Next day, being Good Friday, was passed by the Pope in religious retreat, which was interrupted by indispensable business only. After Mass of the Presanctified he sat in his study with his confessor, while his chaplain in black passed through on tiptoe from the private chapel, and his chamberlains, tired out by the ceremonies of yesterday, dozed on their stools in the outer hall.
The day was bright but the room was darkened, and the hearts of the two old men were heavy. Over the face of the Pope there was a cloud of trouble, and the countenance of the Capuchin was solemn to the point of sternness. The friar sat in the old-fashioned easy-chair with his bare feet showing from under the edge of his brown habit; the Pope lay on the lounge with both hands in the vertical pockets of his white woollen cassock.
"Your Holiness is not well this morning?"
"Not very well, Father Pifferi."
"Your Holiness was disturbed by the interview in the Sacristy. But you should think no more about it. In any case, what the Minister proposed was impossible, therefore you must dismiss it from your mind. To ask a wife to reveal the secrets of her husband would be tyranny worse than the rack. Besides, it would be uncanonical, and your Holiness could never consider it."
"How so?"
"Didn't your Holiness promise that whatever the nature of this poor lady's confidence you would hold it as sacred as the confessional?"
"Well?"
"What is the confessional, your Holiness? It is a tribunal in which the priest is judge and the penitent a prisoner who pleads guilty. Is the priest to call witnesses to prove other crimes? He has no right and no power to do so."
"But where the penitent wittingly or unwittingly is in the position of an accomplice, what then, Father Pifferi?"
"Even then it is expressly forbidden to demand the names of others upon the plea of preventing evil. How can you hold this lady's confidence as sacred and yet ask her to denounce her husband?"
The Pope rose with a face full of pain, walked to the bookcase,and took down a book. "Listen, Father," he said, and he began to read:—
"If the penitent was obliged under pain of mortal sin to reveal his accomplices to repair a common injury, I have maintained against other theologians that even then the confessor cannot oblige him to do so."
"There!" cried the Capuchin. "What did I say? Gaume is wise, and the other theologians, who are they?"
"Only," continued the Pope, turning a page and holding up one finger, "he can and must oblige him to make known his accomplices to other persons who can arrest the scandal."
The Capuchin took a long breath. "Is that what the Holy Father intends to do in this instance?"
"Hecanandmust."
The Capuchin dropped his head, and there was a long pause, in which the Pope walked nervously about the room.
"Poor child!" said the Capuchin. "But perhaps her heart has been too much set on human love."
The Pope sighed.
"Yet who are we, whose hearts are closed to earthly affection, to prescribe a limit to human love?"
"Who indeed?" said the Pope.
"Do you recall her resemblance to any one, your Holiness?"
The Pope stopped in his walk and looked towards the curtained window.
"The same soft voice and radiant smile, the same attitude of idolatry towards the husband she is devoted to, the same...."
"The Sisters of the Sacred Heart will take her when all is over," said the Pope.
"And the man, too, whatever his errors, has a certain grandeur of soul, that lifts him far above these chief gaolers and detectives who call themselves statesmen and diplomatists, these scavengers of civilisation."
"He must go back to America and begin life again," said the Pope.
Two hours later Father Pifferi went off to fetch Roma, and the Pope sat down to his mid-day meal. The room was very quiet, and in the absence of the church bells the city seemed to sit in silence. Cortis stood behind the Pope's chair, and the cat sat on a stool at the opposite side of the table.
The chamberlains, lay and ecclesiastical, waited in theante-camera, and the Swiss and Noble Guards, the Palatine Guards, and thepalfrenieridotted the decorated halls that led to the royal stairs.
But the saintly old man, who had a palace yet no home, servants yet no family, an army yet no empire, who was the father of all men, yet knew no longer the ordinary joys and sorrows of human life, sat alone in his little plain apartment and ate his simple dish of spinach and beans.
Good Friday's Ministerial paper announced in its official column that late the night before the King, attended by the Minister of the Interior, had paid a surprise visit to the Mint, which was in the Via Fondamenta, a lane approached by way of the silent passage which leads to the lodging of the Canons of St. Peter's. Roma was puzzling over the inexplicable announcement, when old John, one of Rossi's pensioners, knocked at her door. His face and his lips were white, and when Roma offered him money he put it aside impatiently.
"You mustn't think a gold hammer can break the gate of heaven, Eccellenza," the old man said.
Then he told his story. The King had seen the Pope in secret the night before, and there was something going on about the Honourable Rossi. John knew it because his grandson had left Rome that morning for Chiasso, and another member of the secret police had started for Modane. If Donna Roma knew where the Honourable was to be found, she had better tell him not to return to Italy.
"Better be a wood-bird than a cage-bird, you know," the old man whispered.
Roma thanked him for his news, and then warned him of the risk he ran, being dependent on his grandson and his grandson's wife.
"That's nothing," he said, "nothing at allnow."
Last night he had dreamed a dream. He thought he was a strong man again, with his children about him, and beholden to no one. How happy he had been! But when he awoke, and found it was not true, and that he was old and feeble, he felt that he could hear it no longer.
"I'm in the way and taking the food of the children, soit can't last long, Eccellenza," he said in a tremulous voice, smiling with his toothless mouth, and nodding slightly as he went away.
In the uneasy depths of Roma's soul only one thing was now certain. Her husband was in danger, and he must not attempt to cross the frontier. Yet how was he to be prevented? The difficulty was enormous. If only Rossi had replied to her letter by telegram, as she had asked him to do, she might have found some means of communication. At length an idea occurred to her, and she sat down to write a letter.
"Dearest," she wrote, while her eyes shone with a kind of delirium and tears trickled down her cheeks, "I am very ill, and as you cannot come to me I must go to you. Don't think me too weak and womanish, after all my solemn promises to be so strong and brave. But I can only live by love, dearest, and your absence is more than I can bear. You will think I ought to be content with your letters, and certainly they have been very sweet and dear to me; but they are so few, and they come at such long intervals, and now they seem to have stopped altogether. Perhaps at the bottom of my selfish heart, too, I think your letters might be a wee bit more lover-like, but then men don't write real love letters, and nearly every woman would confess, if she told the truth, and she is a little disappointed in that regard.
