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 The magic of Rome, 
 
 3 1924 013 634 815 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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The Magic of Rome 
 
 BY 
 
 LUCAS CLEEVE 
 
 auth(Jr of -^ 
 
 *AS THE TWIG IS BENT," "mARY ANNE OF PARCHMENT BUILDINGS,' 
 
 " LAZARUS," " BLUE LILIES," 
 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 Xonbon 
 
 DIGBY, LONG & CO. 
 
 1 8 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E.G. 
 
 1902 
 V. 
 
THE MAGIC OF ROME 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The sun crept stealthily across the hills and 
 held something of augur and inquiry as it 
 slid in pale yellow streaks over the tall trees 
 that shut in the Castle of St Angidli — shut 
 it in, at least in the summer, by the aid of a 
 thousand intertwinings of leafy boughs ; but 
 in winter it could be seen clearly from 
 between the gaunt trunks of the unclad 
 trees that stood around like trusty chamber- 
 lains ; and while at a distance it seemed 
 crowded by trees, pressed in' by the forest of 
 pine-tops, yet when one reached its gates 
 one could see that great lawns and terraces 
 kept distance between the house and the, 
 encroachments of the forest behind. It had 
 no idea that it was reckoned a castle in the 
 guide-books and by travellers, seeing it had 
 
2 The Magic of Rome 
 
 neither bulwark, barbican nor abatis, not 
 even a battlement or parapet or dyke. From 
 time immemorial it had been the Villa St 
 Angioli ; ever since the Crusades, when the 
 family name had been Santioli, and some 
 energetic chatelaine had provided three sons 
 for the wars, while she knelt and prayed and 
 heard masses with her daughters, and the 
 Pope hearing of it had said, " Non tutti 
 santi ed angioli " (They are all saints and 
 angels); and later on, when a Marquisate 
 had been bestowed upon them, they had 
 made marquetry of the appellation and 
 called it Sant Angioli, using the old family 
 name. But the dawn found drawn blinds 
 and dead silence, and the castle stood poised 
 so high that it seemed as if the twittering of 
 the birds made music at the foot of it lest it 
 should awaken the inhabitants. Only a large 
 raven flew right over the roof, making a 
 great shadow and croaking ; then swooping 
 straight down on to the trees and bushes 
 that grew on the slant of the hill, only the 
 topmost branches reaching the wall of the 
 garden. 
 
 Presently a yawning palfrenier opened a 
 stable door and stretched himself towards 
 
The Magic of Rome 3 
 
 the morning ; then with a sudden remem- 
 brance of what the day was to bring forth 
 he opened the shutters of the loose boxes 
 and looked in to see what sort of night the 
 horses had had. One whinnied wistfully. 
 It was Count Orazios's hunter, who knew 
 what the joys of the early morning con- 
 tained, and longed to be led out while the 
 shadows were still grey and the sun still 
 lemon. 
 
 Now the blinds of the drawing-room were 
 jerked by a serving-maid, and then presently 
 the Marchesa di Sant Angioli awoke with a 
 sigh on her lace pillow and peered between 
 the four posters at the bronze clock a Mercury 
 held on the mantelpiece of Carrara marble. 
 It was her boast that her maid had never 
 found her sleeping, and while she sipped 
 coffee and wondered at the coming day. 
 Padre Buonavpglio threw open his balcony 
 window and whispered a short prayer, seem- 
 ingly to the stable roof rather than to heaven, 
 for the beauty of God's morning had no 
 private word for him, and if he rose early 
 and exercised his devotions on the balcony 
 it was more because it behoved a priest than 
 because he enjoyed it. 
 
4 The Magic of Rome 
 
 Padre Buonavoglio was at once the 
 almoner and chaplain of the Sant Angiolis 
 and a man of over forty. The want of a 
 smile on his face obviated the possible quali- 
 fication of a hypocritical expression, yet his 
 face had on it a moulding that one felt could 
 be bent to almost any expression, and the 
 very weight of impressiveness it at first con- 
 veyed suggested a possibility of a mask so 
 successfully thrown that what appeared 
 beneath would be as unlike solemnity as the 
 butterfly is to the chrysalis. 
 
 There were one or two who had seen the 
 priest's face distorted by rage, sharpened by 
 cunning hate and fear, and one or two who 
 had seen his eyes dilated with all the passion 
 of an ordinary untonsured man, heard those 
 lips murmuring words it would be a sacrilege 
 to all priesthood to repeat. Yet, as a rule, 
 the life and doctrines, the whole presentment 
 of Padre Buonavoglio were consistent, and 
 his surroundings enhanced him with a rever- 
 ence and semi-luminous gloom which re- 
 minded one of the dull lamps that illumine 
 the pictures in the churches. 
 
 To-day he wondered what the Marchesa 
 di Sant Angioli was thinking of; he 
 
The Magic of Rome 5 
 
 wondered also what I the two travellers in 
 the ' train from Nice were talking about, 
 thinking, dreading! Most of all he 
 wondered whether he would be obeyed, 
 defied, tricked or successful. On his face 
 was the expression of a man who could 
 stoop to any depths, overthrow every 
 obstacle, tear up the very roots of his own 
 heart and that of others to attain success. 
 Had he not done so before? In two 
 generations it would be possible to him, 
 but in the third? — that mystic third in 
 which so many links are sometimes broken 
 for want of the power of the member of 
 the first. 
 
 His prayers hurriedly achieved, he tore 
 open the letters old Domizio had laid on 
 the silver tray by the side of his qup of 
 chocolate. They were nearly all on business 
 matters connected with charity or the 
 Church — all except two. One was from 
 the Cardinal Ugomonti. 
 
 " You have a grand opportunity before 
 you, an opportunity which, if well taken 
 hold of, well seized, adapted, gripped hold 
 of, may lead, who knows, to the purple 
 
6 The Magic of Rome 
 
 sooner than you or I think. His Holiness 
 mentioned your name to me yesterday, and 
 asked me when you were coming to Rome. 
 This may, or may not, mean an interview 
 on the subject — I can't tell — but that His 
 Holiness bears the matter in mind — of that 
 there can be no doubt. But I feel certain 
 that you will make every use of the 
 situation." 
 
 Padre Buonavoglio was not sure that he 
 liked the way the Cardinal had put the last 
 remark. 
 
 The other letter was illiterate and badly 
 spelt, and even then was not in the hand- 
 writing of the sender, but written by a 
 public letter-writer. The Padre frowned 
 and an oath escaped his lips. 
 
 "You force me to write since you will 
 not answer, and now Giacomo the scrivano 
 pubblico knows all about it. This is your 
 fault. I don't like to do this job, but I 
 suppose you would arrange with the Buon 
 Dio to send me to hell if I disobeyed. I 
 can't think He meant priests to be like you. 
 
The Magic of Rome 7 
 
 The poor Marchesa ! I can't sleep for think- 
 ing of her. Dio di me. Must it be ? 
 
 " Beppina." 
 
 Padre Buonavoglio put down the letter, 
 or rather threw it down away from him, 
 treated it as one treats the distasteful and 
 repugnant. Through all his correspondence 
 he realised the vague discomfort he had 
 woven around him. Through the beads, as 
 it were, that were strung side by side, year 
 after year, by events and circumstances, 
 destiny and time, he could discern the threat 
 which drew, as it were, the self-same hue, 
 the self-same thread right through the whole 
 encollure of his existence. It seemed to him 
 as if he heard the rattling of the links he 
 himself had forged around his own life, the 
 links that held his existence in iron grasp, 
 pressed it into the service of ambition — an 
 ambition which had grown to such pro- 
 portions that it almost outstripped and 
 sacrificed the certainty of its aims. What 
 did he want or expect at the end of it all? 
 he asked himself, when he was brave enough 
 to stop and think. Bah ! he wanted nothing 
 here below but the good of the Church, the 
 
8 The Magic of Rome 
 
 propagation of the truth! If not God's 
 truth, then, at least, what Rome had given 
 out as truth. That amalgamated Liebig of 
 falsehood, drawn from the essence of truth— 
 the mystic wedded to romance and diluted 
 with fear, stirred to palatability by the inter- 
 mixing of many promises and unlimited 
 possibilities — yes, it was part of himself, 
 this battle with enlightenment, this crowding 
 out of doubt and argument. He had defied 
 it once ; severed, as it were, the head of one 
 dread serpent that stood on end and looked 
 him between the eyes; and now another 
 glided, as it were, into the place of its slain 
 fellow, came swiftly and unexpectedly and 
 also raised its head, not only ready to spit 
 poison and defiance in his face, but to ask 
 why he had slain its comrade. 
 
 The battle was harder now than it had 
 been then, he told himself as he paced 
 his bedroom. An early morning zephyr 
 blew into the room, raising faintly the 
 lace curtains and blowing the letters on 
 to the floor. The house was awake now. 
 From below came the noise of bustle 
 and stir, while without dogs barked and 
 carriages and horses were being washed 
 
The Magic of Rome 9 
 
 in the stable-yard. Maria called to Beppa 
 and Giovanni to Paolo. The whole castle 
 was awake and preparing to receive the 
 Marchesina Orazio, and still the Padre 
 Buonavoglio walked the room, his hands 
 folded behind him for the most part, unless 
 one was occasionally brought forward and 
 raised to caress his shaven chin. Much, 
 much would depend on to-day. He must 
 win her confidence. Orazio was right. He 
 took from a locked drawer the letter Orazio 
 had written to his mother in confidence, but 
 which she had handed to the priest, from 
 whom she had no secrets. 
 
 He held many, too many, of her own. 
 
 " One thing I beg of you, mother, for 
 the sake of all of us. Let there be no 
 discussions about religion. My dear wife is 
 ready to do everything in her power to soften 
 the situation. She will go to mass for the 
 sake of the peasants, and there will be no 
 friction unless it arises from you or Padre 
 Buonavoglio, and your influence over him 
 is so unbounded that I must beg of you to 
 use it for the ends of peace and not strife." 
 
 " Her influence so unbounded. Ha ! ha ! 
 
10 The Magic of Rome 
 
 The priest laughed with a heavy laugh, 
 that seemed to stir the whole of his body. 
 
 " Her influence ; bah ! how ridiculous 
 humanity is with its mistakes ! How ludi- 
 crous, even, in its constant propensity for 
 taking hold of the wrong end of the stick. 
 Influence! The poor, weak fool. She 
 never influenced anything or anybody in 
 her life, yet he thinks that she turns me 
 round her little finger. Ha, ha ! " Then 
 he grew suddenly serious. 
 
 "Yet there is talent even in that. She 
 cannot be considered to have failed since 
 she has made that impression." 
 
 The sun burst in now at the windows, 
 having illumined the whole mountain side 
 and flanking forest, and left them, as it 
 were, to bask while he hied him away to 
 look in at the castle windows and see what 
 the inmates were about. 
 
 What he saw was that the Padre was very 
 agitated, very disturbed, and that he was 
 reading, over and over again, letters he 
 knew by heart, while he looked anxiously at 
 the clock, as if awaiting some summons. 
 
 He was reading Orazio's letter for the 
 third time, and the words seemed to take 
 
The Magic of Rome ii 
 
 fresh meaning, as if afraid to weary him by 
 repetition. 
 
 "I feel certain," wrote the Count, " that 
 had there been less controversy my brother 
 ■yvould not, as I feel sure he did, have put an 
 end to himself. For Heaven's sake let us 
 live in peace and bow to the inevitable ; I 
 count on you." The tone held almost a 
 menace, the Padre thought. Yet it showed 
 that Orazio suspected nothing. 
 
 " He is right," he murmured to himself. 
 " Peace, peace at first, and then, should it 
 become necessary, bold, unflinching meas- 
 ures, with no wavering. If necessary, 
 cruelty even, in the human sense of the 
 word, for the sake of the Church and of 
 God." As he spoke he came and stood 
 before an altar, covered in black cloth, over 
 which hung an ivory crucifix. He put his 
 head on one side and interfolded the fat 
 fingers of his two podgy hands over the sash 
 round his rather protruding waist while he 
 mumbled a prayer. The attitude Was one 
 more of familiarity than of adoration or 
 reverence. He seemed to 'have established 
 an understanding between himself and the 
 crucifix that rendered too much delicate 
 
12 The Magic of Rome 
 
 observance superfluous. Yet to-day there 
 struck him, on the ivory face, an expression 
 he had not seen there before. It seemed to 
 him as if the crown of thorns had detached 
 itself a little and fallen more heavily over 
 the anguish-sweating head, with its huge 
 drops of human and divine woe intermingledi 
 Almost it seemed as if the face frowned at 
 him and the weary eyes reproached him. 
 But he kept on mumbling a prayer, for he 
 could hear the skirts of Celerina, the 
 Marchesa's maid, sweeping the corridor. 
 
 The woman stood reverently in the door- 
 way while he gabbled off" the remainder of 
 his prayer. 
 
 " The Signore Marchesa is ready for your 
 Reverence," she said, as he turned round, 
 and gathering up a breviary and prayer- 
 book he followed her to the Marchesa's 
 room. She looked very stately, he thought, 
 clad in a velvet gown, with a beautiful piece 
 of black Venice lace thrown over her head 
 and shoulders like a Spanish mantilla, while 
 at her throat flashed a graceful Florentine 
 brooch, from which a cross was suspended. 
 
 The priest greeted her with much the 
 same mixture of deference and familiarity 
 
The Magic of Rome 13 
 
 and the tinge of contempt he assumed 
 towards the crucifix. Women and religion, 
 these were the ornamental sides of life, the 
 poetry that sweetens the prose, but the real 
 reason of life, its immense scope for power, 
 for manipulating, as it were, characters and 
 temperaments, these were the true ends of 
 man's life ; the forcing of ideas — steady, un- 
 swervable ideas — the riveting of them on 
 to the unstable waverings of imagination 
 and doubt ; the garnering of souls that 
 cannot understand — poor, foolish souls that 
 will try to think , and feel and understand, as 
 if God cares for their vain pulings, their 
 weak crying for the moon. 
 
 In answer to his inquiries respecting her 
 health and the night she had spent, she 
 answered with a weariness which she much 
 affected, and which, while it suited her 
 appearance, was very far from being in 
 keeping with the restlessness of her mind, 
 the nervous feverishness of her being. 
 
 "My night was very bad. Is it wonderful 
 when one is so anxious ? Then, again, to- 
 day is the anniversary — " 
 
 "Ah!" The priest made a gesture of 
 surprise. 
 
14 The Magic of Rome 
 
 "I wonder whether Orazio remembers 
 
 it!" 
 
 As she spoke she turned away her eyes 
 from the priest. 
 
 For ten long years these two had kept 
 this farce up between them. The deep but 
 resigned sadness and wonder of the Marchesa, 
 the pitying sympathy of the priest. This 
 scene had been enacted every year since 
 Uberto had disappeared, and often between 
 times besides. Almost they had begun to 
 believe what they pretended, just as this 
 morning both had brought themselves to 
 believe that a show of toleration was not 
 only the best policy but a Christian require- 
 ment insisted upon by the religion they 
 professed. 
 
 "The Church commands us to be most 
 gentle with the erring sheep, even with the 
 revolting ones, how much more with those 
 who do not know their error and danger, 
 who cannot see their own darkness ? " The 
 priest had Orazio's letter in his mind. 
 
 "Oh, you are so right, so wise." The 
 aged Marchesa, aged more from weariness 
 than years, pressed the priest's hands while he 
 thought of thirty years ago. There had been 
 
The Magic of Rome 15 
 
 a moment — one moment — when the prOud 
 daughter of the Due di Torrosi had almost 
 turned the Padre out of doors, withered him 
 with her looks of scorn, almost she had de- 
 nounced him at the Holy See. Better far 
 had she done so. But he had pleaded his 
 cause well, for he had been young and good- 
 looking then. He was, after all, a man, 
 and her beauty had maddened him. To 
 speak of the matter would be to bring dis- 
 grace for ever upon him, to stir up such 
 scandal as would never be laid low again. 
 It would be to , show him that she thought 
 him incapable of controlling his feelings, and 
 so, partly from pleased vanity, partly to avoid 
 a fuss, she had been silent, and the past held 
 nothing but an agitated dream which rarely 
 troubled either of them now, 
 
 "It brings it all so back to me." The 
 Marchesa's voice was very clear and a little 
 harsh, as some Italian voices are. 
 
