Chapter VIII: Part FOUR: David Rossi (1)

I

David Rossi was in his bedroom writing his leader for next morning's paper. A lamp with a dark shade burned on the desk, and the rest of the room was in shadow. It was late, and the house was quiet.

The door opened softly, and Bruno, in shirt-sleeves and slippered feet, came on tiptoe into the room. He brought a letter in a large violet envelope with a monogram on the front of it, and put it down on the desk by Rossi's side. It was from Roma.

"DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--Without rhyme or reason I have been expecting
to see you here to-day, having something to say which it is
important that you should hear. May I expect you in the morning?
Knowing how busy you are, I dare not bid you come, yet the matter
is of great consequence and admits of no delay. It is not a
subject on which it is safe or proper to write, and how to speak
of it I am at a loss to decide. But you shall help me. Therefore
come without delay! There! I have bidden you come in spite of
myself. Judge from that how eager is my expectation.--In haste,
"ROMA V.

"P.S.--I open my envelope, to wonder if you can ever forgive me
the humiliations you have suffered for my sake. To think that _I_
threw you into the way of them! And merely to wipe out an offence
that is not worth considering! I am ashamed of myself. I am also
ashamed of the people about me. You will remember that I told you
they were pitiless and cruel. They are worse--they are heartless
and without mercy. But how bravely you bore their insults and
innuendoes! I almost cry to think of it, and if I were a good
Catholic I should confess and do penance. See? I do confess, and
if you want me to do penance you will come yourself and impose it."

It was the first letter that David Rossi had received from Roma, and as he read it the air seemed to him to be filled with the sweet girlish voice. He could see the play of her large, bright, violet eyes. The delicate fragrance of the scented paper rose to his nostrils, and without being conscious of what he was doing he raised the letter to his lips.

Then he became aware that Bruno was still in the room. The good fellow was in the shadow behind him, pushing things about under some pretext and trying to make a noise.

"Don't let me keep you up, Bruno."

"Sure you don't want anything, sir?" said Bruno with confusion.

David Rossi rose and walked about the room with his slow step.

"You have something to say to me?"

"Well, yes, sir--yes, I have."

"What is it?"

Bruno scratched his shock head and looked about as if for help. His eyes fell on the letter lying open in the light on the desk.

"It's about that, sir. I knew where it came from by the colour and the monogram."

"Well?"

Bruno began to look frightened, and then in a louder voice, that bubbled out of his mouth like water from the neck of a bottle, he said:

"Tell you the truth, sir, people are talking about you."

"What are they saying, Bruno?"

"Saying?... Ever heard the proverb, 'Sun in the eyes, the battle lost'? Sun in the eyes--that's what they're saying, sir."

"So they're saying that, are they?"

"They are. And doesn't it look like it, sir? You'll allow it looks like it, anyway. When you started the Republic, sir, the people had hopes of you. But a month is gone and you haven't done a thing."

David Rossi, with head down, continued to pace to and fro.

"'Patience,' I'm saying. 'Go slow and sure,' says I. That's all right, sir, but the Government is going fast enough. Forty thousand men called out to keep the people quiet, and when the bread-tax begins on the first of the month the blessed saints know what will happen. Next week we hold our meeting in the Coliseum. You called it yourself, sir, yet they're laying odds you won't be there. Where will you be? In the house of a bad woman?"

"Bruno!" cried Rossi in a stern voice, "what right have you to talk to me like this?"

Bruno was frightened at what he had said, but he tried to carry it off with a look of passion.

"Right? The right of a friend, sir, who can't stand by and see you betrayed. Yes, betrayed, that's the word for it. Betrayed! Betrayed! It's a plot to ruin the people through the weakness of their leader. A woman drawn across a man's trail. The trick is as old as the ages. Never heard what we say in Rome?--'The man is fire, the woman is tow; then comes the devil and puts them together.'"

David Rossi was standing face to face with Bruno, who was growing hot and trying to laugh bitterly.

"Oh, I know what I'm saying, sir. The Prime Minister is at the bottom of everything. David Rossi never goes to Donna Roma's house but the Baron Bonelli knows all about it. They write to each other every day, and I've posted her letters myself. _Her_ house is _his_ house. Carriages, horses, servants, liveries--how else could she support it? By her art, her sculpture?"

Bruno was frightened to the bottom of his soul, but he continued to talk and to laugh bitterly.

"She's deceiving you, sir. Isn't it as plain as daylight? You hit her hard, and old Vampire too, in your speech on the morning of the Pope's Jubilee, and she's paying you out for both of them."

"That's enough, Bruno."

"All Rome knows it, and everybody will be laughing at you soon."

"You've said enough, I tell you. Go to bed."

"Oh, I know! The heart has its reasons, but it listens to none."

"Go to bed, I tell you! Isn't it sufficient that by your tittle-tattle you caused me to wrong the lady?"

"_I_ did?"

"_You_ did."

"I did not."