"I know my husband has other things to think about, great things, high and noble aims and objects, but I am only a woman in spite of my loud pretences, and I must be loved, or I shall die. Not that I am afraid of dying, because I know that if I die I shall be with you in a moment, and this cruel separation will be at an end. But I want to live, and I'm certain I shall begin to feel better after I have passed a few moments at your side. So I shall pack up immediately and start away on the wings of the morning.
"Don't be alarmed if you find me looking pale and thin and old and ugly. How could I be anything else when the particular world I live in has been sunless all these weeks? I know your work is very pressing, especially now when so many things are happening; but you will put it aside for a little while, won't you, and take me up into the Alps somewhere, and nurse me back to health and happiness? Fancy! We shall be boy and girl again, as in the days when you usedto catch butterflies for me, and then look sad when, like a naughty child, I scrunched them!
"Au revoir, dearest. I shall fall into your hands nearly as soon as this letter. I tremble to think you may be angry with me for following you and interrupting your work. If you show it in your face I shall certainly expire. But you will be good to your poor pilgrim of love and comfort and strengthen her. All the time you have been away she has never forgotten you for a moment—no, not one waking moment. An ordinary woman who loved an ordinary man would not tell him this, but you are not ordinary, and if I am I don't care a pin to pretend.
"Expect me, then, by the fastest train leaving Rome to-morrow morning, and don't budge from Paris until I arrive.
"Roma."
The strain of this letter, with its conscious subterfuge and its unconscious truth, put Roma into a state of fever; and when she had finished it and sent it to the post, her head was light, and she was aware for the first time that she was really ill.
The deaf old woman, who helped her to pack, talked without ceasing of Rossi and Bruno and Elena and little Joseph, and finally of the King and his intended jubilee.
"I don't take no notice of Governments, Signora. It's the same as it used to be in the old days. One Pope died, and his soul went into the next. First an ugly Pope, then a handsome one, but the soul was the same in all. Wet soup or dry—that's all I trouble about now; and I don't care who gets the taxes so long as I can pay.... What do you say, Tommaso?"
The Garibaldian had come upstairs smiling and winking, and holding out a letter. "From Trinità de' Monti," he whispered. Flushing crimson and trembling visibly, Roma took the letter out of the old man's hands with as much apprehension as if he had tried to deal her a blow, and went off to her room.
"What do I say, Francesca? I say it's a good thing to be a Christian in these days, and that's why I always carry a sharp knife and a rosary."
The letter bore the Berlin postmark.
"Mydear Wife,—I left Paris rather unexpectedly three days ago and arrived here on Tuesday. The reason of this sudden flight was the announcement in the Paris papers of the festivities intended in Rome in honour of the King's accession. Such a shameless outrage on the people's sufferings in the hour of their greatest need seemed to call for immediate and effectual protest, and it was thought wise to push on the work of organisation with every possible despatch...."
"There is a train north at 9.30," thought Roma. "I must leave to-night, not in the morning."
"Oh, Roma, Roma, my dear Roma, I understand your father now, and can sympathise with him at last. He held that even regicide might become a necessary weapon in the warfare of humanity, and though I knew that some of the greatest spirits had recourse to it, I always thought this belief the defect of your father's quality as a prophet and the limit of his vision. But now I see that the only difference between us was that his heart was bigger than mine, and that in those cruel crises where the people are helpless and can do nothing by constitutional means, revolution, not evolution, mayseemto be their only hope...."
Roma felt hysterical. There could no longer be any doubt of Rossi's intention.
"I don't tell you anything definite about our plans, dearest, partly because of the danger of this letter going astray, and partly because I don't think it right to saddle my wife with the responsibility of knowing a programme that is weighted with issues of such immense importance to so many. I know there is not a drop of blood in her veins that isn't ready to flow for me, but that is no reason for exposing her to the danger of even the prick of her little finger.
"Briefly our cry is 'Unite! Unite! Unite!' As soon as our scheme is complete, and associates all over Europe receive the word to commence concerted movement, the tyrants at the heads of the States will find the old edifices riddled and honeycombed, and ready to fall."
Roma imagined she could see everything as it was intendedto be—the signal, the rising, the regicide. "There is a train at 2.30; I must catch that one," she thought.
"Dearest, don't attempt to reply to this letter, for I may leave Berlin at any moment, but whether for Geneva or Zürich I don't yet know. I can give you no address for letter or telegram, and perhaps it is best that at the critical moment I should cut myself off from all connection with Rome. Before many days I shall be with you; my absence will be over, and, God willing, I shall never leave your side again...."
Roma was growing dizzy. Rossi was rushing on his death, and there was no help for him. It was like the awful hand of the Almighty driving him blindly on.
"Adieu, my darling. Keep well. A friend writes that letters from Rome are following me from London. They must be yours, but before they overtake me I shall be holding you in my arms. How I long for it! I am more than ever full of love for you, and if I have filled my letter with business I have other things to say to you the very moment that we meet. Don't expect me until you see me in your room. Be brave! Now is the moment for all your courage. Remember you promised to be my soldier as well as my wife—'ready and waiting when her captain calls.'
D."
Roma was standing with Rossi's letter in her hand—her face and lips white, and her head full of a roaring noise—when a knock came to the bedroom door. Before answering she thrust the letter into the stove and set a match to it.
"Donna Roma! Are you there, Signora?"
"Wait ... come in."
The old woman's head, in its coloured handkerchief, appeared through the half-opened door.
"A Frate in the sitting-room to see you, Signora."
It was Father Pifferi. The old man's gentle face looked troubled. Roma gave him a rapid, penetrating, and fearful glance.
"The Holy Father wishes to see you again," he said.