 " It is certainly a disastrous coincidence." 
 Padre Buonavoglio looked benign as he 
 spoke. " Ma ci vuol pazienza cosi ha volto 
 Iddio " (God has willed it). 
 
 " I don't believe He has willed it at all." 
 The Marchesa's voice contained asperity. 
 
1 6 The Magic of Rome 
 
 "It is simply that the Sant Angiolis must 
 do something out of the way, or ridiculous, 
 and upset everybody, or they are not happy," 
 
 " Yet it is not out of the way since the 
 whole trouble began with the first Sant 
 Angioli." 
 
 "One would think you are in favour of 
 this dreadful heretic marriage; as if the 
 ridiculous succession rule wasn't ludicrous 
 and painful enough." 
 
 The priest raised his eyes and hands to 
 heaven in mute pleadings with the gods to 
 show the lady how mistaken she was. 
 
 " I have often told you, Marchesa, that 
 I think the Pope should long ago have 
 interfered." 
 
 At the mention of the Pope an awe- 
 struck expression came over the Marchesa's 
 features. 
 
 " No doubt His Holiness sees difficulties. 
 It would be a precedent that might be put 
 down to weakness." 
 
 "Yet there is much danger till this 
 tradition is put an end to." 
 
 "We must show patience," went on the 
 Marchesa. " I know Orazio. If there is any 
 dispute he will take her away, and then — " 
 
The Magic of Rome . ly 
 
 Neither gave words to the thoughts ex- 
 pressed by the Marchesa's silence. 
 
 " We must show tolerance, and even 
 kindness and sympathy." 
 
 " Ah, Padre, how wise you are ! How I 
 thank you ! " 
 
 To himself the priest wondered whether 
 she would show so much tolerance and sym- 
 pathy as he meant to do. He thought not. 
 The first disturbance, if any took place, 
 would, he knew, be set astir by herself. 
 
 And then the two prayed and read to- 
 gether as had been their habit for twenty^ 
 five years now, and it struck neither that 
 one or the other was insincere, or that the 
 two of them lulled themselves with fictitious 
 soothings to which custom had given a 
 serious aspect which was almost truth. , 
 
 Then the Marchesa, leaning on his arm, 
 invited him to come and see the rooms she 
 had prepared for her son's wife. Once she 
 stood still in a doorway, and, turning to Padre 
 Buonavoglio, exclaimed almost impatiently, — 
 
 "How different it might all have been ! " 
 
 "Chevuole? What will you? With 
 patience we shall see great things." 
 
 To the Marchesa the rooms looked 
 
1 8 The Magic of Rome 
 
 splendid. She revelled in their height. 
 The sombre darkness of the painted ceilings, 
 the damask curtains, of a strange bright pink 
 with gold patterns worked into them with 
 some gold tissue, seemed to her old-fashioned 
 taste to suit the chairs of Florence green 
 brocade to perfection. The stiff- backed 
 sofas needed no soft cushions, the tall 
 epergnes no smiling flowers to make this 
 awe-inspiring room more beautiful. In the, 
 centre stood a table of malachite and mother- 
 o'-pearl, and in the centre of the table a 
 superb basket of porphyry with fruits in 
 marble of all colours beautifully sculptured, 
 of that work which Italy taught to India, 
 and which is now amongst the native glories 
 of Delhi workmanship. On a tortoiseshell 
 cabinet in the corner reclined an infant 
 Bacchus of white marble, bearing a bunch 
 of stony - hewn grapes beneath its fat 
 shoulders, while in the corners of the room, 
 on ebony and dark marble stands, stood busts 
 of different members of the Sant Angioli 
 family belonging to different generations, 
 and each the work of some renowned 
 artist. 
 
 Only the breath of spring, insisting 
 
The Magic of Rome 19 
 
 on entrance through the lace curtains that 
 fluttered beneath the heavy rose damask 
 ones, gave some brightness and tenderness 
 to the sombre surroundings. The door of 
 the best bedroom stood open, and far 
 away one could see the large four-poster, 
 with its crimson silken draperies, looking 
 more like a dais than a bed, but neither 
 the priest nor the Marchesa entered the 
 room. Was it possible that either could 
 see in fancy the apocalypse of the sorrow 
 that would take place there ? 
 
 Oh ! why, if there are guardian angels, 
 do they not sometimes stand across our 
 pathway and bid us turn aside ? Will no 
 one, even on the threshold of the great iron 
 gateways designed by Benvenuto Cellini, 
 seize the heads of the fiery horses and 
 turn them the other way ? But no ; pranc- 
 ing, and turning their dark heads from side 
 to side, the white gleamings of their eye- 
 balls only matched by the beads of foam 
 on their shiny black coats, the silver 
 trappings polished and shimmering by many 
 willing hands that morning till the crest 
 an angel raising a saint in pilgrim's dress 
 from his knees, shone a very glistening 
 
20 The Magic of Rome 
 
 vision to the peasants as they stood 
 grouped at the entrance to the property, 
 the carriage advances between a picturesque 
 crowd of smiling girls and bronzed, ox- 
 eyed youths grouped on both sides of the 
 road all the way up to the castle. 
 
 And the Marchesina Orazio looks out, and 
 bows and waves to them, as her smile 
 matches in brightness the golden flashes 
 of her hair, 
 
 « E Bella per Bacco ! " 
 
 And the women cry, — 
 
 " Pare un Angelo ! " 
 
 And now they all shout, — 
 
 " Eviva la Padrona ! " They turn in at 
 the gates. Giselda slips her hand into her 
 husband's arm. He turns anxiously towards 
 her. Is she afraid ? If so, she is not more 
 so than he is. But she only murmurs, — 
 
 " How beautiful ! how beautiful ! " 
 
 For it is very beautiful the way to the 
 villa (which, in a town, would have been 
 called a " palazzo," so magnificent and im- 
 posing was its construction), which faced 
 the valley, confronting one like some 
 haughty beauty that bade you come no 
 nearer. 
 
The Magic of Rome 21 
 
 " You like it, carissima ? " 
 
 He had never till then felt proud of his 
 beautiful home. 
 
 And now a figure, stately, cold, but 
 still beautiful, comes forward on to the 
 terrace at the top of the sweeping flight 
 of stone stairs, and stands in front of the 
 stone fountain that has been made to play 
 in honour of her arrival. The Marchesa 
 enfolds her daughter - in - law in a little 
 warmer embrace than she had herself 
 meant to give way to, because of her youth 
 and beauty, and now she turns to the dark 
 figure of the priest standing behind her. 
 Something chills Giselda as he bows low, 
 with an expression of kindly pity and 
 patronage, and the beauty of the villa 
 seems suddenly dimmed as they move 
 towards the house, where old Domizio and 
 a group of old retainers await her. 
 
 " I have heard, much of you," she says to 
 the old Domizio, with a sunny smile, as he 
 bids her welcome. 
 
 " Servitore ed Amico " (Servant and 
 Friend), says the Marchesa, and Domizio 
 looks troubled with pleasure. 
 
 And so they move on, talking of small 
 
22 The Magic of Rome 
 
 nothings, of the journey, the beauty of the 
 scenery, across the big hall, with a door at 
 each end, up the sweeping stairs, across the 
 drawing-rooms, along the long galleries to her 
 apartments, and the most poignant element 
 of the ordeal, its novelty, has evaporated. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 It was the Marchese Orazio who ac- 
 cepted the situation with the most philo- 
 sophy, which was a good thing, seeing 
 that he was one of the principal people 
 concerned. But it isn't always the leading 
 actor in a play who knows his part best. 
 He had foreseen all the storms that would 
 arise when he announced his engagement 
 to a Protestant, yet least of all to his 
 house did this alliance seem to him unfitting, 
 seeing that it had come to them through a 
 Protestant, and that tradition exacted that 
 the first child born after the marriage should 
 return to Protestantism or forfeit the pro- 
 perty. This was what Orazio's mother 
 looked upon as the crime of the Sant 
 Angioli family. It was absurd to do so, 
 for, as Orazio had said to her, "It is the 
 essence of our being. Our very origin as 
 owners of Sant Angioli." 
 
 23 
 
24 The Magic of Rome 
 
 " The absurd will should have been upset 
 by His Holiness long ago." 
 
 But that would have been a difficult 
 matter, seeing that each owner in turn 
 was obliged to make a will carrying On the 
 tradition or also forfeit the property. 
 
 There were many stories about the origin 
 of this tradition, a tradition that had become 
 now a stern, irrevocable law. The old 
 Marchesa favoured the idea that the 
 original fountain of its being had sprung 
 from the madness of the first owner, and 
 she would hear no other tale ; but the 
 Marchese Orazio knew full well that the 
 origin sprang, as the origin of so many 
 complicated difficult problems spring, from 
 the weavings of financial difficulties. A 
 Santioli, hundreds of years before, had 
 gambled away his fortune and been com- 
 pelled, in order to save his property, to 
 marry an Austrian heiress, who was of the 
 Protestant faith. The condition of the 
 marriage had been this singular will, namely, 
 a condition that the first child of each 
 succeeding marriage in the direct line 
 should return to the Protestant faith. 
 Strange condition this for a noble house 
 
The Magic of Rome 25 
 
 of Rome that had produced cardinals and 
 priests, and reckoned itself "personee 
 gratae " of the Pope's. And how strangely 
 destiny had interfered on behalf of Catholi- 
 cism — the generation had been childless, 
 and the property lapsed to a distant cousin. 
 One generation had had only daughters ; 
 the firstborn of another had died at birth ; 
 the firstborn of another been killed at 
 war. Always, always, for many hundred 
 years, the castle was presided over by a 
 Catholic, who in turn married into some 
 noble house of Rome 
 
 " It was an infamous compact and has been 
 revoked by God," the old Marchesa had said 
 often. Then her own firstborn had come into 
 the world, and she had seen him grow to 
 manhood, rejoicing in the free, glorious faith 
 he was able to embrace by right of law, and 
 which all her persuasion could not make him 
 renounce. Then at twenty he had disap- 
 peared. His hat had been found by the lake 
 a thousand yards from the house, and a letter, 
 saying he had taken his own life, had been left 
 on his table, and the Marchesa had seen in it 
 once more the finger of Heaven ; and while 
 she mourned the son she loved, albeit she 
 
26 The Magic of Rome 
 
 had made his life a burden in her efforts to 
 convert him, she yet rejoiced that it was 
 Orazio, her second son, her Roman CathoHc 
 son, who was the owner of Sant Angioli. 
 The masses said for the soul of Uberto, the 
 heretic, would have provided religious practice 
 for a province. 
 
 And now Orazio had sprung upon her a 
 surprise that contained all the bitterness reli- 
 gious surprises alone enfold. . She had thought 
 that his thoughts were so wholly one with 
 hers. He had married a Protestant. His 
 enforcement of the tradition had wounded her 
 beyond what she would own to. She did not 
 know Orazio. His brother's death had made 
 an impression on him which was not so much 
 the result as the echo, the refraction of the 
 ideas that reigned at Sant Angioli. So firm 
 was he in his prejudices that he would not 
 own that Rome was harmed by his union with 
 a heretic. If Rome was strong enough what 
 could it matter if a Protestant woman came 
 into its life ? She did not know, his mother, 
 that he had married as much from a wish to 
 experimentalise as infatuation. Still less did 
 she know that Orazio counted on his own 
 influence with Giselda to infuse into her 
 
The Magic of Rome 27 
 
 mind ideas of Rome. Her letter to him had 
 been characteristic. 
 
 " My son, I cannot think that you have 
 taken a reckless step or that your marriage 
 has been contemplated without one thought 
 of your mother's feelings. I know you too 
 well to think you have been influenced by 
 passion only. That you have dealt a blow 
 you are, doubtless, aware. My soul and the 
 thoughts of my heart have ever been an open 
 page to you. You know even that the death 
 of your brother, terrible as it was, was almost 
 a joy to me compared with other possibilities 
 had he lived. A mother must not be selfish, 
 and I trust, as ever, to the intervention of 
 Providence, who has not deserted us." 
 
 Orazio had argued thus. If Giselda had 
 a child and it lived it must needs be a heretic ; 
 what matter then if the mother was of the 
 same faith ? If it died the decree of God was 
 spoken ; what mattered it to what creed she 
 belonged? What he confessed to no one 
 was the intense jealousy of his nature, and 
 that his marriage with a Protestant meant 
 no priest, no confession between him and 
 her. 
 
 Giselda was of mixed parentage. Her 
 
28 The Magic of Rome 
 
 mother was an Englishwoman married to a 
 German count. Her wealth meant a great 
 deal even to the Sant Angiolis, for she was 
 an only child ; but none of this had swayed 
 him when he first saw her playing with her 
 dogs on the lawns of her father's schloss. She 
 had seemed to him the impersona.tion of pure 
 womanhood, and when the old graf had said 
 to him, " She is as good and as beautiful as 
 her mother, and when I have said that I have 
 said everything," he felt that if he could win 
 her he was entering within the portals that 
 are opened to few — the portals of a human 
 happiness which is allowed only to a select 
 number in this world. 
 
 " The millennium is here," the old graf had 
 said, with his arm in his wife's, and Orazio 
 had realised that heaven is on earth, provided 
 man understands it aright. 
 
 For one instant he had pierced through the 
 veil that shrouds the unattainable. He had 
 seen beyond the clouds, and he knew that the 
 presence of Giselda would keep the curtain 
 lifted. 
 
 The question in his mind was, whether she 
 was strong enough to bring heaven with her 
 to Sant Angioli. 
 
The Magic of Rome 29 
 
 The object of his life had become the wish 
 to spare her disillusions. 
 
 His mother had refused to come to the 
 wedding, pleading ill-health and age. He 
 too had been glad that she had not come. 
 Life holds many complications for those who 
 belong to Rome. He asked of life only a 
 honeymoon that had no cloud in it. To 
 feast on the beauties of his wife's mind for a 
 few months, to enjoy for one brief moment 
 the joys God had provided for the garden of 
 Eden, and which will return one day. Yet 
 while he watched the outputting of her joyous 
 nature he did not know what count he took 
 of her presentment to his mother and to Padre 
 Buonavoglio. 
 
 He disliked the . priest intensely, but to 
 insist on his departure would be to make a 
 scan,dal and wound his mother. The toler- 
 ance he bore to other creeds began at home. 
 What he had not quite recognised in Giselda 
 was her latent power of resistance. She was 
 weak, weak to the utmost limits of forbearance, 
 but when forbearance had exhausted itself 
 he did not know what would take its place. 
 Nature abhors a vacuum in minds as well 
 as bodies, and replaces emotions, faiths. 
 
30 The Magic of Rome 
 
 beliefs by other substitutes. He did not 
 know the prayer Giselda had sent to Heaven 
 on the eve of her wiedding night. 
 
 " God grant that I may never forget my 
 faith or fail to fight for it." Yet she told 
 him all that was in her heart. For six 
 months they had travelled and doctrine had 
 no weight with either. 
 
 It was only when she had seen the black- 
 robed figure of thepriest behind her mother-in- 
 law that she had realised the creed of Orazio. 
 
 But all her thoughts were centred in a 
 future that no one could take from her. If 
 it was a girl or boy, what mattered it ? Her 
 faith was its faith by right of Rome, and 
 Orazio was too noble to interfere. 
 
 No one could have resisted the juvenile, 
 up-to-date influence Giselda brought to Sant 
 Angioli. 
 