"You did, and if it hadn't been for the tales you told me before I knew her, or had ever seen her, I should never have spoken of her as I did."

"She deserved all you said of her."

"She didn't deserve one word of it, and it was your lies that made me slander her."

Bruno's eyes flinched as if a blow had fallen on them. Then he tried to laugh.

"Hit me again. The skin of the ass is used to blows. Only don't go too far with me, David Rossi."

"Then don't _you_ go too far with your falsehoods and suspicion."

"Suspicion! Holy Virgin! Is it suspicion that she has had you at her studio to make a Roman holiday for her friends and cronies? By the saints! Suspicion!"

"Go on, if it becomes you."

"If what becomes me?"

"To eat her bread and talk against her."

"That's a lie, David Rossi, and you know it. It's my own bread I'm eating. My labour belongs to me, and I sell it to my employer. But my conscience belongs to God, and she cannot buy it."

David Rossi's white and angry face broke up like a snow-flake in the sun.

"I was wrong when I said that, Bruno, and I ask your pardon."

"Do you say that, sir? And after I've insulted you?"

David Rossi held out his hand, and Bruno clasped it.

"I had no right to be angry with you, Bruno, but you are wrong about Donna Roma. Believe me, dear friend, cruelly, awfully, terribly wrong."

"You think she is a good woman."

"I know she is, and if I said otherwise, I take it back and am ashamed."

"Beautiful! If I could only believe in her as you do, sir. But I've known her for two years."

"And I've known her for twenty."

"_You_ have?"

"I have. Shall I tell you who she is? She is the daughter of my old friend in England."

"The one who died in Elba?"

"Yes."

"The good man who found you and fed you, and educated you when you were a boy in London?"

"That was the father of Donna Roma."

"Then he was Prince Volonna, after all?"

"Yes, and they lied to me when they told me she was dead and buried."

Bruno was silent for a moment, and then in a choking voice he said:

"Why didn't you strike me dead when I said she was deceiving you? Forgive me, sir!"

"I do forgive you, Bruno, but not for myself--for her."

Bruno turned away with a dazed expression.

"Forget what I said about going to Donna Roma's, sir."

Rossi sat down and took up his pen.

"No, I cannot forget it," he said. "I _will not_ forget it. I will go to her house no more."

Bruno was silent for a moment, and then he said in a thick voice:

"I understand! God help you, David Rossi. It's a lonely road you mean to travel."

Rossi drew a long breath and made ready to write.

"Good-night, Bruno."

"Good-night," said Bruno, and the good fellow went out with wet eyes.

II

The night was far gone, and the city lay still, while Rossi replied to Roma.

"MY DEAR R.,--You have nothing to reproach yourself with in regard
to my poor doings, or tryings-to-do. They were necessary, and if
the penalties had been worse a hundredfold I should not chew the
cud of my bargain now. Besides your wish, I had another motive, a
secret motive, and perhaps, if I were a good Catholic, I should
confess too, although not with a view to penance. Apparently, it
has come out well, and now that it seems to be all over, both your
scheme and mine, now that the wrong I did you is to some extent
undone, and my own object is in some measure achieved, I find
myself face to face with a position in which it is my duty to you
as well as to myself to bring our intercourse to an end.

"The truth is that we cannot be friends any longer, for the reason
that I love some one in whom you are, unhappily, too much
interested, and because there are obstacles between that person
and myself which are decisive and insurmountable. This alone puts
it on me as a point of honour that you and I should never see each
other again. Each of my visits adds to my embarrassment, to the
feeling that I am doing wrong in paying them, and to the certainty
that I must give them up altogether.

"Thank you again and again for the more than pleasant hours we
have spent together. It is not your fault that I must bury the
memory of them in oblivion. This does not mean that it is any part
of the painful but unavoidable result of circumstances I cannot
explain, that we should not write to each other as occasion may
arise. Continue to think of me as your brother--your brother far
away--to be called upon for counsel in your hour of need and
necessity. And whenever you call, be sure I shall be there.

"What you say of an important matter suggests that something has
come to your knowledge which concerns myself and the authorities;
but when a man has spent all his life on the edge of a precipice,
the most urgent perils are of little moment, and I beg of you not
to be alarmed for my sake. Whatever it is, it is only a part of
the atmosphere of danger I have always lived in--the glacier I
have always walked upon--and 'if it is not now, it is to come; if
it is not to come, it will be now--the
readiness is all.' Good-bye!--Yours, dear R----, D."

III

Next day brought Roma's reply.

"MY DEAR D.,--Your letter has thrown me into the wildest state of
excitement and confusion. I have done no work all day long, and
when Black has leapt upon me and cried, 'Come out for a walk, you
dear, dear dunce,' I have hardly known whether he barked or
talked.

"I am sorry our charming intercourse is to be interrupted, but you
can't mean that it is to be broken off altogether. You can't, you
can't, or my eyes would be red with crying, instead of dancing
with delight.