Roma thought for a moment; then she said, "Very well, let us go," and she went back to her room to make ready. The last of the letter was burning in the stove.
Roma returned to the Vatican with the Capuchin. There were the same gorgeous staircases and halls, the same soldiers, chamberlains, Bussolanti and Monsignori, the same atmosphere of the palace of an emperor. But in the little plain apartment which they entered, not as before by way of the throne room, but by a secret corridor with cocoanut matting and narrow frosted windows, the Pope stood waiting, like a simple priest, in a white woollen cassock.
He smiled as Roma approached, a sad smile, and his weary eyes, when she looked timidly into his face, were full of the measureless pity that is in the eyes of the surgeon who is about to vivisect a dumb creature because it is necessary for the welfare of the human race.
She knelt and kissed his ring. He raised her and put her to sit on the lounge, sitting in the arm-chair himself, and continuing to hold her hand. The Capuchin stood by the window, holding the curtain aside as if looking out on the piazza.
"You believe the Holy Father would not send for you to injure you?" he said.
"I am sure he would not, your Holiness," she answered.
"And though I disapprove of your husband's doings, you know I would not willingly do him any harm?"
"The Holy Father would not do harm to any one; and my husband is so good, and his aims are so noble, that nobody who really knew him could ever try to injure him."
He looked into her face; it shone with a frightened joy, and pity grew upon him.
"Your devotion to your husband is very sweet and beautiful, my daughter, and it grieves the Holy Father's heart to trouble it. But it seems to be his duty to do so, and he must do his duty."
Again she looked up timidly, and again the sense came to him of dumb eyes full of entreaty.
"My daughter, your husband's motives may not be bad. They may even be good and noble. It is often so with men of his sympathies. They see the disparity of wealth and poverty, and their hearts are torn with anger and with pity. But, my child, they do not know that true and lasting reforms, such as affect the whole human family, can only beaccomplished by God and by the authority of His Holy Church and Pontificate, and that it must be the bell of St. Peter's which announces them to the world."
As the Pope was speaking the colour ran up Roma's face like a flag of distress. She looked helplessly round at the Capuchin. The dumb eyes seemed to ask when the blow would fall.
"As a consequence, what is he doing, my daughter? Ignoring the Church, which like a true mother is ever anxious to bear the burden of human weakness and suffering; he is setting up a new gospel, such as would reduce mankind to a worse barbarism than that from which Christ freed us. Is this conduct worthy of your devotion, my child?"
Roma fixed her timid eyes on the Pope's face and answered:
"I have nothing to do with my husband's opinions, your Holiness. I have only to be true to the friendship he gives me and the love I bear him."
"My child," said the Pope, "ask yourself what your husband is doing at this moment. Not content with sowing the seeds of discord in Parliament and by the press, he is wandering through Europe, gathering up the adventurers who work in darkness in every country, and hatching a conspiracy which would lead to a state of anarchy throughout the world."
Roma withdrew her hand from the hand of the Pope and made an exclamation of dissent.
"Ah, I know what you would say, my daughter. He did not set out to produce anarchy. Such men never do. They begin with evolution and end with revolution. They begin with peace and end with violence. And the only sequel to your husband's aims must be the destruction of civil society, of Government, and of the Church."
Roma's fingers were clasped convulsively in her lap. She lifted her timid but passionate face and said:
"I know nothing about that, your Holiness. I only know that whatever he is doing his heart laid it upon him as a duty, and his heart is pure and noble."
"My daughter, your husband may be the greatest of patriots in spirit and intention, but nevertheless he is one of the criminal and visionary teachers of this unhappy time who are deluding the ignorant crowd with promises that can never be realised. Anarchy, chaos, the uprooting of religionand morality, of justice, human dignity, and the purity of domestic life—these are the only possible fruits of the seed he is sowing."
The timid eyes began to flash. "I did not come here to hear this, your Holiness." The Pope put his hand tenderly on her hands.
"Remember, my child, what you said yourself on your former visit."
Roma dropped her head.
"The authorities know all about it."
"Holy Father!"
"It was necessary."
"Then ... then somebody must have told them."
"I told them. The Holy Father revealed no more than was necessary to relieve his conscience and to prevent crime. It was your own tongue that told the rest, my daughter."
He recalled what had passed in the cabinet of the Prime Minister, and Roma felt as if something choked her. "No matter!" she said, with the same frightened but passionate face. "David Rossi is prepared for anything, and he will be prepared for this."
"The authorities already knew more than I could tell them," said the Pope. "They knew where your husband was and what he was doing. They know where he is now, and they are preparing to arrest him."
Roma's nerves grew more and more excited, the timid look gave place to a look of defiance.
"They tell me that he is in Berlin at this moment. Is it true?"
Roma did not reply.
"They say their advices from official sources leave no doubt that he is engaged in conspiracy."
Still Roma did not reply.
"They say confidently that the conspiracy points to rebellion, and is intended to include regicide. Is it so?"
Roma bit her lip and remained silent.
"Can't you trust me, my child? Don't you know the Holy Father? Only give me some hope that these statements are untrue, and the Holy Father is ready to withstand all evil influences against you, and face the world in your defence."
Roma felt as if something would snap within her brain. "I cannot say ... I do not know," she faltered.
"But have you any uncertainty, my daughter? If you have the least reason to believe that these statements are slanders of malicious imaginations, tell me so, and I will give your husband the benefit of the doubt."
Roma rose to her feet, but she held on to the edge of the table that stood by her side, rigid, quivering, frail and silent. The Pope looked up at her with weary eyes, and continued in a caressing tone:
"If unhappily you have no doubt that your husband is engaged in dangerous enterprises, can you not dissuade him from them?"
"No," said Roma, struggling with her tears, "that is impossible. Whether he is right or wrong, it is not for me to sit in judgment upon him. Besides, long ago, before we were married, I promised that I would never stand between him and his work, and I never can—never."
"But if he loves you, my child, would he not wish for your sake to avoid the danger?"