 The little iron table she had placed beneath 
 the trees, the soft pile of tissues that lay 
 upon it, the glistening of her modern dress, 
 the golden head, the artistic beauty and 
 grace of her girlish figure. The youth of it 
 dominated on the terrace of Sant Angioli, 
 and all her respect to her mother-in-law and 
 the priest was more concession than sub- 
 
The Magic of Rome 31 
 
 servience. To youth belongs the world, 
 and the Marchesa could not but recognise 
 that the personality of Giselda was as strong 
 a factor in her life as the Benedictae of the 
 Pope would have been. 
 
 In this strange world of ours God has 
 given to individuals an opportunity, a power 
 that outstrides rule or law or conventionality, 
 the endless building up of the rock on the 
 waverings of Peter. 
 
 At present Giselda's whole aim was to 
 conciliate. In the world we learn that con- 
 ciliation is but the pandering of the weak to 
 the strong, and that strength alone of body 
 or mind prevails; that the survival of the 
 fittest means life here below anew if the 
 swamping of the unfit means life hereafter. 
 She was all sweetness to her mother-in-law 
 for Orazio's sake. What did it all matter 
 since she and her child would be one ? 
 
 However, she was not long in noticing the 
 way Padre Buonavoglio weighed her words. 
 No word had passed between them of which 
 he had not altered the meaning and eradicated 
 that which gave them import. If now and 
 then he was carried away by her brightness 
 or brilliancy he invariably pulled up suddenly 
 
32 The Magic of Rome 
 
 with some remark which raised a barrier of 
 seriousness, almost of reserve, between them. 
 After the long honeymoon the atmosphere 
 of Sant Angioli stifled her ; only the hidden 
 joy within her saved her from moping — that 
 and Orazio's attitude, which was perfect. 
 
 Perhaps it was the strict avoidance of all 
 religious discussion, of any mention even of 
 religion to her, that made Giselda ponder so 
 on the difference of her own faith. What 
 struck her most- forcibly was the ignorance 
 displayed by her husband and his mother, 
 and even by Padre Buonavoglio, with regard 
 to all religions but their own. 
 
 " I believe they think that Protestants, 
 Jews, Turks and infidels all hold the same 
 faith," she wrote to her mother. 
 
 Once only did their display of ignorance 
 raise a flash of eloquent protest in her heart. 
 It was one day when the Marchesa and 
 Padre Buonavoglio and her husband had 
 been to early mass. The Marchesa looked 
 weary on her return, and while Giselda 
 helped to loosen her cloak she said, — 
 
 "You are late, dear, you must want your 
 breakfast." 
 
 "Ah, dear child," replied the Marchesa, 
 
The Magic of Rome 33 
 
 "how I wish you could have been with us, 
 that you could understand the comfort of 
 the Holy Communion," 
 
 " I wish indeed that there was a Protestant 
 church near I could go to," Giselda answered 
 simply. 
 
 " Church, yes, dear, that too is a blessing, 
 but the Communion — your religion does not 
 know that blessing." 
 
 " Madre mia! we too go to Communion." 
 
 " Ah, really ... I thought . . ." The 
 Marchesa's voice gave such a distance to 
 their faiths that Giselda felt irritated. 
 
 "Yes, yes, they have a form which re- 
 sembles ours a little," interrupted the Padre, 
 "but it is not the same thing. The Protest- 
 ants eat bread and drink wine in remem- 
 brance of the Lord's Supper. Is it not so, 
 Marchesa ? But they do not believe in the 
 real presence." 
 
 He took his place at the breakfast-table 
 and said grace with the air of a man who 
 has closed a subject for good and all. A 
 response rose to Giselda's lips, but was 
 arrested by a look from Orazio. 
 
 " Don't be dragged into religious dis- 
 cussions," Orazio said to her later. " You are 
 
 c 
 
34 The Magic of Rome 
 
 sure to get the worst of it, and it does your 
 faith no good." 
 
 Giselda's pretty lips almost pouted. 
 
 "Why do you say that? Our religion 
 can bear arguments as well as yours." 
 
 "No, dear child, it can't ; your faith is 
 not united enough. You have no hard and 
 fast rules. You interpret your Bible and 
 your conscience, your very forms of worship, 
 as you like ; you have no religious law 
 beyond the commandments. Even the 
 bishops of the English Church are mere 
 figure-heads in a pageant like the Lord 
 Mayor," Then, as she was about to 
 protest, he went on : " That is just what I 
 like in your religion ; it is the expression 
 of what each individual heart feels. Our 
 religion teaches us what to feel." 
 
 " Caro, do you think you will become a 
 Protestant one day ? " She did not know 
 the deep conviction of hope that her face 
 and tone expressed, 
 
 "Never!" replied her husband, and his 
 words chilled her. 
 
 " My own opinion is," she wrote that 
 night in her diary, which, placid and mono- 
 tonous as her days were, she still managed 
 
The Magic of Romk 35 
 
 to fill, "that even if a Romanist became a 
 convert and practised Protestantism all his 
 life he would yet on his deathbed send for 
 a Roman priest, so afraid would he be that 
 he had acted wrongly. As a girl I never 
 believed in the power of Rome; I am 
 beginning to understand it." 
 
 Yet, faithful to her resolve, she attended 
 one mass on Sundayjs, and tried to enter 
 into all the different obligations her 
 husband's religion inspired. On Fridays 
 she fasted like the others. 
 
 " I love fish," she said mischievously one 
 day to Padre Buonavoglio ; " don't you 
 think I ought to eat something else on 
 fast-days ? " 
 
 " It matters not," replied the Padre, 
 unctuously, " since fasting has no meaning 
 for you." And once more a vague irritation 
 rose in Giselda's mind ; he had the gift of 
 pushing her beyond the pale. 
 
 What Padre Buonavoglio was beginning 
 to realise — and the realisation angered him 
 — was that beneath the girlish aspect, in the 
 background of those blue eyes, in the far 
 recesses of the brain that stirred beneath 
 that fair white brow, perhaps even at the 
 
36 The Magic of Rome 
 
 core of the heart that beat so truly, lay a 
 strata of resistance, bf firm resolves, of 
 keen understanding he had not reckoned 
 upon. 
 
 " She knows her religion, which so many 
 of her faith do not," he said to himself. 
 " She will teach it to, and inculcate it in, 
 her son." 
 
 Yes, that was what she counted on doing. 
 If only it would be a son. And laughing at 
 her own inconsistency she lighted a candle 
 to St Anthony in the little chapel every 
 day, little knowing that the old Marchesa's, 
 which burned steadily by its side, was lit 
 with a prayer that it might be a girl. 
 
 Once now and then the vague want of 
 oneness with her surroundings intruded 
 upon her painfully, but she choked it with 
 a girlish argument. 
 
 " I have so much, I must be content. 
 Fancy if my child were going to be handed 
 over to the priests." Her mind went no 
 further than her firstborn. 
 
 She was not unhappy in those days. She 
 played and sang and drove with her hus- 
 band to return the visits of the neighbours, 
 and visited the peasants, who cared not 
 
The Magic of Rome 37 
 
 whether she was a "heretic" or not so long 
 as she smiled upon them and gave them 
 money ; and in the evening she and Orazio 
 wandered in the garden in the moonlight, 
 while the Marchesa dozed in the drawing- 
 room and the priest muttered prayers or 
 wrote to Rome in his study. 
 
 " Isn't it like a place in a novel ? " she 
 said once to her husband. " How beautifully 
 the house stands against the forest, and 
 how perfect is the architecture. Look how 
 weird those statues look in the moonlight, 
 and how proudly the whole place dominates 
 the valley. Listen now to the nightingale ; 
 it seems calling to the river nymphs. All 
 you want is a ghost — a real ghost — -the. 
 haunting presence of some terrible crime. 
 Tell me, Orazio, was a crime ever com- 
 mitted in the old days here? Were there 
 ever prisoners in those terrible dungeons 
 you showed me the other day?" 
 
 Orazio did not answer for one instant. 
 "There is no record in. the archives 
 of any crime," he replied. "Once two 
 ancestors of mine fought a duel on the 
 lawn there," and he pointed to the sward 
 that gleamed grey-blue in the moonlight. 
 
38 The Magic of Rome 
 
 " Yet sometimes " — he paused again — " I 
 wonder whether my brother really com- 
 mitted suicide, and why ? " 
 
 It was very rarely that he talked of him- 
 self or his family, and Giselda was glad 
 to draw out his confidence. His reserve 
 was the only thing she reproached him 
 with. 
 
 " He chills me a little bit now and then," 
 she said to herself. 
 
 But to-night he seemed to be yearning 
 to unburden himself. 
 
 " Sometimes I have fancied I have heard 
 his voice calling. Once I thought I saw 
 him walking in the shrubbery. It was 
 fancy, of course," he added, as Giselda 
 drew closer to him nervously. 
 
 "He was so unlike a man who could 
 commit suicide," he went on; "so cheery, 
 so patient. Of course I know they worried 
 him a good deal." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 He jerked his head towards the house. 
 "They naturally didn't like the place being 
 in the hands of a Protestant. It is absurd 
 that they will not become accustomed to the 
 inevitable. I sometimes wonder — " 
 
The Magic of Rome 39 
 
 He broke off suddenly and a fearful 
 thought crept to Giselda's mind — a thought 
 too terrible to impart even to her husband. 
 She shivered and moved instinctively towards 
 the house, where through the open windows 
 the brightly-lit candles and lamps gave 
 evidence of cheerful life and warmth. 
 
 The next day Giselda mentioned the 
 subject to Padre Buonavoglio. They were 
 standing on a terrace overlooking the river. 
 Straight down the hill from the wall of the 
 terrace ran the mountain, covered by short 
 stubbly fir trees, growing thick like hair on 
 a close-cropped head, and at the foot ran 
 the river. 
 
 " He seems to think he did not commit , 
 suicide." She was leaning over the wall, 
 and the noise of the river almost drowned 
 her words. The priest turned his head 
 swiftly and looked at her. Her thoughts 
 were already in another channel, but her 
 words sounded like a sequence of ideas. 
 
 "How awful it would be to be hurled 
 from here, yet how quickly one would meet 
 death ..." 
 
 Ah! Her head swam. She was seized 
 with vertigo or panic. Which was it ? It 
 
40 The Magic of Rome 
 
 seemed to her that the priest's face had 
 changed, that he made a step towards her, 
 that his eyes had grown bloodshot. A great 
 terror seized her. In an instant she had 
 almost overbalanced herself, then someone 
 had seized her — Orazio ! 
 
 Giselda lay fainting in his arms. 
 
 " The Marchesa Giselda cannot stand 
 heights ; in her present condition it is 
 dangerous to look down from such a 
 distance." Padre Buonavoglio's voice was 
 calm, too calm, under the circumstances, 
 Orazio thought. While he led her into the 
 house, and soothed her, and bade her rest, 
 his face grew stern. As she grew calmer 
 he questioned her. 
 
 " What happened, carissima ? " 
 
 " Oh ! it is absurd ; it was hallucination. 
 I had looked too long at the river from that 
 awful height. I grew dizzy. I fancied — 
 oh ! it is ridiculous — I fancied that Padre 
 Buonavoglio came close to me, looking — oh ! 
 so wicked, and tried to push me over the 
 edge." She ended in an hysterical laugh. 
 "Isn't it ridiculous?" 
 
 " Absurd, of course." Orazio's voice was 
 very stern. 
 
The Magic of Rome 41 
 
 Early next morning Padre Buonavoglio 
 started for Rome. 
 
 " And I did so want to beg his pardon 
 for frightening him," Giselda told her 
 husband. 
 
 " You can do that when he comes back," 
 said her husband. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The sun was shining as somehow it only 
 knows how to shine in Italy, bringing new 
 life and up-to-date brightness into the old 
 grey palazzos, which, however sombre they 
 may look, yet allow one to suspect, beneath 
 their sculptured portals, the existence of 
 love, poetry, romance. 
 
 To-day it streamed into the Palazzo 
 Veroni on to the stairs, into the vast 
 drawing-rooms of the Principessa, and up- 
 stairs straight across the studio of the old 
 painter Palagi, who rented the top floor, 
 and who stretched out his hands to the 
 warmth and thought it was good to live 
 albeit he was not a Raphael. 
 
 Where the sunbeams shone were great 
 beams of dancing particles, shimmering in 
 space like phantom rafters, and one of these 
 struck across the Principessa:'s eyes and 
 
 42 
 
The Magic of Rome 43 
 
 made them blink, so that she turned, her 
 head aside into the shadow to recognise 
 her visitor and clasp the hand of Padre 
 Buonavoglio. 
 
 How happy and bright she had been 
 when she had woke up to see the sunshine, 
 and now Padre Buonavoglio's presence had 
 chased it away from her heart at anyrate, 
 for the beams still hung there in golden 
 nebula across the room. As he spoke she 
 cast her eyes down to avoid the sun, and 
 noticed for the first time how threadbare the 
 carpet had grown. 
 
 " I had expected to hear from you." His 
 voice contained anxiety as well as reproach, 
 but she noticed only the reproach. If she 
 changed now she would upset his plans 
 dreadfully. 
 
 " I am such a bad correspondent." How 
 could she tell him that she put off writiijg to 
 him from day to day because writing to him 
 meant bringing him nearer to her thoughts, 
 from which she tried to thrust him every day, 
 this man she hated and despised, but feared 
 still more. His look searched her face. What 
 had happened, he wondered, since he had last 
 seen her ? Had there been a reconciliation. 
 
44 The Magic of Rome 
 
 or was she beginning to find elsewhere, as he 
 had always thought she would, the sympathy 
 denied her at home. And she was wondering 
 how she could get rid of him, wipe him out 
 of her life. It seemed that the intervening 
 months had built up a barrier of time, and 
 that she had nothing to say to him, while he 
 resolved quickly that if she was not amenable 
 he would use the full extent of the power he 
 held over her. 
 
 Now she motioned to him to be seated 
 since he meant to stay. He laid his shovel 
 hat on the table with a brief " Mi permette," 
 which she knew meant staying. 
 
 He drew his chair close to her sofa. 
 
 " Would it be possible to deny visitors 
 to-day?" 
 
 How she detested the tone of certainty that 
 his wishes would be carried out with which 
 he put the question. 
 
 For one instant the impulse seized her to 
 say, " I expect someone to-day, I did not ex- 
 pect you; another day I shall have more 
 leisure ; " but what mattered it as to-day, or 
 next day, or the day after would be all the 
 same ? He would see her, and he would see 
 her alone. 
 
The Magic of Rome 45 
 
 She rang the bell and bade her servant 
 refuse admission to everyone. The Padre's 
 features were beginning to relax. He strode 
 to the window while she gave her orders. 
 Presently he stepped out on to the steep stone 
 balcony, over the rail of which a beautiful 
 shawl had been thrown for the Principessa to 
 lean upon. It was nearly twelve o'clock and 
 the streets were deserted. Rich and poor 
 alike were eating and resting. The heat was 
 great outside, in glaring contrast to the cool 
 of the Principessa's vast drawing-rooms. A 
 flower-girl passed, and fancying the Princi- 
 pessa was somewhere near, held up a bunch 
 of roses ; but the priest looked steadily 
 across the street and she passed on. 
 Would she join him on the balcony? he 
 wondered. But she did not. Every moment 
 that their conversation was delayed seemed 
 a moment gained. As he re-entered the 
 drawing-room he was still wondering how 
 far he could trust her. "Trust no one," 
 he whispered to himself, and now he 
 drew his chair close to her sofa. He 
 laid one fat hand on the edge of it 
 even, 
 
 " It does one good to see you again and 
 
46 The Magic of Rome 
 
 see you looking so well, so — what shall I 
 say? ... " 
 
 " Say beautiful and have done with it," she 
 smiled ; but her voice had a tinge of mockery 
 in it. Much her beauty had done for her, she 
 thought bitterly. 
 