"Yet why they should dance I don't really know, seeing you are so
indefinite, and I have no right to understand anything. If you
cannot write by post, or even send messages by hand, if my man F.
is your enemy, and your housemate B. is mine, isn't that precisely
the best reason why you should come and talk matters over? Come at
once. I bid you come! In a matter of such inconceivable
importance, surely a sister has a right to command.

"In that character, I suppose, I ought to be glad of the news you
give me. Well, I _am_ glad! But being a daughter of Eve, I have a
right to be curious. I want to ask questions. You say I know the
lady, and am, unhappily, too deeply interested in her--who is she?
Does she know of your love for her? Is she beautiful? Is she
charming? Give me one initial of her name--only one--and I will be
good. I am so much in the dark, and I cannot commit myself until I
know more.

"You speak of obstacles, and say they are decisive and
insurmountable. That's terrible, but perhaps you are only thinking
of what the poets call the 'cruel madness' of love, as if its
madness and cruelty were sufficient reason for flying away from
it. Or perhaps the obstacles are those of circumstances; but in
that case, if the woman is the right one, she will be willing to
wait for such difficulties to be got over, or even to find her
happiness in sharing them.

"See how I plead for my unknown sister! Which is sweet of me,
considering that you don't tell me who she is, but leave me to
find out if she is likely to suit me. But why not let me help you?
Come at once and talk things over.

"Yet how vain I am! Even while I proffer assistance with so loud a
voice, I am smitten cold with the fear of an impediment which you
know a thousand times better than I do how to measure and to meet.
Perhaps the woman you speak of is unworthy of your friendship and
love. I can understand that to be an insurmountable obstacle. You
stand so high, and have to think about your work, your aims, your
people. And perhaps it is only a dream and a delusion, a mirage of
the heart, that love lifts a woman up to the level of the man who
loves her.

"Then there may be some fault--some grave fault. I can understand
that too. We do not love because we should, but because we must,
and there is nothing so cruel as the inequality of man and woman
in the way the world regards their conduct. But I am like a bat in
the dark, flying at gleams of light from closely-curtained
windows. Will you not confide in me? Do! Do! Do!

"Besides, I have the other matter to talk about. You remember
telling me how you kicked out the man M----? He turned spy as the
consequence, and has been sent to England. You ought to know that
he has been making inquiries about you, and appears to have found
out various particulars. Any day may bring urgent news of him, and
if you will not come to me I may have to go to you in spite of
every protest.

"To-morrow is the day for your opening of Parliament, and I have a
ticket for the Court tribune, so you may expect to see me floating
somewhere above you in an atmosphere of lace and perfume.
Good-night!--Your poor bewildered sister, ROMA."

IV

Next morning David Rossi put on evening dress, in obedience to the etiquette of the opening day of Parliament. Before going to the ceremony he answered Roma's letter of the night before.

"DEAR R.,--If anything could add to the bitterness of my regret at
ending an intercourse which has brought me the happiest moments of
my life, it would be the tone of your sweet and charming letter.
You ask me if the woman I love is beautiful. She is more than
beautiful, she is lovely. You ask me if she knows that I love her.
I have never dared to disclose my secret, and if I could have
believed that she had ever so much as guessed at it, I should have
found some consolation in a feeling which is too deep for the
humiliations of pride. You ask me if she is worthy of my
friendship and love. She is worthy of the love and friendship of a
better man than I am or can ever hope to be.

"Yet even if she were not so, even if there were, as you say, a
fault in her, who am I that I should judge her harshly? I am not
one of those who think that a woman is fallen because
circumstances and evil men have conspired against her. I reject
the monstrous theory that while a man may redeem the past, a woman
never can. I abhor the judgment of the world by which a woman may
be punished because she is trying to be pure, and dragged down
because she is rising from the dirt. And if she had sinned as I
have sinned, and suffered as I have suffered, I would pray for
strength enough to say, 'Because I love her we are one, and we
stand or fall together.'

"But she is sweet, and pure, and true, and brave, and noble-hearted,
and there is no fault in her, or she would not be the daughter of
her father, who was the noblest man I ever knew or ever expect to
know. No, the root of the separation is in myself, in myself only,
in my circumstances and the personal situation I find myself in.

"And yet it is difficult for me to state the obstacle which
divides us, or to say more about it than that it is permanent and
insurmountable. I should deceive myself if I tried to believe that
time would remove or lessen it, and I have contended in vain with
feelings which have tempted me to hold on at any price to the only
joy and happiness of my life.

"To go to her and open my heart is impossible, for personal
intercourse is precisely the peril I am trying to avoid. How weak
I am in her company! Even when her dress touches me at passing, I
am thrilled with an emotion I cannot master; and when she lifts
her large bright eyes to mine, I am the slave of a passion which
conquers all my will.

"No, it is not lightly and without cause that I have taken a step
which sacrifices love to duty. I love her, with all my heart and
soul and strength I love her, and that is why she and I, for her
sake more than mine, should never meet again.