"I can't ask him. I told him to go on without thinking of me, and I would take care of myself whatever happened."
Her eyes were now shining with her tears. The Pope patted the hand on the table.
"Can you not at least go to him and warn him, and thus leave him to judge for himself, my daughter?"
"Yes ... no, that is impossible also."
"Why so, my child?"
"Because I don't know where he is, and I shouldn't know where to find him. In his last letter he said it was better I should not know."
"Then he has cut himself off from you entirely?"
"Entirely. I am to see him next in Rome."
"And meantime, that he may not run the risk of being traced by his enemies, he has stopped all channels of communication with his friends?"
"Yes."
The Pope's face whitened visibly, and an inward voice said to him, "This is God's hand. Death is waiting for the man in Rome, and he is walking blindly on to it."
The weary eyes looked with compassion on Roma's quivering face. "There's no help for it," thought the Pope.
"Suppose, my child ... suppose it were within your power to hinder evil consequences, would you do it?"
"I am a woman, Holy Father. What can a woman do to hinder anything?"
"In the history of nations it has sometimes happened that a woman has been able to save life and protect society by raising a little hand like this."
The Pope lifted Roma's quivering fingers from the table.
"If there is anything I can do, your Holiness, without breaking my promise or betraying my husband...."
"It is a terrible ordeal, my child. For a wife, God knows how terrible."
"No matter! If it will save my husband.... Tell me, your Holiness."
He told her the proposal of the Prime Minister and the promise of the King. His voice vibrated. He was like a man who was wounding himself at every word. She looked at him until he had finished, without ability to speak.
"You ask me todenouncemy husband?"
"It is the only way to save him, my daughter."
She looked round the room with helpless eyes, full of a dumb appeal for mercy or the chance of escape.
"Holy Father," she said in a choking voice, "that is what his enemies have been asking me to do all this time, and because I have refused they have persecuted me with poverty and shame. And now that I come to you for refuge and shelter, thinking your fatherly arms will protect me, you ... even you...."
She broke off as by a sudden thought, and said: "But it is impossible. He is my husband, therefore I cannot witness against him."
"My heart bleeds for you, my child, and I am ashamed to gainsay you. But an oath is not necessary to a denunciation, and if it were so the law of this unchristian country would not recognise you as Rossi's wife."
"But he will know who has denounced him. I am the only one in the world to whom he has told his secrets, and he will hate me and part from me."
"You will have saved his life, my daughter."
"What is it to me to have saved his life if he is lost to me for ever?"
"Is it you that say that, my child—you that have sacrificed so much already? Doesn't the highest love remember first the welfare of the loved one and think of itself the last?"
"Yes, yes; I didn't know what I was saying. But he will curse me for destroying his cause."
"His cause will be destroyed in any case. It is doomed already. And when his visionary schemes are in the dust, and all is lost and vain, and your tears are powerless to bring back the past...."
"But he will be banished, and I shall never see him again."
"It will be the less of two evils, my child," said the Pope. And in the solemn, vibrating voice that rang in Roma's ears like the voice of Rossi, he added, "'Whosoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed.'"
Again Roma held on to the table, feeling at every moment as if she might fall with a crash.
"That's what would come to your husband if he were arrested and condemned for a conspiracy to kill the King. And even if the humane spirit of the age snatched him from death—what then? A cell in a prison on a volcanic rock in the sea, a stone sepulchre for the living dead, buried like a toad in a hole left by the running lava of life, guarded, watched, tortured in body and soul—a figure of tremendous tragedy, the hapless man once worshipped by the people spreading impotent hands to the outer world, until madness comes to his relief and suicide helps him to escape into eternity and leave only his wasted body on the earth."
Roma could bear the nervous tension no longer. "I'll do it," she said.
"My brave child!" said the Capuchin, turning from the window, with a face broken up by emotion.
"It is one thing to repeat a secret if it is to harm any one, and quite another thing if it is to do good, isn't it?" said Roma.
"Indeed it is," said the Capuchin.
"He will never forgive me—I know that quite well. He will never imagine I would have died rather than do it. But I shall know I have done it for the best."
"Indeed you will."
Roma's eyes were shining with fresh tears, and she was struggling to keep back her sobs. "When we parted on the night he went away he said perhaps we were parting for ever. I promised to be faithful to death itself, but I was thinking of my own death, not his, and I didn't imagine that to save his life I must betray his...."
But at that moment she broke down utterly, and the Pope, who had returned to his seat, rose again to comfort her.
"Calm yourself, my daughter," he said. "What you are going to do is an act of heroic self-sacrifice. Be brave and Heaven will reward you."
She grew calmer after a while, and then Father Pifferi made arrangements for the visit to the Procura. He would call for her at ten in the morning.
"Wait!" said Roma. A new light had come into her face—the light of a new idea.
"What is it, my daughter?" said the Pope.
"Holy Father, there is something I had forgotten. But I must tell you before it is too late. It may alter your view of everything. When you hear it you may say, 'You must not speak a word. You shall not speak. It is impossible.'"
"Tell me, my child."
Roma hesitated and looked from the Capuchin to the Pope. "How can I tell you," she said. "It is so difficult. I hadn't meant to tell any one."
"Go on, my daughter."
"My husband's name...."
"Well?"
"Rossi is not really his name, your Holiness. It is the name he took on returning to Italy, because the one he had borne abroad had been involved in trouble."
"Just so," said the Pope.
"Holy Father, David Rossi was a friendless orphan."
"I have heard so," said the Pope.
"He never knew his father—not even by name. His mother was a poor unhappy woman who had been cruelly deceived by everybody. She drowned herself in the Tiber."
"Poor soul," said the Pope.
"He was nursed in the Foundling, your Holiness, and brought up in a straw hut in the Campagna, and then sold as a boy into England."
The Pope moved uneasily in his seat.
"My father found him on the streets of London on a winter's night, your Holiness, carrying a squirrel and an accordion. He wore a ragged suit of velveteens which used to be laughed at by the London boys, and that was all that sheltered his little body from the cold. 'Some poor man's child,' my father thought. But who can say if it was so, your Holiness?"