 " Questo sempre " (That you are always). 
 The priest paused. With all his knowledge 
 of women he always found it difficult to 
 approach this one ; yet her veiy aloofness 
 rendered her one of his most useful tools. 
 Yes, he was certain now that the safest plan 
 was to appeal to her kindness of heart. With 
 women it was always safest to appeal first, 
 then threaten. 
 
 " I have come to ask your help." 
 
 The Principessa raised her beautiful eye- 
 brows. 
 
 " My help ? " 
 
 She was glad at the turn the conver- 
 sation was taking, and he saw the relief 
 on her features and took advantage of 
 
 " I want you to help some one of your own 
 sex as you alone can help her ; I want you 
 to do it for me, for the sake of Christianity, 
 for God." 
 
The Magic of Rome 47 
 
 Involuntarily he grew agitated, and, rising 
 from his seat, paced the vast room, his robes 
 making a slight, soft rustle as he walked. 
 Then he stood in front of her. 
 
 "Is the Principessa di Vaeroni prepared to 
 do a great act of kindness ? " 
 
 " Dica pure " (Tell on, we shall see). 
 
 " I know you will not refuse, you are 
 capable of any sacrifice." 
 
 The Principessa winced. He had no right 
 to remind her of what he had only learned 
 through the confessional. 
 
 Then abruptly he went on, — 
 
 " How is it now between you and the 
 Principe ? " 
 
 " Oh ! " There was a world of pain in her 
 sigh. 
 
 " And you still think if you had a child 
 things would be better ? " 
 
 " He adores children, but it is not to 
 be. Do not let us talk of what is so painful. 
 You know I have just come back from 
 Lourdes." 
 
 " I heard of your munificent gift to the 
 Church." There was a tinge of reproach in 
 his voice. She had not told him of her pro- 
 jected visit to the shrine. " I know how you 
 
48 The Magic of Rome 
 
 feel, Principessa. We must be patient. Yet 
 perhaps God has heard your prayer." 
 
 " Chi lo sa?" It was a very despondent 
 voice that spoke. 
 
 " Well, what I want you to do is to take a 
 little child to your heart." 
 
 " Dio mio ! Madre Mia ! " The Princi- 
 pessa sat up on the sofa. What on 
 earth was he going to tell her? Yet 
 the words that came to her lips did not 
 pass them. They would have been an 
 insult. 
 
 Then he told her a sad story of betrayal, 
 of the agony of mind of a young girl who 
 would be cast out of her home when the 
 secret was known, " The child will be born 
 in February." 
 
 " It may not live," The Principessa rose 
 to her feet and walked to the window. How 
 hot the cobbles looked in the glaring sun ! 
 How silent everything was! Everything 
 but her own heart. 
 
 In answer to her remark the priest 
 shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " That would be the best thing." 
 
 " Ubaldo would never consent." 
 
 The priest looked around. The doors 
 
The Magic of Rome 49 
 
 were closed. He rose and lifted the heavy 
 portieres that hung over them. 
 
 The Principessa held her hands to her 
 breast and was silent. Even in a land 
 where deceit is more than a practice, almost 
 if not quite a religion so interwoven with 
 dogmas of its belief that it is almost un- 
 recognisable, she hated deceit. 
 
 "If he ever knew he would never forgive 
 me. 
 
 "Pah! One forgives everything," he 
 had almost added "to a beautiful woman," 
 but her look forbade it. 
 
 "It would mean years of dissimulation, a 
 lifetime of untruth." 
 
 "He has deceived you for years." 
 
 Something noble in her responded to his 
 remark. 
 
 "That makes me dislike untruth the 
 more." 
 
 The priest felt irritated, but the time 
 had not come yet to threaten her. 
 
 The servant entered to announce lun- 
 cheon, and the strangely - assorted pair 
 passed into the next room and were joined 
 by the Prince di Vaeroni and his secretary, 
 and an old great-aunt of the Prince's, who 
 
 D 
 
50 The Magic of Rome 
 
 lived on the second floor and only came in 
 to meals. 
 
 During the repast the Padre Buonavoglio 
 became again the witty, cynical man of the 
 world, the keen politician, the well - read 
 scholar. There was no vestige of gaucherie 
 at the remembrance of his suggestion to 
 the Princess ; no inkling appeared of the 
 knowledge he possessed of the strained 
 relations between his hosts. He gave a 
 glowing account of the beauty of the new 
 Marchesa di Sant Angioli, and there was 
 no pause, no suspicion of discomfort 
 throughout the meal. 
 
 When the Prince bade him farewell he 
 expressed the hope of seeing him again 
 soon. A wish that was totally without 
 sinqerity, for he hated the personality of 
 his wife's confessor. 
 
 A few moments later the priest took his 
 departure. 
 
 " I shall be at the church of Santa Chiara 
 to-morrow at ten," he said at parting, "or 
 later if you wish." 
 
 The words were tantamount to a sugges- 
 tion that he would be at her disposal for 
 confession. Her face flushed. She was 
 
The Magic of Rome 51 
 
 not going to tell him that she had changed 
 her confessor. He would probably come 
 to hear of it. It would be time then to 
 have it out with him. 
 
 " To - morrow — " She paused. " To- 
 morrow I am going to AHato for the day." 
 He knew it was not true and his farewell 
 was a little frigid. 
 
 " I shall think over what you told me. 
 We will talk of it again." 
 
 " I shall be in Rome for ten days." 
 
 At the door he turned. 
 
 " I shall be very grateful to you for this 
 service." 
 
 "Si vedira" (We shall see), and the 
 priest had gone. 
 
 The Principessa sighed a sigh of relief^ 
 and as she crossed the room to go out on to 
 the balcony to breathe fresh air she caught 
 sight of herself in a tall glass. 
 
 " Principessa di Vaeroni," she said, looking 
 at herself in the glass and arranging a lock 
 of fair, soft hair, "the most unfortunate, 
 the most miserable woman in all Rome. 
 Born what for? Apparently for the pur- 
 pose of showing the world how wretched 
 a human being can be." 
 
52 The Magic of Rome 
 
 A couple of hours later she was driving 
 along the Pincio, bowing to right and left, 
 smiling sometimes, and sometimes waving 
 her hand as an intimate woman friend 
 flashed past. Then presently she bade her 
 servants drive on, on into the country, 
 where she could think, for the isolation of 
 her loveless life had fostered thought and 
 meditation. 
 
 How strange was this wonderful sugges- 
 tion of Padre Buonavoglio's, how unex- 
 pected. What did it mean ? For a 
 single-minded act on his part, a movement 
 of sheer pity from Buonavoglio, that was 
 out of the question, absurd to contemplate. 
 She had no doubt whatever that the child 
 was his, but the thought was sacrilege. 
 Who was the mother? That was what 
 puzzled her most. The woman who could 
 have cared for such a man, what was she ? 
 But her maternal instinct was strong. Her 
 longing for love still stronger. Most of 
 all it seemed to her as if her pride would 
 at least be healed of its deep wounds. 
 Would it bring Ubaldo to her feet ? 
 Would it stay the scandalmonging tongues, 
 the scoffing sneers that had reached her 
 
The Magic of Rome 53 
 
 ears more than once? Ah, she knew well 
 one woman who would cry with rage if 
 the Prince returned to her. Yes, much 
 as she hated Padre Buonavoglio, it seemed 
 to her as if his suggestion held something 
 of good in it. It seemed to her that if 
 she could once more hear Ubaldo's voice 
 murmuring in her ear, " I love you, my 
 adorable wife," in the old, old way, 
 life would still be worth living. But 
 there was another side to the picture, a 
 dark, heavy side that was like the purple 
 overlappings of the clouds at sunset, fierce 
 as the blood-red washings behind the hills 
 and sad as the bells that were ringing out 
 the Angelus in Rome as her coachman 
 drove back to the city. 
 
 If she refused, what would Buonavoglio 
 do ? He who would blast her life on earth, 
 and, for all she knew, her life hereafter. 
 
 To her brain there crept a voice, — 
 
 " Make a bargain with him. Let this be 
 the price of your freedom. Take the child 
 on condition of his banishment from your 
 life forever." 
 
 Meanwhile, after leaving her, Padre Buona- 
 voglio had turned to the right instead of to 
 
54 The Magic of Rome 
 
 the left, which led back into the town, and 
 had threaded his way up and down a quantity 
 of streets, the labyrinth of which seemed 
 familiar to him, till he reached a little street 
 jutting straight on to the river. Here the 
 poor women sat at their doors as if they 
 were in the country, some plaiting straw, 
 some knitting, not a few only playing with 
 their babies, while young girls sat and 
 listened unblushing to the lowered whispers 
 of their inamorati, while children played and 
 quarrelled and screamed along the street. 
 
 Here and there a girl tittered as the priest 
 went by. Presently he reached a dirty door 
 between a little vegetable shop and an 
 ironer's. He knocked impatiently. An old 
 woman opened the door, admitted him and 
 closed it again. 
 
 "Piange, piange, sempre " (She cries with- 
 out ceasing), muttered the old woman as she 
 preceded him upstairs. The priest bit his 
 lips. Apparently the interview was going to 
 be more unpleasant than he had anticipated. 
 He was ushered into a sordid, dirty room 
 with scanty furniture, and the paper of which 
 hung in drooping shreds in places on the 
 wall ; a child was seated on the floor playing 
 
The Magic of Rome 55 
 
 with old chicken bones, and in one corner 
 a woman between thirty and forty was 
 washing clothes at a tub. The one beautiful 
 adornment of the room was a girl of about 
 twenty, whose whole aspect represented 
 radiance from head to foot. The cop- 
 peras tresses glinted in the afternoon sun, 
 the luminous eyes shone as if a thousand 
 fires smouldered in them, and in the de- 
 spondent droop, as she leaned against the 
 window-sill, was a world of grace. This was 
 Graziosa, the niece of the laundress of 
 the Vatican, who had taken the Padre's 
 fancy and who had thought it fine to be 
 wooed by a priest. 
 
 The elder woman dropped the cloth she 
 was rubbing between her hands and it fell 
 with a flocculent, swalping sound into the 
 water. Then she wiped her hands on her 
 apron, the while her look met the priest's with 
 a mixed expression of defiance and servility. 
 As he entered Graziosa straightenecj herself 
 at the window and trembled all over. 
 
 The priest was at a decided disadvantage 
 alone with these two women. The child got 
 up and stared at him with his finger in his 
 mouth. 
 
56 The Magic of Rome 
 
 " Run into the street, Paolo, this is no 
 place for you, run," said the laundress. The 
 child obeyed slowly and was expedited by 
 a cuff on the head. The woman put her 
 arms on her hips and watched the priest, who 
 was talking to Graziosa. 
 
 " Well, a pretty business this is. What is 
 to become of us all ? If His Holiness should 
 hear of it I don't know what would become 
 of some of us." 
 
 " Zitta, zitta" (Be quiet). " His Holiness 
 doesn't bother himself about such things. 
 I can arrange it ; only, if you talk like that 
 I will do nothing at all." 
 
 The girl turned two dark, luminous eyes, 
 with blue rings round them, upon the priest. 
 
 " Come si fa, come si fa," she wailed, and 
 tears started to her eyes. She was certainly 
 very beautiful. If only she had been a little 
 older and he had had a comfortable presby- 
 tery, she could have been his servant, but 
 his home was with the Sant Angiolis ; it 
 could not be. Then he began to expound 
 his plan. The child would be taken away 
 if it lived and brought up by a kind 
 Principessa, and if Beppo, who loved her so, 
 ■would marry her, she should have a dowry 
 
The Magic of Rome 57 
 
 of five thousand lire, a little fortune. They 
 could start a shop or buy fields in the 
 Campagne. She would be happy ; it only 
 depended on her aunt to arrange this 
 and they would be happy. Perhaps, if she 
 arranged this with Beppo, there would be 
 a thousand lire for the laundress too." 
 
 The girl's eyes glistened. He was gener- 
 ous after all, the Padre. It would be well. 
 How the girls would envy her ! But a cun- 
 ning expression came over the old woman's 
 face. She knew too well all that was to be 
 gained by having a priest-lover in the family. 
 
 "Pah! five thousand lire. What is that 
 and the girl's reputation gone ? Beppino 
 will never marry her now, nor can I send 
 her with the baskets to the Vatican. 
 Then there is the whole business and the 
 clothes — oh, five thousand lire, it's that!" and 
 she snapped her fingers before his face. 
 But the priest was equal to the occasion 
 and his countrywoman. 
 
 " I will not give more." He rose to go. 
 
 " Make it six and I will see what I can do." 
 
 " Five thousand, neither more nor less, 
 and perhaps five hundred francs for yourself 
 when all is settled." 
 
58 The Magic of Rome 
 
 " Five hundred ; you said a thousand just 
 now," Presently she would lose everything. 
 
 " Si vedra," and the priest went down the 
 stairs without bidding farewell to either of 
 the women. 
 
 " Pst ! pst ! Padre mio." The old laun- 
 dress ran down the stairs. " And what 
 about the other matter ? " 
 
 " I'll see you again about that. There is 
 time yet." 
 
 " Shall I come and see His Reverence ?" 
 
 " Yes, on Sunday night." 
 
 " To the usual address ? " 
 
 "Yes, as always." 
 
 " A rivederci." The priest started off at 
 a rapid pace, while a naughty boy hummed 
 after him, — 
 
 " Sono figlio di prete dove h la mia 
 mamma ? " 
 
 Just as the Principessa was returning 
 from her drive, and the clouds turning 
 almost emerald behind the hills, the Padre 
 Buonavoglio was ushered into the presence 
 of the Cardinal Vitelli, with whom he was 
 going to dine. 
 
 The Cardinal received him with his usual 
 kindliness, but Padre Buonavoglio searched 
 
The Magic of Rome 59 
 
 his face eagerly, for a man who has secrets 
 in his life is ever ready for unpleasant 
 and unexpected revelations and discoveries. 
 But there was no expression of mistrust on 
 the good Cardinal's face. He had heard 
 rumours, as who had not .■* but he paid little 
 attention to them. 
 
 " Good heavens," he would say, in answer 
 to gossips, " I have enough to do with my 
 own shortcomings." 
 
 He knew, none better, the singular intri- 
 cacies of human weakness, the depths to 
 which a man may fall who is not wholly 
 bad. Large-minded as he was, he realised 
 too well the awful scope the Roman Church 
 gives to evil propensities. 
 
 "In our religion more than in any other," 
 he had once said, " does a man need 
 character, firmness, strength." His words 
 had been repeated to the Pope, and it had 
 taken him many years to live down the 
 mistrust they had occasioned. 
 
 Dinner was over, and the two men still 
 sat and talked, and cautiously the priest, 
 whose very breath was intrigue, had put 
 forward a feeler with regard to the Sant 
 Angiolis, 
 
6o The Magic of Rome 
 
 "It seems a pity, your Eminence, that 
 something cannot be done to break through 
 the tradition. The day will come at last 
 when the heir will live, and then Sant 
 Angioli will pass away from us. Goodness 
 knows, we need to hold all we can in these 
 days." 
 
 " Ah ! my dear fellow, I recognise your 
 energy " — was there a touch of sarcasm in 
 the voice ? Buonavoglio wondered — " but our 
 hands are too full. Let us alter nothing; 
 let us rather keep what there is. For 
 goodness sake, let the heir live this 
 time." 
 
 Buonavoglio started. His temples worked 
 in a way that, with him, was characteristic of 
 agitation, then his bony cheeks wrinkled 
 into a ghastly smile. 
 
 " By all means let us let him live, since 
 your Eminence desires it." He tossed down 
 a tiny glass of certosa that stood by his 
 empty coffee cup. 
 