"I note what you say about the man M----, but you must forgive me
if I cannot be much concerned about it. There is nobody in London
who knows me in the character I now bear, and can link it to the
one you are thinking of. Good-bye, again! God be with you and keep
you always! D."

Having written this letter, David Rossi sealed it carefully and posted it with his own hand on his way to the opening of Parliament.

V

The day was fine, and the city was bright with many flags in honour of the King. All the streets leading from the royal palace to the Hall of the Deputies were lined with people. The square in front of the Parliament House was kept clear by a cordon of Carabineers, but the open windows of the hotels and houses round about were filled with faces.

David Rossi entered the house by the little private door for deputies in the side street. The chamber was already thronged, and as full of movement as a hive of bees. Ladies in light dresses, soldiers in uniform, diplomatists wearing decorations, senators and deputies in white cravats and gloves, were moving to their places and saluting each other with bows and smiles.

Rossi slipped into the place he usually occupied among the deputies. It was the corner seat by the door on the left of the royal canopy, immediately facing the section, which had been apportioned to the Court tribune. He did not lift his eyes as he entered, but he was conscious of a tall, well-rounded yet girlish figure in a grey dress that glistened in a ray of sunshine, with dark hair under a large black hat, and flashing eyes that seemed to pierce into his own like a shaft of light.

Beautiful ladies with big oriental eyes were about her, and young deputies were using their opera-glasses upon them with undisguised curiosity. There was much gossip, some laughter, and a good deal of gesticulation. The atmosphere was one of light spirits, approaching gaiety, the atmosphere of the theatre or the ballroom.

The clock over the reporters' gallery showed seven minutes after the hour appointed, when the walls of the chamber shook with the vibration of a cannon-shot. It was a gun fired at the Castle of St. Angelo to announce the King's arrival. At the same moment there came the muffled strains of the royal hymn played by the band in the piazza. The little gales of gossip died down in an instant, and in dead silence the assembly rose to its feet.

A minute afterwards the King entered amid a fanfare of trumpets, the shouts of many voices, and the clapping of hands. He was a young man, in the uniform of a general, with a face that was drawn into deep lines under the eyes by ill-health and anxiety. Two soldiers, carrying their brass helmets with waving plumes, walked by his side, and a line of his Ministers followed. His Queen, a tall and beautiful girl, came behind, surrounded by many ladies.

The King took his seat under the baldacchino, with his Ministers on his left. The Queen sat on his right hand, with her ladies beside her. They bowed to the plaudits of the assembly, and the drawn face of the young King wore a painful smile.

The Baron Bonelli, in court dress and decorations, stood at the King's elbow, calm, dignified, self-possessed--the one strong face and figure in the group under the canopy. After the cheering and the shouting had subsided he requested the assembly, at the command of His Majesty, to resume their seats. Then he handed a paper to the King.

It was the King's speech to his Parliament, and he read it nervously in a voice that had not learned to control itself. But the speech was sufficiently emphatic, and its words were grandiose and even florid.

It consisted of four clauses. In the first clause the King thanked God that his country was on terms of amity with all foreign countries, and invoked God's help in the preservation of peace. The second clause was about the increase of the army.

"The army," said the King, "is very dear to me, as it has always been dear to my family. My illustrious grandfather, who granted freedom to the kingdom, was a soldier; my honoured father was a soldier, and it is my pride that I am myself a soldier also. The army was the foundation of our liberty and it is now the security of our rights. On the strength and stability of the army rest the power of our nation abroad and the authority of our institutions at home. It is my firm resolve to maintain the army in the future as my illustrious ancestors have maintained it in the past, and therefore my Government will propose a bill which is intended to increase still further its numbers and its efficiency."

This was received with a great outburst of applause and the waving of many handkerchiefs. It was observed that some of the ladies shed tears.

The third clause was about the growth and spread of anarchism.

"My house," said the King, "gave liberty to the nation, and now it is my duty and my hope to give security and strength. It is known to Parliament that certain subversive elements, not in Italy alone, but throughout Europe, throughout the world, have been using the most devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and divine. Cold, calculating criminals have perpetrated crimes against the most innocent and the most highly placed, which have sent a thrill of horror into all humane hearts. My Government asks for an absolute power over such criminals, and if we are to bring security to the State, we must reinvigorate the authority to which society trusts the high mandate of protecting and governing."

A still greater outburst of cheering interrupted the young King, who raised his head amid the shouts, the clapping of hands, and the fluttering of handkerchiefs, and smiled his painful smile.

"More than that," continued the King, "I have to deplore the spread of associations, sodalities, and clubs, which, by an erroneous conception of liberty, are disseminating the germs of revolt against the State. Under the most noble propositions about the moral and economical redemption of the people is hidden a propaganda for the conquest of the public powers.

"My aim is to gain the affection of my people, and to interest them in the cause of order and public security, and therefore my Government will present an urgent bill, which is intended to stop the flowering of these parasitic organisations, by revising these laws of the press and of public meeting, in whose defects agitators find opportunity for their attacks on the doctrines of the State."