The Pope was silent. A sudden change had come over his face. Roma's eyes were held down, her voice was agitated, she was scarcely able to speak.
"My father was angry with the boy's father, I remember, and if at that time he had known where to find him I think he would have denounced him to the public or even the police."
The Pope's head sank on his breast; the Capuchin looked steadfastly at Roma.
"But who knows if he was really to blame, your Holiness? He may have been a good man after all—one of those who have to suffer all their lives for the sins of others. Perhaps ... perhaps that very night he was walking the streets of London, looking in vain among its waifs and outcasts for the little lost boy who owned his own blood and bore his name."
The Pope's face was white and quivering. His elbows rested on the arms of his chair and his wrinkled hands were tightly clasped.
Roma stopped. There was a prolonged silence. The atmosphere of the room seemed to be whirling round with frightful rapidity to one terrific focus.
"Holy Father," said Roma at length, in a low tone, "if David Rossi wereyour own son, would you still ask me to denounce him?"
The Pope lifted a face full of suffering and said in his deep, vibrating voice, "Yes, yes! More than ever for that—a thousand times more than ever."
"ThenI will do it," said Roma.
The Pope rose up in great emotion, laid both hands on her shoulder, and said, "Go in peace, my daughter, and may God grant you at least a little repose."
After recitation of the Rosary, the Pope, who had kept his religious retreat throughout the day, announced, to the astonishment of his chamberlains, his desire to walk in the garden at night. With Father Pifferi carrying a long Etruscan lamp he walked down the dark corridors with their surprisedpalfrenieri, and across the open courtyards with their startled sentinels, to where the arches of the Vatican opened upon the soft spring sky.
The night was warm and quiet, and the moon, which had just risen and was near the full, shone with steady brilliance.
The venerable old men walked without speaking, and only the beating of their sticks on the gravel seemed to break the empty air. At length the Pope stopped and said:
"How strange it all was, Father Pifferi!"
"Very strange, your Holiness," said the Capuchin.
"Rossi is not his name, it seems."
"'Notreallyhis name' was what she said."
"His mother was deceived by every one, and she drowned herself in the Tiber."
"That was so, your Holiness."
"He was nursed in the Foundling, brought up in the Campagna, and then sold as a boy into England."
"It is really extraordinary," said Father Pifferi.
"Most extraordinary," repeated the Pope.
They looked steadily at each other for a moment, and then walked on in silence. Little sparks of blue light pulsed and throbbed and floated before their faces, and the moon itself, like a greater firefly, came and went in the interstices of the thin-leaved trees. The Pope, who shuffled in his walking, stopped again.
"Your Holiness?"
"Who can he be, I wonder?"
The Capuchin drew a deep breath. "We shall know everything to-morrow morning."
"Yes," said the Pope, "we shall know everything to-morrow morning."
Some dark phantom of the past was hovering about them, and they were afraid to challenge it.
At that moment the silence of the listening air was broken by a long clear call, which rang out through the night without any warning, and then stopped as suddenly.
"The nightingale," said the Pope.
A mighty flood of melody floated down from some unseen place, in varying strains of divine music broken by many pauses, and running through every phase of jubilation, sorrow, and pain. It ended in a low wail of unutterable sadness, a pleading, yearning cry of anguish, which seemed to call on God Himself to hear. When it was over, and all was hushed around, the world seemed to have become void.
The Pope's feet shuffled on the gravel. "I shall never forget it," he said.
"It was wonderful," said the Capuchin.
"I was thinking of that poor lady," said the Pope. "Her pleading voice will ring in my ears as long as I live."
"Poor child!" said the Capuchin.
"After all, we could not have acted otherwise. Don't you think so, Father Pifferi? Considering everything, we could not possibly have acted otherwise."
"Perhaps we could not, your Holiness."
They turned the bend of an avenue, where the path under their feet rustled with the thick blossom shed from the overhanging Judas trees.
"Surely this is where the little mother bird used to be," said the Pope.
"So it is," said the friar.
"Strange, she has not sprung out as usual. Ah, Meesh is not here, and perhaps that's the reason." And feeling for the old sarcophagus, the Pope put his hand gently down into it. A moment afterwards he said in another tone: "Father, the young birds are gone."
"Flown, no doubt," said the friar.
"No. See," said the Pope, and he brought up a little nest filled with a ruin of fluff and feathers.
"Meesh has been here indeed," said the friar.
The venerable old men walked on in silence until they re-entered the vaulted courtyards of the Vatican. Then the Pope turned to the Capuchin and said in a breaking voice, "You'll go with the poor lady to the Procura in the morning, Father Pifferi. If the magistrates ask questions which they should not ask, you will protect her, and even forbid her to reply, and if she breaks down at the last moment you will support and comfort her. After that ... we must leave all to the Holy Spirit. God's hand is in this thing ... it is in everything. He will bring out all things well—well for us, well for the Church, well for the poor lady, and even for her husband, whoever he may be."
"Whoever he may be," repeated the Capuchin.
Early in the morning of Holy Saturday, Roma was summoned as a witness before the Penal Tribunal of Rome. The citation, which was signed by a magistrate, required thatshe should present herself at the Procura at ten o'clock the same day, "to depose about facts on which she would then be interrogated," and she was warned that if she did not appear, "she would incur the punishment sanctioned by Article 176 of the Code of Penal Procedure."
Roma found Father Pifferi waiting for her at the door of the Procura. The old Capuchin looked anxious. He glanced at her pale face and quivering lips and inquired if she had slept. She answered that she was well, and they turned to go upstairs.
On the landing of the first floor Commendatore Angelelli, who was wearing a flower in his button-hole, approached them with smiles and quick bows to lead them to the office of the magistrate.
"Only a form," said the Questore. "It will be nothing—nothing at all."