 "It is odd that story of the brother's 
 suicide ! " 
 
 Padre Buonavoglio pushed back his chair 
 so that his face was no longer exposed to 
 the full light of the candles, which glared 
 
The Magic of Rome 6i 
 
 fiercely from the silver candelabra on the 
 table. 
 
 " The hand of God is clearly visible in 
 that family," sighed Buonavoglio, "and I, 
 who am so closely united to their interests, 
 after these many years deplore it. I don't 
 believe a Protestant will ever succeed to the 
 property." 
 
 "Are you as superstitious as all that?" 
 The Cardinal looked across at the priest in 
 some surprise. " For my part I do not 
 think that heaven interferes with such 
 details." 
 
 How strangely he talks, thought the 
 priest again. For the second time it seemed 
 to him as if the Cardinal were laughing at 
 him. He gave an inquiring look, as if he 
 demanded explanation, and the Cardinal 
 rose from his chair and strode once up and 
 down the room. Then he came and stood 
 close to the table, his two arms behind his 
 back. 
 
 "You know, my friend, as one grows 
 older strange thoughts come to one. Some 
 born of experience, some the outcome of 
 reading. Others again seem borne in upon 
 one by revelation. They are perhaps 
 
62 The Magic of Rome 
 
 fancies, only fancies, fads if you will, but 
 they seem to spring out of the roadside of 
 life and cling to one. Of late I have 
 fancied whether there is not a religion that 
 is beyond form and beyond creed. A 
 religion we shall attain to, and which can be 
 attained by any faith, so that there is faith, 
 my friend, so that there is faith." Then, 
 warming to his subject : " Faith, my dear 
 brother, what is that? Does that come 
 through form or creed, by absolution, ex- 
 communication, by Ave Marias or Agnus 
 Deis or creeds ? Faith is a gift. May it 
 not belong to some heaven - born religion 
 yet to come?" 
 
 Padre Buonavoglio was silent. The con- 
 versation was taking a turn he did not enjoy. 
 He pondered over his answer. Who was he 
 to contradict the Cardinal Vitelli ? Yet, to 
 agree with him would be dangerous if it 
 came to the Pope's ears. 
 
 " Your Eminence has always been very 
 liberal-minded," he murmured. 
 
 " Liberal-minded!" exclaimed the Cardinal. 
 " Who would dare be anything else face to 
 face with the tremendous questions of 
 religion — the problem God ? . , . Secure 
 
The Magic of Rome 63 
 
 as we feel in our faith, there are yet 
 moments when one wonders if, after all, 
 one is right." 
 
 "What says His Holiness to these 
 questions ? " 
 
 "Ah, the Pope, alas ! is far too busy with 
 the questions of temporal power. That, 
 alas ! is the weakness of our position. 
 Power, human power in the garb of religion 
 is as ridiculous as — as a Cardinal's 
 robes," he said, touching the cross on his 
 breast. " I confess I hate them. I cannot 
 disassociate religion from bare feet and no 
 scrip or purse." 
 
 "Ah, your Eminence, I fear you are 
 becoming a religious socialist." 
 
 " Upon my word, I believe I am." 
 
 In after years Padre Buonavoglio remem- 
 bered the Cardinal's words. 
 
 The clocks of St Peter's and all the many 
 bells of Rome rang out midnight as the 
 priest bade the Cardinal farewell. 
 
 As he left the Cardinal's presence His 
 Eminence walked to the window of hi? 
 apartments. A cold moon was stealing 
 slowly along the roofs of the churches. 
 Bluish-grey enveloped Rome. Against the 
 
64 The Magic of Rome 
 
 sky the trees lay like black etchings 
 scratched across it. 
 
 "Ah, he is like all the rest — narrow, 
 bigoted, treacherous. Where, where is the 
 religion to be found that can annihilate the 
 love of self, the constant thought of self? 
 Is it in Romanism or Protestantism ? Has 
 it any creed ? Thy Kingdom come, O God. 
 Let it come quickly ! " 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 But the day which Padre Buonavoglio had 
 begun so early with the Principessa was not 
 yet at an end. Rapidly he walked through 
 the lonely streets of Rome, across the Piazza 
 di Spagna, then up to the right and down 
 again along a little street. Here he stopped 
 at the door of what had once been a beautiful 
 palazzo, but it was now a squalid, dirty tene- 
 ment, let at low prices, in different apartments 
 or rooms, to impoverished people. All was 
 silence, and the reflection of the moonbeams 
 on the window-panes looked like the eyes 
 of dead people. He sprang up the stairs 
 with the buoyant step of a man twenty years 
 his junior. He was in his element now that 
 he returned to the haunts and elements of 
 intrigue. A strange contradiction this in 
 the composition of his character — his docility 
 and subservience with regard to convention- 
 ality, mingled with a Bohemianism that was 
 
 E 
 
66 The Magic of Rome 
 
 reckless and almost savage ; yet those who 
 saw the one trait were never permitted to 
 penetrate the other. 
 
 Beneath the door of the first floor ran 
 a thin line of light. He turned the handle 
 and found the door locked. 
 
 "It is I, Ulysses," he called through the 
 keyhole cautiously ; and the door was opened 
 cautiously and closed again and locked. 
 
 There is perhaps nothing that makes a 
 more disagreeable impression on one than 
 to see features which one has looked upon 
 habitually under the influence of one ex- 
 pression suddenly distorted or pervaded by 
 an expression totally foreign to them. So 
 it was that had any confreres of Padre 
 Buonavoglio seen him at that moment he 
 would have been horrified, aghast at the 
 different bearing of his whole being. 
 Habitually reserved and almost ascetic- 
 looking, with a countenance which, if not 
 inspired, had, at least, upon it the imprint 
 of concentrated thought, he assumed now 
 a demeanour of jollity, of devil-may-care 
 recklessness, of gross bonhomie, that ap- 
 peared so exotic that one felt as if he must 
 be a prey to drunkenness or madness. 
 
The Magic of Rome ^'j 
 
 " Halloa, there, how are you, my friends ? " 
 He slapped this one on the back, clasped 
 hands or nodded familiarly to those who 
 stood around to greet him — and a motley 
 crew they were; Seediness, the absolute 
 dissolution of success and prosperity, of 
 noble thought and high-struck aims, was 
 painted on their faces. An unkempt, un- 
 shaved lot they were, though here and there 
 a bright, shrewd eye, a figure about which 
 hung still a faded air of distinction, bore 
 witness of what one or other of the indi- 
 viduals might have been had he wished, or 
 tried, or perhaps known how, for ignorance 
 is generally at the root of our disasters. 
 
 " Ah, you have come ! " The speaker 
 was evidently a Pole, and his tone expressed 
 pleasure and relief from doubt. "We 
 thought perhaps you were going to fail us." 
 
 " Pah ! " Padre Buonavoglio seated him- 
 self at a table and poured himself out a glass; 
 of red wine from a bottle that stood on the 
 table. He crossed his legs and raised the 
 wineglass in front of the light, as if its 
 ruby glistenings pleased him. The others, 
 about fifteen in number, grouped around him 
 . to listen. 
 
68 The Magic of Rome 
 
 " Have you seen him ? " said one. 
 
 " Seen him ? yes, and talked to him for a 
 couple of hours." 
 
 " And it won't do ? " 
 
 "Yes and no." The priest tasted the 
 wine, made a grimace at its bitterness, and 
 went on. 
 
 " The difficulty is to obtain frank answers. 
 That they desire it is clear enough, but they 
 have not the courage to take the responsi- 
 bility upon themselves." 
 
 " That is perhaps natural," replied the Pole, 
 with a touch of cynicism. " An anarchist 
 plot, the death of the King brought about by 
 a plot of the Vatican with the knowledge of 
 His—" 
 
 "Hsh!" 
 
 A step was plainly heard ringing out on 
 the narrow curb-stone outside. The lights 
 were turned out immediately. The steps 
 stopped outside the door of the building. 
 The windows were covered, no light was 
 visible without. The steps came up to the 
 door. 
 
 " The police ! " whispered one of the party. 
 
 Buonavoglio's face blanched. What if he 
 were found in the company of these well- 
 
The Magic of Rome 69 
 
 known Socialistic Anarchist characters ? 
 What a scandal ! From sheer fear of con- 
 sequences he would be renounced by the 
 Vatican. 
 
 The lock was tried and they all held their 
 peace. 
 
 The Guardia muttered something and 
 went downstairs again. After all, it would 
 cost him his life if he interfered with them. 
 
 " A man has a right to his own opinion," 
 he said to himself, and the little company 
 breathed again. 
 
 But Buonavoglio had grown restless and 
 agitated. 
 
 " We had better disperse." 
 
 " No, no ; they are gone," said a voice in 
 the darkness. 
 
 " Probably to fetch others. We must run 
 no risk." There was a return of clerical 
 unctuousness to the priest's voice. 
 
 " We shall never get on at this rate," said 
 one. 
 
 " We must meet again elsewhere." Padre 
 Buonavoglio was already feeling his way to 
 the door. 
 
 "It may be years, my friends, before we 
 attain our ends, but we shall attain them. 
 
70 The Magic of Rome 
 
 We must move cautiously." As he spoke he 
 suited the action to his words and slipped out. 
 
 Below, in the shadow of the archway of the 
 door, a woman was waiting for him. He 
 started. He had forgotten Beppina. Un- 
 nerved as he now felt, and tired with his long 
 day after the peaceful early hours at Sant 
 Angioli, he reproached himself with having 
 given her this address. He made a sign to 
 her, and she followed him out of the doorway^ 
 up a quantity of streets, till they came to the 
 riverside. Here the moon lay beaming on the 
 ancient waters. It was about three o'clock 
 i|i the morning. Close to the low wall that 
 runs along the riverside he turned and spoke 
 to her hurriedly. His face looked haggard 
 and old in the moonlight. Had he sunk 
 down dead at her feet it would not have 
 surprised her, so ill he looked. 
 
 Briefly he told her his plans. 
 
 " I shall send for you in February. You 
 will receive a telegram. It will be signed 
 Paolo, You will start at once, and I will 
 meet you at Gries, the rest I will tell you 
 when we meet." 
 
 He slid a gold piece into her hand and 
 walked hurriedly away, his tall figure and 
 
The Magic of Rome 71 
 
 long robe throwing a shadow like that of a 
 gigantic woman across the white gleaming 
 road. 
 
 " Carpo di Diavolo," said the woman, look- 
 ing after him and down at the gold piece 
 again. 
 
 " They make quick work of these matters, 
 these men of God. • Servants of Christ 
 indeed!" She shrugged her shoulders. 
 " That poor little innocent Gesii. He would 
 never have wanted servants of that sort, that's 
 sure enough," and she drew her shawl over 
 her head and hurried home. 
 
 The Principessa still lingered on the balcony, 
 watching the dawn as it stole with noiseless 
 golden feet across the city. Ah ! how aloc^e 
 she felt, this young woman, with all her 
 beauty, all her wealth, her jewels and her 
 infinite charm. The long, loose sleeves of 
 her dressing-gown had fallen back, her soft 
 white arms gleamed in the blending of the 
 lights of day and night. She buried her 
 head in her two hands and mused, oh ! so 
 bitterly, and/presently great tears rose to her 
 eyes. 
 
72 The Magic of Rome 
 
 "Gloria!" 
 
 It was her husband's voice. What had 
 happened that he came to seek her, he who 
 so rarely spoke her name ? " Still up ? and 
 all alone?" 
 
 " Am I not always alone ? " she said wearily, 
 and her voice matched the wanings of the 
 moon and the pale outputtings of dawn. 
 
 " Cara ! " His arm was round her. 
 
 "Crying?" 
 
 " Oh, Ubaldo, I love you so ! " 
 
 She had turned and laid her head on his 
 breast, and one fair hand lay on his shoulder, 
 while she wept as if her heart would break. 
 
 " Forgive me," he whispered, as he 
 raised her hand to his lips and kissed it 
 passionately. 
 
 " We both have much to forgive." Her 
 words were but a whisper. 
 
 " No, no, only you. You are perfect, 
 Gloria mia." Slowly he led her back into 
 her room and drew her down on to a sofa 
 in the window, from which they could see 
 the bold advance of day, and when he 
 had ceased whispering to her the sun 
 streamed full into the chamber. 
 
 The next day Padre Buonavoglio received 
 
The Magic of Rome t^ 
 
 a note from the Principessa : "I will do as 
 you wish, but on certain conditions." 
 
 Ubaldo had returned to her. She must 
 bind him to her ; nay, more, she must get 
 rid of the dark presence that haunted her 
 life and that had come so often between 
 herself and Ubaldo, the man she loved 
 beyond anyone else in the world. The day 
 before it had seemed an impossibility, but 
 now he would grow to love it, to think it his, 
 and then one day he would forgive when 
 she told him. 
 
 She could not tell what caprice had 
 brought him back to her, any more than she 
 could have explained the whim that had 
 possessed him when for long weary months 
 he had treated her as a stranger, almost as 
 an enemy. That he was disappointed as 
 three years went by and she gave him no 
 heir to the estates and wealth of the 
 Veronis, was natural ; but did she deserve 
 such hardness ? she who grieved over it 
 as much as he did. They had been many, 
 the cruel women who called themselves her 
 friends, and who had whispered to her of 
 her husband's infatuation for the Duchess di 
 Sant lago, a vulgar little American, who 
 
74 The Magic of Rome 
 
 had been married for her money by the 
 scion of a ruined ducal house. But Gloria's 
 was one of those hearts who, while they 
 crave love, neither exact nor expect it. It 
 seemed to her that she was wedded to ill- 
 luck, and that at twenty-one life for her was 
 over, and she was content to welcome back 
 Ubaldo and to ask for no account of the 
 intervening months. There are great sacri- 
 fices, great heroisms to be found in the 
 houses of the great the world wots not of; 
 but they, too, have their poetry, their 
 grandeur, all the more, perhaps, that from 
 the depths of their suffering they do not 
 cry out. 
 
 Reserved, dignified, beautiful, complete 
 was the forgiveness Gloria di Veroni be- 
 stowed upon her husband. 
 
 When he had come to her room he had 
 wanted some papers which were in the room 
 adjoining hers. He had grown thoroughly 
 tired of the American. Then something in 
 the darkness of the room, the untouched 
 bed, where laces lay gleaming in the moon- 
 light with a dead blue light, had struck him 
 with a cold chill. Gloria was not there ! A 
 fearful thought had come to him ! Then his 
 
The Magic of Rome 75 
 
 eyes had turned to the open window, and, 
 leaning against the balcony, he had seen 
 the chaste white figure of his wife, her 
 golden hair looking like silver in the moon- 
 light, and in such an attitude of despair, 
 with such an air of dejection, loneliness and 
 utter solitude that his heart had smote him. 
 How young she was ! How good ! How 
 lonely ! 
 
 Ah ! how different everything seemed 
 this morning. The sun rippled in la,ughing 
 waves into the Palazzo. The very street 
 noises seemed to hold a joyous cry in them. 
 Life seemed to go on again after a long 
 silence for Gloria. For the first time the 
 Principe asked the Maggiordomo why the 
 flower vases in the different rooms were 
 not full of the Principessa's favourite flowers. 
 To him it seemed as if he had never yet 
 noticed how exquisite her eyes were, how 
 delicate and artistic the pose of her tiny 
 head, and she had waited all this time for 
 him, while so many women would have 
 sought consolaition elsewhere. A good 
 woman can always have that consolation 
 in life, that the effect her goodness has 
 on mankind is beyond any impression, how- 
 
76 The Magic of Rome 
 
 ever emphatic it may seem, made by a 
 frivolous woman, no matter the passion 
 the latter may succeed in inspiring. 
 
 The next day the Maggiordomo an- 
 nounced, — 
 
 " Sua Reverenzia il Padre Buonavoglio." 
 