A prolonged outburst of applause followed this passage, mingled with a tumult of tongues, which went on after the King had begun to read again, rendering his last clause--an invocation of God's blessing on the deliberations of Parliament--almost inaudible.

The end of the speech was a signal for further cheering, and when the King left the hall, bowing as before, and smiling his painful smile, the shouts of "Long live the King," the clapping of hands, and the waving of handkerchiefs followed him to the street. The entire ceremony had occupied twelve minutes.

Then the clamour of voices drowned the sound of the royal hymn outside. Deputies were climbing about to join their friends among the ladies, whose light laughter was to be heard on every side.

David Rossi rose to go. Without lifting his head, he had been conscious that during the latter part of the King's speech many eyes were fixed upon him. Playing with his watch-chain, he had struggled to look calm and impassive. But his heart was sick, and he wished to get away quickly.

A partition, shielding the door of the corridor, stood near to his seat, and he was trying to get round it. He heard his name in the air around him, mingled with significant trills and unmistakable accents. All at once he was conscious of a perfume he knew, and of a girlish figure facing him.

"Good-day, Honourable," said a voice that thrilled him like the strings of a harp drawn tight.

He lifted his head and answered. It was Roma. Her face was lighted up with a fire he had never seen before. Only one glance he dared to take, but he could see that at the next instant those flashing eyes would burst into tears.

The tide was passing out by the front doors where the carriages and the reporters waited, but Rossi stepped round to the back. He was on the way to the office of his newspaper, and dipping into the Corso from a lane that crossed it, he came upon the King's carriage returning to the Quirinal. It was entirely surrounded by soldiers, the military commander of Rome on the right, the commander of the Carabineers on the left, and the Cuirassiers, riding two deep, before and behind, so that the King and Queen were scarcely visible to the cheering crowd. Last in the royal procession came an ordinary cab containing two detectives in plain clothes.

The office of the _Sunrise_ was in a narrow lane out of the Corso. It was a dingy building of three floors, with the machine-rooms on the ground-level, the composing-rooms at the top, and the editorial rooms between. Rossi's office was a large apartment, with three desks, that were intended for the editor and his day and night assistants.

His day assistant received him with many bows and compliments. He was a small man with an insincere face.

Rossi drank a cup of coffee and settled to his work. It was an article on the day's doings, more fearless and outspoken than he had ever published before. Such a day as they had just gone through, with the flying of flags and the playing of royal hymns, was not really a day of joy and rejoicing, but of degradation and shame. If the people had known what they were doing, they would have hung their flags with crape and played funeral marches.

"Such a scene as we have witnessed to-day," he wrote, "like all such scenes throughout the world, whether in Germany, Russia, and England, or in China, Persia, and the darkest regions of Africa, is but proof of the melancholy fact that while man, as the individual, has been nineteen hundred years converted to Christianity, man, as the nation, remains to this day for the most part utterly pagan."

The assistant editor, who had glanced over the pages of manuscript as Rossi threw them aside, looked up at last and said:

"Are you sure, sir, that you wish to print this article?"

"Quite sure."

The man made a shrug of his shoulders, and took the copy upstairs.

The short day had closed in when Rossi was returning home. Screamers in the streets were crying early editions of the evening papers, and the cafés in the Corso were full of officers and civilians, sipping vermouth and reading glowing accounts of the King's enthusiastic reception. Pitiful! Most pitiful! And the man who dared to tell the truth must be prepared for any consequences.

David Rossi told himself that he _was_ prepared. Henceforth he would devote himself to the people, without a thought of what might happen. Nothing should come between him and his work--nothing whatever--not even ... but, no, he could not think of it!

VI

Two letters were awaiting David Rossi in his rooms at home.

One was a circular from the President of the Chamber of Deputies summoning Parliament for the day after to-morrow to elect officials and reply to the speech of the King.

The other was from Roma, and the address was in a large, hurried hand. David Rossi broke the seal with nervous fingers.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,--I know! I know! I know now what the obstacle is.
B. gave me the hint of it on one of the days of last week, when I
was so anxious to see you and you did not come. It is your
unflinching devotion to your mission and to your public duties.
You are one of those who think that when a man has dedicated his
life to work for the world, he should give up everything
else--father, mother, wife, child--and live like a priest, who puts
away home, and love, and kindred, that others may have them more
abundantly. I can understand that, and see a sort of nobility in
it too, especially in days when the career of a statesman is only
a path to vainglory of every kind. It is great, it is glorious, it
thrills me to think of it.

"But I am losing faith in my unknown sister that is to be, in
spite of all my pleading. You say she is beautiful--that's well
enough, but it comes by nature. You say she is sweet, and true,
and charming--and I am willing to take it all on trust. But when
you say she is noble-hearted I respectfully refuse to believe it.
If she were that, you would be sure that she would know that
friendship is the surest part of love, and to be the friend of a
great man is to be a help to him, and not an impediment.