Commendatore Angelelli led the way into a silent room furnished in red, with carpet, couch, armchairs, table, a stove, and two large portraits of the King and Queen.
"Sit down, please. Make yourselves comfortable," said the Chief of Police, and he passed into an adjoining room.
A moment afterwards he returned with two other men. One of them was an elderly gentleman, who wore with his frockcoat a close-fitting velvet cap decorated with two bands of gold lace. This was the Procurator General, and the other, a younger man, carrying a portfolio, was his private secretary. A marshal of Carabineers came to the door for a moment.
"Don't be afraid, my child. No harm shall come to you," whispered Father Pifferi. But the good Capuchin himself was trembling visibly.
The Procurator General was gentle and polite, but he dismissed the Chief of Police, and would have dismissed the Capuchin also, but for vehement protests.
"Very well, I see no objection; sit down again," he said.
It was a strange three-cornered interview. Father Pifferi, quaking with fear, thought he was there to protect Roma. The Procurator General, smiling and serene, thought she had come to complete a secret scheme of personal revenge. And Roma herself, sitting erect in her chair, in her black Eton coat and straw hat, and with her wonderful eyes turning slowly from face to face, thought only of Rossi, and was silent and calm.
The secretary opened his portfolio on the table and prepared to write. The Procurator General sat in front of Roma and leaned slightly forward.
"You are Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of the late Prince Prospero Volonna?"
"I am."
"You were born in England and lived there as a child?"
"Yes."
"Although you were young when you lost your father, you have a perfect recollection both of him and of his associates?"
"Of some of his associates."
"One of them was a young man who lived in his house as a kind of adopted son?"
"Yes."
"You are aware that your father was unhappily involved in political troubles?"
"I am."
"You know that he was arrested on a serious charge?"
"I do."
"You also know that, when condemned to death by a military tribunal for conspiring against the person of the late sovereign, his sentence was commuted by the King, but that one of his associates, condemned at the same time, and for the same crime, escaped all punishment because he was not then at the disposition of the law?"
"Yes."
"That was the young man who lived with him as his adopted son?"
"It was."
There was a moment's pause during which nothing could be heard but the quick breathing of the Capuchin and the scratching of the secretary's pen.
"During the past few months you have made the acquaintance in Rome of the Deputy David Rossi?"
"I have."
The Capuchin moved in his seat. "Acquaintance! The lady is married to the Deputy."
The Procurator General's eyes rose perceptibly. "Married!"
"That is to say religiously married, which is all the Church thinks necessary."
"Ah, I see," said the Procurator General, suppressing asmile. "Still I must ask the lady to make her statement in her natal name."
"Go on, sir," said the Capuchin.
"Your intimacy with the Honourable Rossi has no doubt led him to speak freely on many subjects?"
"It has."
"He has perhaps told you that Rossi was not his father's name."
"Yes."
"That it was his mother's name, and though strictly his legal name also, he has borne it only since his return to Rome?"
"That is so."
It was the Capuchin's turn to look surprised. His sandalled feet shuffled on the carpet, and he prepared to take snuff.
"The Honourable Rossi has been some weeks abroad, and during his absence you have no doubt received letters from him?"
"I have."
"Can you tell me if in any of these letters he has said anything of a certain revolutionary propaganda?"
The Capuchin, with his finger and thumb half raised, stopped and said, "I forbid the question, sir."
"Father General!"
"I mean that I counsel the lady not to answer it."
The Procurator General suppressed another smile, directed this time at Roma, and said, "Bene!"
"Be calm, my daughter," whispered the Capuchin.
"At least," said the Procurator General, "you can now be certain that you had seen the Honourable Rossi before you met him in Rome?"
"I can."
"In fact you recognise in the illustrious Deputy the young man condemned in contumacy eighteen years ago?"
"I do."
"Perhaps in his letters or conversations he has even admitted the identity?"
"He has."
"Only one more question, Donna Roma," said the Procurator General, with another smile. "Your father's name in England was Doctor Roselli, and the name of his young confederate——"
"Courage, my child," whispered the Capuchin, taking Roma's ice-cold hand in his own trembling one.
"The name of his young confederate was——"
"David Leone," said Roma, lifting her eyes to the face of Father Pifferi.
"So David Leone and David Rossi are one and the same person?"
"Yes," said Roma, and the Capuchin dropped back in his seat as if he had been dealt a blow.
"Thank you. I need trouble you no more. My secretary will now prepare theprécis."
Commendatore Angelelli returned with the Carabineer, and there was some talking in low tones. "Report for the Committee of the Chamber, sir?" "That is unnecessary at this moment, the House having risen for Easter." "Warrant for the arrest, then?" "Certainly. Here is the form. Fill it up, and I will sign."
While the secretary wrote hisprécisat one side of the table, the Chief of Police prepared hismandatoat the other side, repeating the words to the Carabineer who stood behind his chair. "We ... considering the conclusions of the Public Minister ... according to Article 187 of the Code ... order the arrest of David Leone, commonly called David Rossi ... imputed guilty of attempted regicide in the year ... and tried and condemned in contumacy for the crime contemplated in Article.... And to such effects we require the Corps of the Royal Carabineers to conduct him before us to be interrogated on the facts above stated, and call on all officials and agents of the public force to lend a strong hand for the execution of the present warrant. Age, 34 years. Height, 1.79 metres. Forehead, lofty. Eyes, large and dark. Nose, Roman. Hair, black with short curls. Beard and moustache, clean shaven.Corporatura, distinguished."
When the secretary had finished hisprécishe read it aloud to Roma and his superior.
"Good! Give the lady the pen. You will sign this paper, Donna Roma—and that will do."
Roma and Father Pifferi had both risen. "Courage," the Capuchin tried to say, but his quivering lips emitted no sound. Roma stood a moment with the pen in her fingers, and her great eyes looked slowly round the room. Then she stooped and wrote her name rapidly.
At the same moment the Procurator General signed the warrant, whereupon the Chief of Police handed it to the Carabineer, saying, "Lose no time—Chiasso," and the soldier went out hurriedly.