 Gloria's heart began to beat violently. 
 He had come to hear her conditions. She 
 had not expected him so soon. Surely 
 his anxiety meant something. To - day 
 would decide who was strongest — she or 
 the priest of Rome. How she loathed it — 
 the scene that was coming. How it marred 
 the new happiness that had come to her 
 with the renewal of Ubaldo's love. The 
 Padre did not fail to notice the expression 
 on her face. He had found the husband 
 and wife together, talking brightly to each 
 other, which was in itself an unusual cir- 
 cumstance, an unwonted sight, and a sight 
 which did not please him, who feared union, 
 and whose motto all his life had been 
 " Divises pour regner," which is also the 
 motto of a large portion of humanity. 
 
 For an instant both were silent. As 
 Ubaldo left the room both felt that between 
 
The Magic of Rome 'j'j 
 
 yesterday and to-day there lay new wishes, 
 new emotions, that the conversation broken 
 off the day before would never be renewed in 
 the same spirit. 
 
 " You wrote to me," began the priest, and 
 Gloria nerved herself for the combat. She 
 was standing, and remained standing; the 
 priest did the same. 
 
 " I have considered your proposal," she 
 began. Her voice was stern, business-like, 
 like his own. " I will adopt the child , . ." 
 
 The priest made as if he would speak, but 
 she held up her hand. 
 
 " Please hear me to the end," she said. 
 " We may be interrupted ; my husband may 
 return." There was a world of tenderness 
 in her voice as it lingered on the two 
 words, " my husband." " Let me speak, 
 then you shall say ' Yes ' or * No.' 
 First of all, I must know if it is well- 
 born. I must be certain that there lies 
 upon it no stigma of birth, for I am a 
 believer in heredity, and it would horrify 
 me — I think it would kill me if I saw in 
 one I intend to treat and love as my own 
 unfoldings of anything coarse, the evidence 
 of a birthright of low thought or inclinations. 
 
78 The Magic of Rome 
 
 I will be frank with you. I must know 
 whose the child is. I must be certain that it 
 is one of us." 
 
 The priest strode up and down the room. 
 His temples worked terribly. 
 
 " Then the bargain is at an end," he 
 exclaimed almost angrily. "It is impos- 
 sible that you, signora, should know 
 whose it is." 
 
 "Well, I will take your word," she said, 
 " on the question of birth." 
 
 "It will be as well-born as yourself." 
 
 " And the mother consents ? " 
 
 The priest looked away. 
 
 " I have not mentioned the arrangement 
 to her yet. I waited for your consent. 
 She will consent — she must, for her own 
 sake." 
 
 "Poor girl!" Gloria sighed for the un- 
 known woman who was to part with the 
 only comfort of her anguish of body and 
 soul. 
 
 "Then it is an arranged thing." The 
 priest waited breathlessly for a reply, and 
 as a proud steeplechaser pulls itself together 
 for its last hurdle she nerved herself to make 
 the condition that to her present mood 
 
The Magic of Rome 79 
 
 seemed to make life or death. She came 
 to the table and leaned a little against it 
 for support, although she seemed to stand 
 erect enough. 
 
 " Padre Buonavoglio," she began, " I 
 have yet a condition to make. It is one 
 that may pain, or wound you. Before tell- 
 ing you what it is I must ask you whether 
 you are prepared to hear from my lips 
 unpleasant truths — words that are unbe- 
 coming from a mere woman to a member 
 of our great Church, most of all unbecoming 
 from me to you, because for many years 
 you have been my confessor. Yet I will 
 not take this child into my house unless 
 you have heard and agreed to this my last 
 condition." She remained silent, and the 
 priest looked at her amazed. He had 
 turned a ghastly colour. Inwardly he 
 wondered what she knew, what she was 
 going to tell him. He pieced her present 
 attitude with the fact of the Principe's ap- 
 pearance in the streets of Rome the night 
 before. She had believed his word about 
 the child. What then was coming? A 
 cold sweat broke out on his brow, yet for 
 his own sake it was better to know. 
 
8o The Magic of Rome 
 
 "After all," she said softly, "would it 
 not be better to give the child to someone 
 else ? " 
 
 "No," said the priest, with decision. 
 " Let me hear what you have to say. All 
 words are welcome from your lips. 
 Speak," and he added swiftly, "be frank 
 with me." 
 
 Something in the humility of his manner 
 touched her for a moment. Had she ex- 
 aggerated to herself the horror of his 
 presence in her life? Was it fancy 
 only that he seemed to be like the evil 
 genius of her life ? Was it not because 
 he knew the one weak moment of it that 
 she hated him so? Yet if she did not 
 take advantage of this moment it would 
 never come again. 
 
 " Padre BuonavogHo," she said, very 
 calmly, very gently, although her heart 
 was beating, " I want you to promise 
 never to see me again. Never to cross 
 my path so long as either of us live, till 
 we meet perhaps at that judgment seat 
 above where God who knows and under- 
 stands all will judge." 
 
 The priest started. His lips moved, but 
 
The Magic of Rome 8i 
 
 he stood silent, revolving in his mind the 
 strange bargain she would make with him. 
 Then to himself he smiled. This was 
 fear. How transparent women's minds 
 were after all ! This was childish fear. 
 She strove to push away from her the 
 phantom she dreaded, as a child puts its 
 head under the bedclothes to shut out the 
 gaunt shadows on the walls. Could it be 
 possible that she feared him as much as 
 all this ? What triumph in the thought ! 
 
 "Your words pain me naturally," he 
 answered. " I should like you to explain 
 them." 
 
 " I will." And now it seemed to him 
 as if she grew suddenly^ taller, as if behind 
 the beautiful, calm image of the Principessa 
 he could detect all the bitterness, all the 
 pent-up agony of a writhing soul struggling 
 to be free. 
 
 " Last night — " She paused. It seemed 
 sacrilege to her to discuss the renewal of 
 Ubaldo's love with this man who was 
 supposed to know none of its stirrings, 
 "Last night my husband and I were re- 
 conciled to each other. He begged me to 
 forgive him his coldness and neglect and 
 
82 The Magic of Rome 
 
 I — I tried to tell him that I too needed 
 his forgiveness. He would not listen. 
 We are both content to let the past bury 
 its past and to begin again. I feel now 
 that I love him beyond everyone in the 
 world. I want no one to come between 
 us." 
 
 The priest raised his hand as if about 
 to speak. 
 
 "Oh, I know what you would say — that 
 you have not come between us. You will 
 remind me, perhaps, of what you have 
 hinted at before, although it was told you 
 in the confessional, of that absurd moment 
 when I fancied myself in love with the 
 Duca di Fugomonti. When I imagined 
 that I had a right to console myself since 
 Ubaldo had deserted me. Well, Padre 
 Buonavoglio, I hate to say it, but it is 
 true. It was you, not Fugomonti, who 
 came between us. When I saw him and 
 told him he was never to see me again 
 you know how well he behaved, how he 
 obeyed my wishes. Of the duel after- 
 wards, and his death, you know that I 
 cannot bear to speak. Don't you re- 
 member, Reverendo, your words when I 
 
The Magic of Rome 83 
 
 came and told you how I reproached my- 
 self for my infidelity of thought to the 
 husband who had deserted me ? This was 
 what you said." 
 
 Padre Buonavoglio began pacing the room. 
 "You are mad — mad," he muttered. 
 
 " No, I am not mad. Padre Buonavoglio. 
 Instead of warning me of my danger, 
 instead of bidding me tell Ubaldo, appeal 
 to his love, his reason, his protection, 
 instead of bidding me tear that love 
 from my heart, you said, ' My child, 
 you have suffered so much, your hus- 
 band is so cold, that God will doubtless 
 forgive you even if you fall. You 
 must try to be strong, but if you are 
 weak, then, my child, do not forget to 
 come and tell me all about it. I will 
 absolve you. You are young to deny 
 yourself love when it is denied you.' Those 
 were your words. Padre, do you remember ? 
 And do you forget that it was you who 
 told me first of my husband's infatuation 
 for the American ? Was it not you who 
 told me that I should find him at such an 
 hour at her house ? Was it not you who 
 told Fugomonti the hour at which I went 
 
84 The Magic of Rome 
 
 to confession, so that he met me at the very 
 gates of the church, till I told him I would 
 not have the house of God turned into a 
 place of assignation? Then — then it was, 
 Padre Buonavoglio, that you, not he, came 
 between me and my husband, between me 
 and my peace of mind, between me and 
 God Himself." 
 
 " Take care, take care, Principessa." The 
 priest's hands were clenched. Their eyes 
 met like the crossing of swords, blade to 
 blade. 
 
 " Oh, you may threaten." Gloria's words 
 came thick now, and a servant below fancied 
 that she called him, and hurried to the 
 drawing-room, only to be waved impatiently 
 away by Gloria. 
 
 " Dio, di me ! What is happening ? " said 
 the old servant to himself, closing the door 
 carefully lest the rest of the household should 
 hear. 
 
 When all was quiet again, Gloria went 
 on, — 
 
 "Ah, Padre Buonavoglio, it was not you, 
 not the man of God, the priests of our dear 
 Church that saved me then, but my better 
 self, or, perhaps, who knows ? the protecting 
 
The Magic of Rome 85 
 
 spirit of my poor deslr mother, or the blessed 
 Mother of Sorrows, I realised then that in 
 extremity of temptation and of sorrow there 
 is hope neither in Church nor man, only in 
 God. Fugomonti understood, poor soul! I 
 sometimes think that he must be glad now 
 where he is that I refused his love." She 
 was quieter again now. 
 
 " Oh, Padre, forgive me if I have wounded 
 you. Forgive, as I forgive you for all the 
 harm you did me, and if some day some poor 
 woman comes to you for help and guidance, 
 remember how near to ruin was poor Gloria 
 di Veroni." 
 
 But the priest was in no mood for con- 
 ciliation. She not only wounded his pride 
 as a priest and a man, but she had unearthed 
 secrets of his thoughts and machinations, 
 toyched the fount spring of evil, whose 
 existence he had thought no one knew of 
 but himself, of which he himself pretended 
 to ignore the whereabouts. She had read 
 him through and through, this woman who 
 had seemed so child-like and weak and 
 leadable. She should suffer everything he 
 could make her suffer in the future, this 
 fair woman who dared to defy Buonavoglio, 
 
86 The Magic of Rome 
 
 and through him the power of the Church 
 divine to utter wrong. 
 
 " It is infamous, infamous," he repeated. 
 
 " But it is true," she retorted. 
 
 "And your husband — have you told him 
 all this? Do you intend to tell him that 
 this child is the offspring of illegitimacy or 
 to palm it off as his ? " 
 
 The voice was scornful and sneering to 
 insolence. Gloria's cheeks blazed. This 
 was the weak point in her armour, and he 
 knew it. This priest knew the secret of 
 Fugomonti. He would now hold another. 
 What use would he make of them? But 
 Ubaldo would believe her rather than this 
 man, she said to herself. She was ready 
 to defy him, strengthened by her husband's 
 re-conquered love. 
 
 " What I tell my husband is my business, 
 Padre Buonavoglio. You may be certain 
 that I shall tell him what it is right for him 
 to know." 
 
 The priest walked slowly, without bidding 
 her farewell, to the door. Then he turned, 
 and with his hat in his hand bowed low to 
 her between the tall hvocdA&6. portieres. 
 
 " Signora Principessa, I accept your con- 
 
The Magic of Rome 87 
 
 ditions. Addio ! You will see me no more. " 
 To himself he said, " But you will feel me." 
 " Addio ! " responded Gloria, in a cold, 
 faint voice, and the door closed after the 
 priest. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Castello di Sant AngioH was all agog 
 with worry. The old Marchesa had become 
 intensely feminine, to the detriment of creed 
 and dignity. She was really anxious for the 
 health of her daughter-in-law, whom she had 
 grown to love during Buonavoglio's absence. 
 The Marchesa was one of those characters 
 who need reciprocity. When the priest 
 failed her by his absence she brought all 
 her responsiveness to bear on the young 
 woman whom she would have loved so 
 dearly had she dared. There was some- 
 thing furtive and secretive in her connection 
 with Giselda that appealed to her. Latterly 
 Giselda had drawn very close to her. She 
 read her mother-in-law's character better 
 than anyone else did. It was her husband's 
 wish that the child, if a boy, should be 
 called Uberto, like the brother who had 
 disappeared. 
 
 88 
 
The Magic of Rome 89 
 
 " I wonder you are not superstitious about 
 the name," her mother-in-law had said with 
 a side glance at her expression. 
 
 " It would please Orazio so," murmured 
 the fair German girl, whose only desire was 
 peace and conciliation, 
 
 " You are a dear child," the old Marchesa 
 had murmured, and almost with enthusiasm 
 she had discussed the arrival of the new 
 Sant Angioli. She looked out old veils, 
 old swathing bands, old laces that had 
 served four generations of Sant Angiolis. 
 She had the beautiful carved cradle her 
 sons had lain in repolished. She gave 
 Giselda a thousand counsels. And now, 
 while everyone waited the arrival of the 
 doctor, she prayed in the little chapel, as 
 she had never prayed before, for the life of 
 Orazio and his wife and the safe advent of 
 his son. And as she prayed she became 
 conscious that someone had entered the 
 chapel and stood in the dark shades. Padre 
 Buonavoglio had returned, and she felt once 
 more the stir of malevolent energy that had 
 lain dormant for so many weeks. She had 
 been so happy alone with her son and his wife. 
 
 He waited till her devotions were ended. 
 
90 The Magic of Rome 
 
 and then he followed her into the big dark 
 dining-room. 
 
 " Ebbene ? " (Well, what news ?) Shiver- 
 ing there in the half gloom of February 
 chilliness the Marchesa felt that she had no 
 news to give him. 
 
 "It is impossible," she said. 
 
 The priest's face clouded over. His lucky 
 star was not in the ascendant of late, he said 
 to himself. It was wonderful the glamour 
 these heretics threw over people. In an 
 instant he recognised the waverings of mind 
 of his old friend and patroness. She was 
 growing old, he said to himself, but he had no 
 pity for her old age. The Church of Rome 
 is the most pitiless of all. She was part of a 
 great whole, only the fly on the wheel that 
 could be crushed in its turning without any- 
 one knowing or caring. 
 
 "Temptation comes at every age," he 
 said brutally, and the old lady writhed be- 
 neath her black laces. 
 
 " I am too old for all these things," she 
 murmured, and the priest smiled in cynical 
 acquiescence. 
 
 "Yet all is arranged, the Princess Veroni 
 is going to take the child." 
 
The Magic of Rome 91 
 
 The Marchesa started. 
 
 " Gloria di Veroni ? Impossible ! " 
 
 "With God all is possible," replied the 
 priest. 
 
 And now Sant Angioli, looking haggard 
 and dishevelled, entered the room. 
 
 " Un figlio " (A son), he said, kissing his 
 mother. The priest made the sign of the 
 Cross. 
 
 "Salve in Eterno," he muttered, and the 
 old lady burst out crying. 
 
 " I must go back to her," said the son, 
 " She only said two words : ' Go and tell our 
 mother.'" 
 
 " I will come to her," murmured his mother, 
 while he saluted the priest briefly and dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 " It is impossible," she repeated, while the 
 tears streamed from her aged eyes. 
 
 " Leave it to me," muttered Buonavoglio, 
 and his words sounded like the croaking of 
 crows. 
 
 "Mi permette " (Allow me). The priest 
 took her arm and placed it in his own. 
 
 "You must rest," he said, and led her 
 slowly to her apartments. What was to 
 come must come without her intermedd lings, 
 
92 The Magic of Rome 
 
 he said to himself. But all the strength of 
 mind, the patience, the brain-throbs of 
 months had their rest now. Giselda was 
 in a high fever, Sant Angioli sat by her. 
 Never had there been such a woman, he said 
 to himself. Her very piety made him dread 
 for her reason or her life, for even princes 
 are not permitted to see the immaculate 
 twice and live, and great goodness makes us 
 shudder more than great evil. 
 