"My gracious! What does she think you are? A _cavaliere servente_
to dance attendance on her ladyship day and night? Give me the
woman who wants her husband to be a man, with a man's work to do,
a man's burdens to bear, and a man's triumphs to win.

"Yet perhaps I am too hard on my unknown sister that is to be, or
ought to be, and it is only your own distrust that wrongs her. If
she is the daughter of one brave man and really loves another, she
knows her place and her duty. It is to be ready to follow her
husband wherever he must go, to share his fate whatever it may be,
and to live his life, because it is now her own.

"And since I am in the way of pleading for her again, let me tell
you how simple you are to suppose that because you have never
disclosed your secret she may never have guessed it. Goodness me!
To think that men who can make women love them to madness itself
can be so ignorant as not to know that a woman can always tell if
a man loves her, and even fix the very day, and hour, and minute
when he looked into her eyes and loved her first.

"And if my unknown sister that ought to be knows that you love
her, be sure that she loves you in return. Then trust her. Take
the counsel of a woman and go to her. Remember, that if you are
suffering by this separation, perhaps she is suffering too, and if
she is worthy of the love and friendship of a better man than you
are, or ever hope to be (which, without disparaging her ladyship,
I respectfully refuse to believe), let her at least have the
refusal of one or both of them.

"Good-night! I go to the Chamber of Deputies again the day after
to-morrow, being so immersed in public matters (and public men)
that I can think of nothing else at present. Happily my bust is
out of hand, and the caster (not B. this time) is hard at work on
it.

"You won't hear anything about the M---- doings, yet I assure you
they are a most serious matter. Unless I am much mistaken there is
an effort on foot to connect you with my father, which is surely
sufficiently alarming. M---- is returning to Rome, and I hear
rumours of an intention to bring pressure on some one _here_ in
the hope of leading to identification. Think of it, I beg, I
pray!--Your friend,
"R."

VII

Next day Rossi's editorial assistant came with a troubled face. There was bad news from the office. The morning's edition of the _Sunrise_ had been confiscated by the police owing to the article on the King's speech and procession. The proprietors of the paper were angry with their editor, and demanded to see him immediately.

"Tell them I'll be at the office at four o'clock, as usual," said Rossi, and he sat down to write a letter.

It was to Roma. The moment he took up the pen to write to her the air of the room seemed to fill with a sweet feminine presence that banished everything else. It was like talking to her. She was beside him. He could hear her soft replies.

"If it were possible to heighten the pain of my feelings when I
decided to sacrifice my best wishes to my sense of duty, a letter
like your last would be more than I could bear. The obstacle you
deal with is not the one which chiefly weighs with me, but it is a
very real impediment, not altogether disposed of by the sweet and
tender womanliness with which you put it aside. In that regard
what troubles me most is the hideous inequality between what the
man gives and what he gets, and the splendid devotion with which
the woman merges her life in the life of the man she marries only
quickens the sense of his selfishness in allowing himself to
accept so great a prize.

"In my own case, the selfishness, if I yielded to it, would be
greater far than anybody else could be guilty of, and of all men
who have sacrificed women's lives to their own career, I should
feel myself to be the most guilty and inexcusable. My dear and
beloved girl is nobly born, and lives in wealth and luxury, while
I am poor--poor by choice, and therefore poor for ever, brought up
as a foundling, and without a name that I dare call my own.

"What then? Shall such a man as I am ask such a woman as she is to
come into the circle of his life, to exchange her riches for his
poverty, her comfort for his suffering? No.

"Besides, what woman could do it if I did? Women can be unselfish,
they can be faithful, they can be true; but--don't ask me to say
things I do not want to say--women love wealth and luxury and
ease, and shrink from pain and poverty and the forced marches of a
hunted life. And why shouldn't they? Heaven spare them all such
sufferings as men alone should bear!

"Yet all this is still outside the greater obstacle which stands
between me and the dear girl from whom I must separate myself now,
whatever it may cost me, as an inexorable duty. I entreat you to
spare me the pain of explaining further. Believe that for her sake
my resolution, in spite of all your sweet and charming pleading,
is strong and unalterable.

"Only one thing more. If it is as you say it may be, that she
loves me, though I had no right to believe so, that will only add
to my unhappiness in thinking of the wrench that she must suffer.
But she is strong, she is brave, she is the daughter of her
father, and I have faith in the natural power of her mind, in her
youth and the chances of life for one so beautiful and so gifted,
to remove the passing impression that may have been made.

"Good-bye yet again! And God bless you! D.

"P. S.--I am not afraid of M----, and come when he may, I shall
certainly stand my ground. There is only one person in Rome who
could be used against me in the direction you indicate, and I
could trust her with my heart's blood."

VIII

Before two o'clock next day the Chamber of Deputies was already full. The royal chair and baldacchino had been removed, and their place was occupied by the usual bench of the President.