Roma held the pen a moment longer, and then it dropped out of her fingers.
"Come," said the Capuchin, and they left the room.
There was a crowd on the embankment by the corner of the Ripetta bridge. The body of a beggar had been brought out of the river, and it was lying there for the formal inspection of the officials who report on cases of sudden death. Roma stopped to look at the dead man. It was Old John. He had committed suicide.
It was said at the Vatican that the Pope had not slept all night. The attendant whose duty it was to lie awake while the Holy Father expected to sleep said he heard him praying in the dark hours, and at one moment he heard him singing a hymn.
To the Pope it had been a night of searching self-examination. Pictures of his life had passed before him in swift review, pulsing and throbbing out of the darkness like the light of a firefly, now come, now gone.
First the Conclave, the three scrutators, and himself as one of them. The first scrutiny, the second scrutiny, the third scrutiny and his own name going up, up, up, as he proclaimed the votes in a loud voice so that all in the chapel might hear. One vote more to his own name, another, still another; his fear, his fainting; the gentle tones of an old Cardinal, saying, "Take your time, brother; rest, repose a while." Then the election, the awful sense of being God's choice, the almost unearthly joy of the supreme moment when he became the Vicar of Christ on earth.
Then the stepping forth from the dim conclave into the full light of day to be proclaimed the representative of the Almighty, the living voice of God, the infallible one. The sunless chapel, the white and crimson vestments, the fisherman's ring, the vast crowd in the blazing light of the piazza, the sudden silence, and the clear cry of the Cardinal Deacon ringing out under the blue sky, "I announce to you joyful tidings—the Most Eminent and Reverend Cardinal Leone,having taken the name of Pius X., is elected Pope." Then the call of silver trumpets, the roar of ten thousand human throats, the surging mass of living men below the balcony, and the joy-bells ringing out the glad news from every church tower in Rome, that a new King and Pontiff had been given by God to His World.
Somewhere in the dark hours the Pope dozed off, and then Sleep, the maker of visions, dispelled his dream. Another picture—a picture which had pursued him at intervals both in sleeping and waking hours, ever since the great day when he stepped out on to the balcony and was saluted as a god—came to him again that night. He called it his presentiment. The scene was always the same. A darkened room, a chapel, an altar, himself on his knees, with the sense of Someone bending over him, and an awful voice saying into his ears:—"You, the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you, the rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the living voice of God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most exalted dignity on earth—remember you are but clay!"
The Pope awoke with a start, and to break the oppression of painful thoughts he turned on the light, propped himself up in bed, and taking a book from the night table, he began to read. It was the Catholic legend of a father doomed to destroy his son, or suffer the son to destroy the father. They had been separated early in the son's life, and now that they met again they met as foes, and the son drew his sword upon his father without knowing who he was!
One by one the incidents of the history linked themselves with the incidents of the day before, and the lonely old man of the Vatican—childless, kinless, homeless for all his state, and cut off from every human tie—began to think of things that were still farther back than the conclave and the proclamation—things of the dead past which nature had seemed to bury with so kind a hand, covering the grave with grass and flowers.
A sweet young face, timid and trustful; a sudden shock such as makes the world crumble beneath a man's feet; a vague sense of guilt and shame, unreasonable, unmerited, unjustifiable, yet not to be put away; a blank period of humiliation; the opening of eyes in a new world; the humblest place in a religious house, the kitchen of the Noviciate. Then a great yearning, a great restlessness; coming out of the convent;dispensations; holy orders; works of charity; travels in foreign lands and searchings day and night in the streets of a cruel city for some one who had been lost and was never found.
The Pope put down the book and turned out the light. It was then that he sang and prayed.
When Cortis came with the Pope's breakfast in the frayed edge of the morning, the chamberlain outside the bedroom door whispered to the valet, "The Holy Father has been with the angels all night long."
There was a Papal "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection, but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of the Easter bells.
The little door to the private corridor opened quietly, and Father Pifferi entered the room.
"Well?" said the Pope.
"It is all over," said the Capuchin.
"Did the poor child ... did she bear up bravely?"
"Very bravely, your Holiness."
"No weakness, no hysteria? She did not faint or break down at the end?"
"On the contrary, she was composed—perfectly composed and quiet."
"Thank God!"
"It was most extraordinary. A woman denouncing her husband, and yet so calm, so terribly calm."
"God helped her to bear her burden. God help all of us in our hour of need!"
The Pope lifted the crucifix to his lips, and added, "And the man?"
"Rossi?"
"Yes."
"After she had signed the denunciation a warrant for his arrest was made out and given to the Carabineers."
"It mentioned everything?"
"Everything."
"Who he is and all about him?"
"Yes, your Holiness."
The Pope fingered his crucifix again, and said, "Who is he, Father Pifferi?"
The Capuchin did not reply.
"Father Pifferi, I ask you who he is?"
Still the Capuchin did not reply, and the Pope smiled a pitiful smile, touched the friar's arm with a caressing gesture, and said, "Don't be afraid for the Holy Father, carissimo. If that poor child, who would have died rather than sacrifice her husband, could be so calm and strong...."
"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "when you asked the lady to denounce David Rossi you thought of him only as an enemy of the Church and of its head, trying to pull down both and destroy civil society—isn't that so?"
The Pope bent his head.
"Holy Father, if ... if you had known that he was something more than that ... something nearer ... if, for example, you had been told that ... that he was the relative of a priest, would you have asked for his denunciation just the same?"
The old Capuchin had stammered, but the Pope answered in a firm voice, "That would have made no difference, my son. The blessed Scriptures do not conceal the sin of Judas, and shall we conceal the offences of those who come within the circle of our own families?"
"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "if you had been told that he was related to a prelate of your domestic household...."
He stopped, and the Pope answered in a voice that trembled slightly, "Still it would have made no difference. The enemies of the Almighty are watching day and night, and shall His holy Church be imperilled and abased by the weakness of His servant?"