 The bells of the Church of Sant Angioli 
 el Calvario rang out in the stillness, an- 
 nouncing the birth of a son and heir, and the 
 Marchese sat on by his wife's bedside. 
 
 Presently the nurse knocked at the door 
 and beckoned the Marchese to come. 
 
 " He cannot live," she murmured, " but 
 she must not know." 
 
 An imprecation rose to the lips of the 
 Marchese. 
 
 Slowly, almost solemnly, he followed the 
 nurse into the next room. There in his 
 cradle lay the heir of the Sant Angiolis. 
 Very peaceful, but very white he looked, 
 thought the Marchese. 
 
 "Meure" (He is dying), said the nurse. 
 
 And presently Padre Buonavoglio stole in 
 
The Magic of Rome 93 
 
 and gazed on the silent sleeping of the 
 child. 
 
 " You will baptize him," said Sant Angioli. 
 
 "I cannot," whispered the priest, "he is 
 born to heresy." 
 
 A fierce crimson flush overspread the 
 features of Sant Angioli. 
 
 " I command you to do it," he said ex- 
 asperated. 
 
 The priest smiled ironically. 
 
 " The Church cannot be commanded," he 
 said. 
 
 "Where is my mother?" 
 
 The words, though uttered by a man full 
 of virility and strength, sounded pathetic as 
 those of a child. In his great torment of 
 soul Sant Angioli could think of no one 
 with greater power to aid him than his 
 mother. 
 
 "She is prostrate, do not disturb her," 
 said the priest, and Sant Angioli approached 
 the cradle. 
 
 " God bless thee ! God save thee ! " he 
 said, and made the sign of the Cross on the 
 infant's brow. Then he strode back to her 
 bedroom. What was a puny child compared 
 to her? 
 
94 The Magic of Rome 
 
 A few hours later Saiit Angioli stood 
 alone with the doctor in a darkened ante- 
 chamber. 
 
 " Is it impossible to save its life ? " asked 
 the Marchese. 
 
 " Impossible. It has no strength in it." 
 
 « And hers ? " 
 
 "She will live," said the doctor, "but you 
 must keep the death from her for many 
 days." 
 
 And Sant Angioli returned to Giselda's 
 bedside. 
 
 And when at dawn he entered the room 
 where his little son had lain he found no- 
 thing but a tiny coffin nailed down and 
 covered with flowers, and the servants 
 praying around. 
 
 And he did not know that beneath the 
 cold, pitying moon a woman was hurrying 
 towards Gries with his child pressed close 
 to her — the heir of the Sant Angiolis on its 
 way to Rome. 
 
 And now Giselda began to recover and 
 ask for her child, and every day a fresh tale 
 was told her. The child was sleeping or 
 out for an airing, or she was too tired to 
 see it. Every day for five days they evaded 
 
The Magic of Rome 95 
 
 her demands, and then at last she asked to 
 see the Marchesa. She who had loved 
 Orazio and held him to her breast would 
 know how she suffered in her longing to see 
 her babe. As from one woman to another 
 she would appeal to her. They were keep- 
 ing something from her. 
 
 But the Marchesa was very ill, they said, 
 and could not leave her bed. Then Giselda 
 sat up and, with wide, red eyes, implored 
 her husband to tell her. 
 
 " He is dead," she said, " and you will not 
 tell me." 
 
 And he whispered that it was dead, but 
 that for his sake she must not grieve too 
 much ; and then, with a shriek, she bounded 
 from her bed, 
 
 " He is not dead," she cried ! " They 
 have taken him from me ! " and she rushed 
 barefoot into the room where he had lain,. 
 But it was empty, and only the little clothes 
 lay folded on the bed. 
 
 " Orazio ! " The cry rang through the 
 house. Padre Buonavoglio heard it in his 
 room above. Giselda Sant Angioli lay 
 stiff and cold upon the floor at Orazio's feet 
 as he entered the room. 
 
96 The Magic of Rome 
 
 And as he carried her apparently Hfeless 
 form back to bed he made a resolve which 
 all the priests in the world, his mother and 
 the Pope himself, could not have shaken. 
 
 Many hours he sat by her bedside watch- 
 ing the occasional flickering of her eyelids, 
 listening to her faint-drawn breaths, and all 
 the time the impulse strengthened, became 
 conquering, imperative in its demands. 
 
 " They could not have done it," he said to 
 himself. Yet as he said it the certainty 
 became more sure. 
 
 And Giselda moaned and sighed and 
 stretched herself and went to sleep — into a 
 real, healthy sleep that held life — and he left 
 her to the nurse. 
 
 The night was dark and the light in the 
 Padre's room was extinct. The night was 
 thick and dark, and the wind sobbed and 
 moaned in the trees, while from the lake — 
 where it was supposed the young Count 
 Sant Angioli had met his death, although his 
 body was never found in it — there rose a 
 mist which, because there was no moon to 
 light it, looked like a dark figure rising on 
 the gloaming of the waters. The Marchese 
 gave a shudder as he slipped out into the 
 
The Magic of Rome 97 
 
 terrace, followed by the faithful Domizio 
 carrying a lantern. Presently he hung back 
 and bade the servant go on in front. 
 
 " I can't see a step," he muttered. 
 
 And now they wound slowly down the 
 hill, little bits of earth and stone and stick 
 detaching themselves from the mountain side 
 beneath their feet. Now and then their 
 descent was so steep that they had to hold 
 on to a fir tree or thick bilberry bush growing 
 on the breast of it, in order to steady them- 
 selves on the sudden tilting of the rugged 
 path. At last they reached the little 
 village which lay straggling in the shape of 
 a lizard at the foot of the hill, the little 
 church looking like the head of one lying in 
 the square at the end of the street. Here 
 all was darkness and silence. Not a light at 
 the window of any of those dull sleepers 
 whose daily work and early hours ensured, 
 for the most part, undisturbed slumbers. 
 Their feet rang out on the cobbles, and 
 Anna, the cobbler's wife, who had risen to 
 give her child the breast, looked out on to 
 the street and wondered at the two figures 
 and the lantern. 
 
 " Travellers who have lost their way, no 
 
 G 
 
98 The Magic of Rome 
 
 doubt," she said to herself, and troubled her 
 head no further. 
 
 And now they reached the little cemetery 
 where lay the vault of a few Sant Angiolis, 
 for most were buried in Rome alongside 
 their former neighbours. The Marchese 
 took a key from his pocket and opened the 
 door of the vault which lay under the 
 church. While he did so Domizio held the 
 lamp to the keyhole with trembling fingers. 
 
 " What are you afraid of, Domizio ? " 
 Gruesome as were his thoughts, the Mar- 
 chese yet smiled a little at the man's fears. 
 
 "Ah! your Excellency must pardon me. 
 The living — that is well enough. One sees 
 them every day. But the dead — ealtra cosa ! 
 that is something else. That is another 
 thing." The door of the vault flew open. 
 The Marchese took the lamp from the 
 trembling servant and held it to his face. 
 
 " Do you know anything of this business, 
 perhaps?" His voice and look were very 
 stern. 
 
 "On my honour, Dio m' intende! God 
 hear me, Excellency, I know nothing," 
 
 The Marchese felt that the man spoke the 
 truth, and now he descended the stone steps 
 
The Magic of Rome 99 
 
 first, out of pity for his old servant. A 
 weird, melancholy sight it was, the row of 
 coffins placed on slabs, and the little tiny 
 one lying on the ground before the altar, 
 over which hung a beautiful picture of the 
 Mother of Jesus, by Giotto, with two candles 
 burning in front of it. It was long since the 
 Marchese had visited the vault. His father 
 had been buried at Rome, his brother had 
 not been buried at all. The beauty of the 
 picture struck him afresh, and he gazed at it 
 for a moment before bending his knee. And 
 now Domizio placed the lantern on a niche 
 in the wall and took out of his coat pocket 
 one of two implements. 
 
 " Open it," ordered the Marchese, briefly, 
 and the man began to place the awl beneath 
 the lid of the tiny coffin. 
 
 One, two, three, the lid began to give 
 way ; now they raised it. The flowers that 
 filled it were still fresh and sent up a sickly 
 fragrance to their nostrils. The Marchese 
 knelt beside the little wooden lid himself 
 and lifted, one by one, the wreaths of 
 exquisite white flowers, the sprigs of white 
 lilac and lily of the valley. But beyond the 
 flowers the coffin was empty. 
 
loo The Magic of Rome 
 
 " Santissimi Vergine ! " exclaimed the old 
 servant, "Santissimi Vergine!" The two 
 men stood up and looked at each other. 
 
 " And this ? " The old man raised a letter 
 from the stone floor, which had fallen 
 amongst the flowers. The Marchese took 
 it from him and started as he recognised 
 his mother's handwriting. His first impulse 
 was to tear it open to read it, lest it gave 
 some clue. Yet some feeling of respect to 
 his mother, of dread to find that she, too, 
 had been party to this horrible thing, made 
 him hold back. He would think before he 
 read it. He slipped it into his pocket and 
 stood with folded hands gazing at the empty- 
 coffin ; then he turned away. He saw it 
 all now, and could piece it all together — the 
 plot — as a child pieces together a puzzle. 
 
 "Close it — no, stop!" he told Domizio, 
 and taking a card from his pocket-book he 
 wrote across it these words : — 
 
 " Can it be that the Church of Rome can 
 stoop to lies, its servants lend themselves 
 to perfidy?" Underneath he signed his 
 name. This he tossed into the coffin. 
 
 " Leave it open," he said, while with his 
 hands, awkward as men are at handling 
 
The Magic of Rome ioi 
 
 delicate things, he threw the flowers back 
 again. 
 
 Then he laid his hand on Domizio's 
 shoulder and brought him forward beneath 
 the light of the altar. 
 
 " Domizio, on the life of my father, 
 whom you loved and served so well, and 
 as you value your , own life, never a word 
 of this." 
 
 "Upon my soul I swear it!" responded 
 the trembling old man. 
 
 "In the name of the Father and the 
 Son and the Holy Ghost," said the 
 Marchese, pointing to the picture. 
 
 And the old man, with the tears streaming 
 down his aged, rugged face, repeated the 
 words, adding, — 
 
 "And by the Blessed Virgin and all the 
 Holy Saints I swear it ! Oh, Padrone mio, 
 that I should live to see this day! Our 
 little master stolen, and the lovely signora 
 dying for love of him up yonder," 
 
 At his words a twitch of mental pain 
 seized the features of the Marchese. Dying ? 
 She should not die, his pure, sweet wife 
 whom they had tortured so ; she should live, 
 live to know that he had had no hand in 
 
I02 The Magic of Rome 
 
 this night's work, that he, at least, had been 
 true to her. 
 
 "And now who shall say that your 
 brother, the Count, was not bewitched 
 away like this ? " His words found an 
 echo in his master's heart. 
 
 " Domizio,- you love me, I know, as you 
 have loved all the Sant Angiolis, as they 
 love you." His voice was infinitely kind. 
 "Whom do you suspect?" 
 
 The man lowered his voice. 
 
 "That Buonavoglio." 
 ' "You mean His Reverence," replied the 
 Marchese, haughtily. The dignity of the 
 Church must be preserved at all hazards. 
 
 "Ah, Excellency, it is difficult to rever- 
 ence what one despises." 
 
 The old man was unaware of the rustic 
 expression of his philosophy. " Prete si ma 
 anche Diavolo " (A priest, yes, but likewise 
 a devil). 
 
 And then the two men left the vault, 
 closing the door after them, and took once 
 more the road through the village and up 
 the hill to the castle. Not a word did they 
 exchange the whole way, except when now 
 and then the old man protested or expos- 
 
The Magic of Rome 103 
 
 tulated as the Marchese helped him up the 
 hill. Cautiously they wound their way, and 
 when they reached the garden, each stone of 
 which they knew so well, the lantern, as if 
 it knew that its duties were over, flickered 
 out. 
 
 And now, having divested himself of his 
 cOat and hat and thick bootSj the Marchese 
 strode to the bedside of his wife. 
 
 " She sleeps," murmured the nurse. 
 : "Thank God!" He had, at least, the 
 night before him in which to string together 
 his tangled thoughts and plans. 
 
 It was Giselda who had bade him to go to 
 the coffin. " What you tell me I will believe," 
 she had said, with her fair young arms cling- 
 ing to his neck and her lovely face pressed 
 close to his. 
 
 " How could he lie to her ? " he asked him- 
 self. Yet how tell her the truth. How often 
 one is face to face with this problem — Is it 
 kinder to tell the truth or to conceal ? Each 
 one answers it as he best can, and how many 
 judge rightly ? 
 
 Life looked very bleak and dreary to-night, 
 all the bleaker that he understood so well 
 what it all meant. 
 
I04 The Magic of Rome 
 
 What was he to do ? To one so refined 
 in character as the Marchese it seemed an 
 insult to ask his mother even if she knew this 
 thing Buonavoglio. The Marchese's fingers 
 tingled as he thought of him. The Sant 
 Angiolis have quick tempers. Had the 
 Marchese seen him that moment he would 
 have struck him. And now he paced the 
 room which Giselda had made so comfortable 
 for her beloved. 
 
 What was it, this curse that hung over 
 the Sant Angiolis ? This envelopment of 
 bad fortune ? Could it be that an inheritance 
 of woe had come to them because an ancestor 
 had married a heretic ? All his soul cried 
 out " No ! " 
 
 Through the beauty of Giselda's soul he 
 could read the beauty of her faith. 
 
 " A religion that turns out women like that 
 must be a good one." For one instant a 
 resolve sprang to his heart. 
 
 " Ha, how it would serve them right ! 
 They have taken away my little son for fear 
 a heretic should rule at Sant Angioli. What 
 ifthe head ofthe Sant Angiolis?" ... Bah, 
 the Magic of Rome was still upon him. The 
 magic that whispers in tones its children dare 
 
The Magic of Rome 105 
 
 not disobey. Was it not rather a temptation of 
 the devil that was assailing him in his wrath ? 
 
 But he was no nearer a solution, and the 
 morning was dawning behind the hills. One 
 streak of red, like the spilled blood of mar- 
 tyred saints, rent the grey heavens, and still 
 his mind had come to no conclusion. To tell 
 Giselda the truth, if the child could not be 
 found, would be to kill her. He could see 
 her face as he told her the horrible tale, read 
 therein the revoltant recoil against his faith, 
 his people. It seemed to him that to tell her 
 would be treachery to his name, his country, 
 his Church. That he would move heaven 
 and earth to find his child, that he had re- 
 solved to do. All the police would be set in 
 motion. To go straight to Buonavoglio and 
 his mother and tell them of his discovery, but 
 this would be to give them a chance of frus- 
 trating his attempts with the police. To ask 
 them point blank would be to be told lies. 
 He had enough experience of that. Of 
 course he could go to the Pope and lay the 
 whole story before him, but he knew what 
 His Holiness would say : — 
 
 " For the sake of the Church I implore 
 you to allow no scandal." 
 
io6 The Magic of Rome 
 
 Everywhere it seemed to him that he 
 knocked his head against a wall. Strongest 
 of all was the certainty that he himself would 
 be considered a traitor if he kicked against 
 the pricks pointed against him by his Church. 
 His plans must be carried out silently. He 
 would go to Rome the next day. But Giselda, 
 how could he leave her? His heart stood 
 still at the thought of what might happen to 
 her — Domizio would have to go. To be sure 
 there was his agent, who acted as his secre- 
 tary ; but to tell him would probably be to 
 tell the whole country side. 
 
 For the moment it seemed to him that the 
 policy of silence was best. To tell his mother 
 was to tell Buonavoglio ; it was to establish 
 between her and him a record of words he 
 could" never forgive himself for having 
 uttered. 
 