When the Prime Minister took his place, cool, collected, smiling, faultlessly dressed and wearing a flower in his button-hole, he was greeted with some applause from the members, and the dry rustle of fans in the ladies' tribune was distinctly heard. The leader of the Opposition had a less marked reception, and when David Rossi glided round the partition to his place on the extreme Left, there was a momentary hush, followed by a buzz of voices.

Then the President of the Chamber entered, with his secretaries about him, and took his seat in a central chair under a bust of the young King. Ushers, wearing a linen band of red, white, and green on their arms, followed with portfolios, and with little trays containing water-bottles and glasses. Conversation ceased, and the President rang a hand-bell that stood by his side, and announced that the sitting was begun.

The first important business of the day was the reply to the speech of the King, and the President called on the member who had been appointed to undertake this duty. A young Deputy, a man of letters, then made his way to a bar behind the chairs of the Ministers and read from a printed paper a florid address to the sovereign.

Having read his printed document, the Deputy proceeded to move the adoption of the reply.

With the proposal of the King and the Government to increase the army he would not deal. It required no recommendation. The people were patriots. They loved their country, and would spend the last drop of their blood to defend it. The only persons who were not with the King in his desire to uphold the army were the secret foes of the nation and the dynasty--persons who were in league with their enemies.

"That," said the speaker, "brings us to the next clause of our reply to His Majesty's gracious speech. We know that there exists among the associations aimed at a compact between strangely varying forces--between the forces of socialism, republicanism, unbelief, and anarchy, and the forces of the Church and the Vatican."

At this statement there was a great commotion. Members on the Left protested with loud shouts of "It is not true," and in a moment the tongues and arms of the whole assembly were in motion. The President rang his bell, and the speaker concluded.

"Let us draw the teeth of both parties to this secret conspiracy, that they may never again use the forces of poverty and discontent to disturb public order."

When the speaker sat down, his friends thronged around him to shake hands with him and congratulate him.

Then the eyes of the House and of the audience in the gallery turned to David Rossi. He had sat with folded arms and head down while his followers screamed their protests. But passing a paper to the President, he now rose and said:

"I ask permission to propose an amendment to the reply to the King's speech."

"You have the word," said the President.

David Rossi read his amendment. At the feet of His Majesty it humbly expressed an opinion that the present was not a time at which fresh burdens should be laid upon the country for the support of the army, with any expectation that they could be borne. Misfortune and suffering had reached their climax. The cup of the people was full.

At this language some of the members laughed. There were cries of "Order" and "Shame," and then the laughter was resumed. The President rang his bell, and at length silence was secured. David Rossi began to speak, in a voice that was firm and resolute.

"If," he said, "the statement that members of this House are in alliance with the Pope and the Vatican is meant for me and mine, I give it a flat denial. And, in order to have done with this calumny once and for ever, permit me to say that between the Papacy and the people, as represented by us, there is not, and never can be, anything in common. In temporal affairs, the theory of the Papacy rejects the theory of the democracy. The theory of the democracy rejects the theory of the Papacy. The one claims a divine right to rule in the person of the Pope because he is Pope. The other denies all divine right except that of the people to rule themselves."

This was received with some applause mingled with laughter, and certain shouts flung out in a shrill hysterical voice. The President rang his bell again, and David Rossi continued.

"The proposal to increase the army," he said, "in a time of tranquillity abroad but of discord at home, is the gravest impeachment that could be made of the Government of a country. Under a right order of things Parliament would be the conscience of the people, Government would be the servant of that conscience, and rebellion would be impossible. But this Government is the master of the country and is keeping the people down by violence and oppression. Parliament is dead. For God's sake let us bury it!"

Loud shouts followed this outburst, and some of the Deputies rose from their seats, and crowding about the speaker in the open space in front, yelled and screamed at him like a pack of hounds. He stood calm, playing with his watch-chain, while the President rang his bell and called for silence. The interruptions died down at last, and the speaker went on:

"If you ask me what is the reason of the discontent which produces the crimes of anarchism, I say, first, the domination of a Government which is absolute, and the want of liberty of speech and meeting. In other countries the discontented are permitted to manifest their woes, and are not punished unless they commit deeds of violence; but in Italy alone, except Russia, a man may be placed outside the law, torn from his home, from the bedside of his nearest and dearest, and sent to _domicilio coatto_ to live or die in a silence as deep as that of the grave. Oh, I know what I am saying. I have been in the midst of it. I have seen a father torn from his daughter, and the motherless child left to the mercy of his enemies."

This allusion quieted the House, and for a moment there was a dead silence. Then through the tense air there came a strange sound, and the President demanded silence from the galleries, whereupon the reporters rose and made a negative movement of the hand with two fingers upraised, pointing at the same time to the ladies' tribune.

One of the ladies had cried out. David Rossi heard the voice, and, when he began again, his own voice was softer and more tremulous.

"Next, I say that the cause of anarchism in Italy, as everywhere else, is poverty. Wait until the 1st of February, and you shall see such an army enter Rome as never before invaded it. I assert that within three miles of this place, at the gates of this capital of Christendom, human beings are living lives more abject than that of savage man.