"Holy Father, if ... if you had been told that ... that he was the kinsman of a Cardinal?"
The Pope was struggling to control himself. "Even then it would have made no difference. I am old and weak, but God would have supported me, and though I had been called upon to cut off my right hand, or give my body to be burned, still...."
His voice quivered and died in his throat, and there was a moment's pause.
"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, turning his eyes away, "if you had been told that he was the nearest of kin to the Pope himself...."
The Pope dropped the crucifix which was trembling in hishand, and half rose from his chair. "Then ... even then ... it would have ... but the will of God be done," he said, and he could not utter another word.
At that moment the Easter bells began to ring. The deep-toned bells of St. Peter's came first with its joyful peal, and then the bells of the other churches of the city took up the rapturous melody. In the Basilica the veil before the altar had been rent with a loud crash, and the Gloria in Excelsis was being sung.
At the same moment a prelate vested in a white tunic entered the Pope's room, and kneeling in the middle of the floor, he said, "Holy Father, I announce to you a great joy. Hallelujah! The Lord is risen again."
The Pope tried to rise from his seat, but could not do so. "Help me, Monsignor," he said faintly, and the prelate raised him to his feet. Then leaning on the prelate's arm, he walked to the door of his private chapel. On reaching it he looked back at Father Pifferi, who was going silently out of the room.
"Addio, carissimo," he said, in a pitiful voice, but the Capuchin could not reply.
Some moments afterwards the Pope was quite alone. The arched windows of the little chapel were covered with heavy red curtains, but the clanging of the brass tongues in the cupola, the deep throb of the organ, and the rolling waves of the voices of the people singing the grand Hallelujah, found their way into the darkened chamber. But above all other sounds in the ears of the Pope as he lay prostrate on the altar steps was the sound of a voice which said, "You, the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you, the rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the living voice of God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most exalted dignity on earth—remember you are but clay."
"Acqua Acetosa!" "Roba Vecchia!" "Rannocchie!"
The street cries were ringing through the Navona, the piazza was alive with people, and strangers were saluting each other as they passed on the pavement when Roma returned home. At the lodge the Garibaldian wished her a good Easter, and at the door of the apartment the curate of the parish,who in cotta and biretta was making his Easter call to sprinkle the rooms with holy water, gave her a smile and his blessing, while old Francesca, inside the house, laying the Easter sideboard of cakes, sausages, and eggs, put both hands behind her back, like a child playing a game, and cried—
"Now, what does the Signora think I've got for her?"
It was a letter, and as the old woman produced it she was glowing with happiness at the joy she was bringing to Roma.
"The porter from Trinità de' Monti brought it," she said, "and he told me to tell you there's a lay sister called Sister Angelica at the convent now, and he is afraid that other letters may go astray.... Aren't you glad you've got a letter, Signora? I thought Signora would die of delight, and I gave the man six soldi."
Roma was turning the envelope over and over in her hands, thinking what a call to joy a letter of Rossi's used to be, and wondering if she ought to open this one.
"Well, that was the way with me too when Tommaso was at the wars. But this is Easter, Signora, and the Blessed Virgin wouldn't bring you bad news to-day. Listen! That's the Gloria. I can always hear the church bells on Holy Saturday. The first time after I was deaf Joseph was a baby, and I took the wrappings off his little feet while the bells were ringing, and he walked straight away! Ah, my poor darling!... But I'm making the Signora cry."
The letter was dated from Zürich. It ran:—
"My dear Roma,—Your letters and I seem to be running a race which shall return to you first. I was compelled to leave Berlin before my long-delayed correspondence could arrive from London, and now it seems probable that I must leave Zürich before it can follow me from Berlin. As a consequence I have not heard from you for weeks—not since your letter about your friend, you remember—and I am in agonies of impatience to know what has happened to you in the interval.
"I came to Switzerland the day before yesterday, pushed on by the urgency of affairs at home. Here we hold the last meeting of our international committee before I go back to Italy. This will be to-morrow (Friday) night, and according to present plans I set out for Rome on Saturday morning.
"How different my return will be from my flight a few weeks ago! Then I was plunged in despair, now I ambuoyed up with hope; then my soul was furrowed by doubts, now it is braced up with certainties; then my idea was a dream, now it is a practical reality.
"O Roma, my Roma, it is a good thing to live. After all, the world is no Gethsemane, and when a man has a beautiful life like yours belonging to him he may be forgiven if he forgets the voices which assail him with fears. They have come to me sometimes, dearest, in this long and cruel silence, and I have asked myself hideous questions. What is happening to my dear one in the midst of my enemies? What sufferings are being inflicted upon her for my sake? She is brave, and will bear anything, but did I do right to leave her behind? Bruno died rather than betray me, and she will do more—infinitely more in her eyes—she will seemedie, rather than imperil a cause which is a thousand times more dear to me than my life.
"Addio, carissima! Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death. If there were any possibility of our love increasing itwouldincrease after going through dangers like these. Keep well, dearest. Preserve that sweet life which is so precious to me that I cannot live without it. Do you remember, it was the 2nd of February when we parted in the darkness at the church door, and now it is Easter, and the day after to-morrow we shall hear the Easter bells! Spring is here, and in the unchangeable changeableness of nature I see the resurrection of humanity and listen to the Gloria of God.
"You cannot answer this letter, dear, because I shall already be on the way to Rome before it reaches you, but you can send me a telegram to Chiasso. Do so. I shall look out for the telegraph boy the moment the train stops at the station. Say you are well and happy and waiting for me, and it will be like a smile from your lovely lips and eyes on the frontier of my native land.
"My train is due to arrive on Sunday morning at seven o'clock. Meet me at the railway station, and let your face be the first I see when the train draws up in Rome. Then ... let me hear your voice, and let my heart become a King.
"D.R."
Roma had grown paler and paler as she read this letter. The man's love and trust were crushing her. Tears filled her eyes and flooded her face. But her soul, which had been stunned and had fallen, recovered itself and arose.