"Housed in huts of straw, sleeping on mattresses of leaves, clothed in rags or nearly nude, fed on maize and chestnuts and acorns, worked eighteen hours a day, and sweated by the tyranny of the overseers, to whom landlords lease their lands while they idle their days in the _salons_ of Rome and Paris, men and women and children are being treated worse than slaves, and beaten more than dogs."

At that there was a terrific uproar, shouts of "It's a lie!" and "Traitor!" followed by a loud outbreak of jeers and laughter. Then, for the first time, David Rossi lost control of himself, and, turning upon Parliament with flaming eyes and quivering voice, he cried:

"You take these statements lightly--you that don't know what it is to be hungry, you that have food enough to eat, and only want sleep to digest it. But _I_ know these things by bitter knowledge--by experience. Don't talk to me, you who had fathers and mothers to care for you, and comfortable homes to live in. I had none of these. I was nursed in a poorhouse and brought up in a hut on the Campagna. Because of the miserable laws of your predecessors my mother drowned herself in the Tiber, and I knew what it was to starve. And I am only one of many. At the very door of Rome, under a Christian Government, the poor are living lives of moral anæmia and physical atrophy more terrible by far than those which made the pagan poet say two thousand years ago--_Paucis vivit humanum genus_--the human race exists for the benefit of the few."

The silence was breathless while the speaker made this personal reference, and when he sat down, after a denunciation of the militarism which was consuming the heart of the civilised world, the House was too dazed to make any manifestation.

In the dead hush that followed, the President put the necessary questions, but the amendment fell through without a vote being taken, and the printed reply was passed.

Then the Minister of War rose to give notice of his bill for increased military expenditure, and proposed to hand it over to the general committee of the budget.

The Baron Bonelli rose next as Minister of the Interior, and gave notice of his bill for the greater security of the public, and the remodelling of the laws of the press and of association.

He spoke incisively and bitterly, and he was obviously excited, but he affected his usual composure.

"After the language we have heard to-day," he said, "and the knowledge we possess of mass meetings projected, it will not surprise the House that I treat this measure as urgent, and propose that we consider it on the principle of the three readings, taking the first of them in four days."

At that there were some cries from the Left, but the Minister continued:

"It will also not surprise the House that, to prevent the obstruction of members who seem ready to sing their Miserere without end, I will ask the House to take the readings without debate."

Then in a moment the whole House was in an uproar and members were shaking their fists in each other's faces. In vain the President rang his bell for silence. At length he put on his hat and left the Chamber, and the sitting was at an end.

IX

The last post that night brought Rossi a letter from Roma.

"MY DEAR, DEAR FRIEND,--It's all up! I'm done with her! My unknown
and invisible sister that is to be, or rather isn't to be and
oughtn't to be, is not worth thinking about any longer. You tell
me that she is good and brave and noble-hearted, and yet you would
have me believe that she loves wealth, and ease, and luxury, and
that she could not give them up even for the sweetest thing that
ever comes into a woman's life. Out on her! What does she think a
wife is? A pet to be pampered, a doll to be dressed up and danced
on your knee? If that's the sort of woman she is, I know what I
should call her. A name is on the tip of my tongue, and the point
of my finger, and the end of my pen, and I'm itching to have it
out, but I suppose I must not write it. Only don't talk to me any
more about the bravery of a woman like that.

"The wife I call brave is a man's friend, and if she knows what
that means, to be the friend of her husband to all the limitless
lengths of friendship, she thinks nothing about sacrifices between
him and her, and differences of class do not exist for either of
them. Her pride died the instant love looked out of her eyes at
him, and if people taunt her with his poverty, or his birth, she
answers and says: 'It's true he is poor, but his glory is, that he
was a workhouse boy who hadn't father or mother to care for him,
and now he is a great man, and I'm proud of him, and not all the
wealth of the world shall take me away.'

"One thing I will say, though, for the sister that isn't to be,
and that is, that you are deceiving yourself if you suppose that
she is going to reconcile herself to your separation while she is
kept in the dark as to the cause of it. It is all very well for
you to pay compliments to her beauty and youth and the natural
strength of her mind to remove passing impressions, but perhaps
the impressions are the reverse of passing ones, and if you go out
of her life, what is to become of her? Have you thought of that?
Of course you haven't.

"No, no, no! My poor sister! you shall not be so hard on her! In
my darkness I could almost fancy that I personate her, and I am
she and she is I. Conceited, isn't it? But I told you it wasn't
for nothing I was a daughter of Eve. Anyhow I have fought hard for
her and beaten you out and out, and now I don't say: 'Will you go
to her?' You will--I know you will.

"My bust is out of the caster's hand, and ought to be under mine,
but I've done no work again to-day. Tried, but the glow of soul
was not there, and I was injuring the face at every touch.

"No further news of M----, and my heart's blood is cold at the
silence. But if you are fearless, why should I be afraid?--Your
friend's friend, R."

X

Before going to bed that night, Rossi replied to Roma.