 "Can it be, can it be," he asked himself, 
 " that man was destined to such bondage, 
 such fettering of thought and action ? " 
 
 And then his eyes fell on his mother's 
 letter. He held it to the lamp that stood on 
 his bureau, he turned it round and round. 
 What had made her slip this missive into the 
 coffin? Ah! he knew too well. Remorse. 
 
The Magic of Rome 107 
 
 He knew all her kindness of heart, her 
 weakness and her bigotry. 
 
 "She dared not disobey," he muttered to 
 himself. Yet he well knew how she would 
 have loved this child of his. Who could tell 
 what that letter contained of elucidation ? It 
 was not addressed to him. Yet it was not 
 addressed to anyone else. On the Envelope 
 were these words : " Let him who op6ns this 
 think kindly of me," 
 
 " Poor, dear, weak mother," whispered her 
 son to himself. And the thought of Giselda 
 returned to him. He had no right to with- 
 hold from her any information he could 
 glean. 
 
 He tore open the letter. 
 
 There were but three lines on it : — 
 
 " If any should wish to know the where- 
 abouts of the son of Orazio di Sant Angioli 
 and his wife Giselda, born February 3rd, 18 — , 
 let them ask the Principessa di Veroni. . . . ! " 
 
 He started. 
 
 " Gloria di Malezzi ! " His cousin. Slowly, 
 very slowly, he folded the letter and replaced 
 it in the envelope. 
 
 He saw it all now, and he went to bed a 
 little comforted. His road seemed very 
 
io8 The Magic of Rome 
 
 straight to him now. Giselda would have her 
 son back after all. Once more he stole into 
 his wife's room and found her still sleeping, 
 and the nurse slept too. Gently he covered 
 the arm she had thrown out of the coverings 
 with the embroidered counterpane and stole 
 back to his room. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 There were many difficulties that lay in 
 the way of Gloria's being able to carry out 
 her plans. Perhaps the greatest lay in her 
 renewed intimacy with her husband, who 
 was constantly with her. More than once 
 there came suddenly across her, like the 
 blast of a mountain storm, the remembrance 
 of the dual life, the secret that would be 
 daily renewed, the prevarications that would 
 daily have to be practised, yet it was but the 
 choice of two evils; That, or the presence 
 of Padre Buonavoglio, whose enhancement 
 seemed to her one of evil, and that seemed 
 to include her in its miasmic spreadings. 
 Yet she had resolved to tell him one day, as 
 we all intend to do right one day, forgetting 
 that only to-day belongs to us. Then, just 
 as she was beginning to despair, fate came 
 to her aid. A telegram from Sicily summoned 
 
 the Prince to the bedside of an uncle, of 
 109 
 
no The Magic of Rome 
 
 whom he was the heir, and Gloria was free, 
 free to breathe and think and carry out 
 her plans. 
 
 " What a poor mockery it is after all of 
 the happiness other women have," she said 
 to herself once. What she disliked most of 
 all was having to make such a woman as 
 Beppina a party to her secret. Would it not 
 have been better after all to leave it to the 
 priest to arrange it ? But all her being 
 revolted against renewing negotiations with 
 him. Beppina, after all, could be bribed to 
 hold her tongue with money. The priest 
 would need other cajoling; 
 
 Nor was Padre Buonavoglio quite content 
 with the arrangement. What if Beppina 
 should tell the tale of Graziosa? Yet he 
 hoped that the threats he had been un- 
 sparing with would seal her lips. If she 
 ever spoke it would have to be against 
 Gloria, not himself. She would yet be a 
 useful tool in the upbuilding of his own 
 machinations. 
 
 The household noticed nothing in Bep- 
 pina's visits, for Gloria was good to the 
 poor, and many were the humble visitors to 
 the Palazzo in those days. But all the pride 
 
The Magic of Rome hi 
 
 of a long race belonging to one of the 
 proudest races in the world revolted against 
 the secret alliance she was obliged to form 
 between herself and this washerwoman. It 
 had been suggested by the priest, by the 
 woman herself, that the woman should take 
 the place of the child's nurse, but this Gloria 
 would not consent to. 
 
 " She is not educated enough," she wrote 
 to the man she hated, but inwardly she told 
 herself that to allow Beppina to live beneath 
 her roof would be to have a spy beneath her 
 very roof. Every action, every thought, 
 every word would go back to Buonavoglio, 
 and he read through her thoughts, and 
 smiled to himself a satisfied smile to 
 think of the impression he had succeeded 
 in making. 
 
 And now the Principessa gave out to her 
 maid the event that was to take place, and 
 her approaching departure for the house 
 of relations near Florence, and every day 
 Ubaldo wrote to her and promised to come 
 back as soon as possible, and she wrote 
 back : — 
 
 " I am well ; stay where you are. It is your 
 first duty. If I want you I will telegraph." 
 
112 The Magic of Rome 
 
 And then one day she returned, returned 
 with a tiny infant smothered in laces in her 
 arms, and a be-ribboned nurse, and all Rome 
 called to congratulate the young Principessa, 
 who, after nearly four years of married life, 
 had attained her life's desire. 
 
 The child had been christened at 
 Florence. 
 
 One thing the mother begs of your 
 Excellency, and that is, that the child 
 should be called " Disperata," Beppina had 
 said. 
 
 Gloria shivered ; the name had something 
 dismal in it which was repugnant to her, 
 yet, kindly always, she gave way to the 
 wishes of the mother she had never seen, 
 and whose naming of the child seemed to 
 waft towards her all the agony of parting 
 with her beloved. 
 
 And Gloria had her named Disperata, but 
 to herself she said I will call her Sperata ; 
 and when Ubaldo came back from Sicily, 
 and she led him to the cradle, he smiled. 
 
 " Sperata, indeed, is a good name," he 
 said. " Sperata, Desiderata, Adorata," and 
 he kissed the tiny maiden. 
 
 Then one evening, when Gloria was 
 
The Magic of Rome 113 
 
 sitting alone, stooping over the embroidery 
 she worked at so artistically, trying by the 
 lamplight to sort the colours of her silks and 
 wools, the Maggiordomo entered somewhat 
 mysteriously. 
 
 " The Marchese di Sant Angioli is below 
 and would speak with your Excellency 
 alone." 
 
 "Sant Angioli?" She started. It was 
 years since she had seen him. What could 
 he want ? The hour was late for a visit 
 of ceremony. She knew that his little son 
 had been born a few weeks ago. Was he 
 bringing her bad news or good ? 
 
 " Alto passare," she said, pushing aside 
 her tapestry frame. "It is probably 
 the Prince he wishes, to see. Let 
 him enter." Had she known it, Orazio 
 di Sant Angioli was hardly less nervous 
 than she was at the prospect of an 
 interview. He and his brother had played 
 with their pretty cousin. Gossips had even 
 whispered of a possible engagement to one 
 or other of them. But the Pope would not 
 hear of an alliance with the heretic elder 
 brother, and a second son as the husband of 
 Gloria Malezzi was out of the question. All 
 
 H 
 
114 The Magic of Rome 
 
 these memories crowded upon him as he 
 waited below in an ante-chamber, but most 
 of all he wondered how she would receive 
 his question, how explain the presence of 
 his tiny son in her house. Legally she had 
 no right of course to keep It. If necessary 
 he could move every limb of the law, but 
 what he feared most of all was the scandal 
 that would ensue, the subdued iron influences 
 of the Church — the Magic of Rome, that 
 lies like a hidden network of gauzy steel 
 over all those that recognise her power or 
 defy her rights. Yet, when he remembered 
 Gloria, he felt certain there would be no 
 scandal. To him it seemed clear enough 
 what had taken place. Gloria wanted a 
 child. Padre Buonavoglio wanted to get 
 rid of this poor little heretic. It needed no 
 extraordinary intelligence to perceive the 
 facility with which the two arrangements 
 had coincided. What most of all surprised 
 Sant AngioH was the fact of Veroni having 
 agreed to the arrangement. Could it be 
 that Gloria had not told him ? This would 
 indeed be a complication. At this juncture 
 in his thoughts the servant came to fetch 
 him, amazed as much as his mistress at the 
 
The Magic of Rome 115 
 
 unusual appearance of the Marchese and at 
 such an hour. 
 
 His first impression was one of surprise 
 at her beauty. She was a hundred times 
 prettier than she had been as a girl. 
 
 " I am glad to see you, cugino mio," she 
 said, bridging over the lapse of time by the 
 warmth of words, while he pressed a kiss to 
 her soft hand. " You have at last remem- 
 bered us." 
 
 " I have never forgotten," he murmured, 
 dazzled by the vision before him. Then he 
 added, "You are alone? We shall not be 
 interrupted." 
 
 " Ubaldo is dining out. A man's dinner. 
 We shall certainly not be interrupted for an 
 hour or more." 
 
 " Tanto meglio " (So much the better). 
 He laid his hat on the table and drew near 
 to the fire to warm his hands. Here in 
 the presence of Gloria things looked more 
 cheery. The lurking anxiety at his heart 
 began to vanish as snow does beneath the 
 sun. 
 
 " I should not have dared to intrude my- 
 self upon you so late had it not been for a 
 matter of importance." 
 
ii6 The Magic of Rome 
 
 "You are always welcome," murmured 
 Gloria. 
 
 •'Gloria, you will forgive me whatever I 
 say." 
 
 " Forgive you ? " 
 
 She looked up inquiringly. 
 
 He could read in her eyes that anyhow 
 she had no secret from him. 
 
 •' If I have become acquainted with your 
 secrets, believe me it is through no fault 
 of my own." 
 
 "My secret?" Her lips trembled. Buona- 
 voglio was his chaplain. Had he already 
 embarked upon his career of revenge ? 
 
 "You have a child here which is not 
 yours. Gloria, trust me. As God hears me 
 I will stand by you. You were tempted, 
 you wanted an heir. It was natural. You 
 did not know that it was my child." 
 
 "Your child?" 
 
 " Ah, you didn't know ? " 
 
 Gloria looked at him with a gaze that was 
 all questioning. 
 
 " I was sure that you did not know. You 
 wanted a child ; Buonavoglio brought you 
 one. You did not ask him from whom. 
 You could not have taken my child. Oh, 
 
The Magic of Rome 117 
 
 Gloria, you who have so beautiful a nature, 
 you could not have robbed Giselda of her 
 little one, her son." 
 
 " It is horrible, horrible ! " Gloria was 
 trying to piece together circumstances and 
 his words. Her look was like that of a mad 
 woman. 
 
 "Your son! The child upstairs is a 
 
 girl." 
 
 " Then we have both been tricked." The 
 Marchese buried his face in his hands. 
 " This is some terrible plot, Gloria." 
 
 "You shall see the child," she said, and 
 taking the lamp from the table she bade him 
 follow her, holding the light with one 
 hand while with the other she held up her 
 trailing skirts. 
 
 Slowly he followed her to the next floor. 
 
 There, in Gloria's bedroom, stood a cradle, 
 in the darkness close to her bedside. In the 
 window the nurse was dozing, who rose to 
 take the lamp from her mistress's hands. 
 
 " Lascia, lascia," said the Principessa^ 
 impatiently. 
 
 Silently she drew the curtains aside. 
 Silently the Marchese shook his head. 
 
 It was not his child, this chubby, fair 
 
ii8 The Magic of Rome 
 
 maiden sleeping with the heavy sleep 
 peculiar to the people's child. 
 
 His little son was dark, and oh, so 
 thin ! 
 
 " You can go down to your supper," said 
 the Principessa to the nurse. 
 
 "We have both been tricked," he said. 
 Then he burst out with an appeal that went 
 to Gloria's heart : " Oh, Gloria, cugina mia, 
 tell me the whole story. You know that 
 you can trust me." Yes, she knew it well. 
 Of all the men in the world she knew she 
 could trust Orazio. 
 
 And simply she told her tale. How she 
 had longed for a child for Ubaldo's sake, 
 for the sake of her own happiness ; how 
 Padre Buonavoglio had suggested her doing 
 a kindness to an unfortunate girl of noble 
 family. 
 
 " Does Ubaldo know ? " whispered the 
 Marchese. 
 
 " Can I trust you ? " 
 
 "Till death." 
 
 "He does not know." 
 
 And then, in confidence, for between these 
 two it was better to have no secrets now, 
 he showed her his mother's letter. 
 
The Magic of Rome 119 
 
 Surely they were both face to face with a 
 terrible predicament. 
 
 "If it had been your son I would have 
 given him back to you," and to both the 
 same thought came — It might have been 
 their son, the son of both of them. 
 
 " I know, I know you would," he said, 
 gazing at the cradle with far-off gaze. 
 
 "What will you do? How can I help 
 you ? " she said softly, presently. 
 
 " What am I to do, God knows." The 
 child moved in its sleep and Gloria patted it 
 with one hand, " You love it already," he 
 said softly, and his heart pained him for 
 Giselda. 
 
 "It is so helpless," she replied gently. 
 
 " Dio, Dio, what am I to do ? " He paced 
 the room. "If you could see her lying there 
 so quiet, so resigned, but oh, so sad ! I could 
 not leave her till to-day. I did not dare." 
 There was a world of confidence in his tone. 
 " Her father was dangerously ill and her 
 mother could not leave him, but now she is 
 with her." 
 
 " Does she know ? " 
 
 " She thinks it is dead," and he told her of 
 his visit to the vault. 
 
I20 The Magic of Rome 
 
 "What is to be done?" she said for the 
 third time. 
 
 " I shall go back to-night and ask Buona- 
 voglio." 
 
 " He will deny any knowledge of it." 
 
 " You know him as well as that ? " Sant 
 Angioli's laugh was bitter. Then, looking 
 round the room as if to make sure they were 
 alone, he went close to Gloria. " I can ruin 
 him if he does not tell me." 
 
 A fierce joy sprang to Gloria's heart. 
 God was good. He had sent someone to help 
 her, to support her against this fiend in 
 saintly garb, 
 
 " Gloria." 
 
 She looked up. That was one of her 
 greatest charms, to listen, to sympathise. 
 
 " You are very devout, do you believe in 
 prayer ? " 
 
 " To God, yes." 
 
 "Is there a God, do you think ? " 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " AGod such as our Church describesHim?" 
 
 Gloria grew quite pale. 
 
 " Do not ask me," she said. 
 
 " Ah, you too have doubts ! " he cried with 
 fierce triumph. "You too cannot believe 
 
The Magic of Rome 121 
 
 in the petty tyrannies, the threats, the 
 prevarications the Church imposes upon us." 
 
 " Hush ! " said Gloria, for the child moved 
 again in its sleep. But it seemed to him as 
 if she tried to quiet the questionings of his 
 heart cind soul. 
 
 " Oh, I know it is treason to speak like 
 that. Treason to whom ? To the Church ? 
 Is it treason to God, think you ? " 
 
 Gloria shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " Di lo sa ? " Loyalty to her Church, that 
 inborn loyalty, born half of fear, half of 
 ignorance, and more wholly still formed of 
 tradition that holds within it all the goadings 
 of a spear and the magic wizarding of the 
 supernatural, forbade her speaking her mind, 
 albeit a thousand times she had been tortured 
 by the selfsame doubts and heartrendings. 
 
 But to-night he craved for sympathy. 
 The very joy his news would have given 
 Giselda, the fear lest she should mis- 
 interpret his intentions or his beliefs kept 
 him from opening his heart to her, but with 
 Gloria it was different. Each knew that 
 neither would dare to show the nakedness 
 of the land around their hearts to strangers. 
 The secrets of their faith, their Church, were 
 
122 The Magic of Rome 
 
 to be kept from all, even from themselves, 
 but he knew how independent was the heart 
 of Gloria. He remembered once when she 
 was about sixteen she had laughed at him 
 for lighting a candle to St Hubert when his 
 favourite horse was ill. 
 
 " Do you think the saints are satisfied 
 with a tiny candle ? " she had said scoffingly. 
 " Give twenty scudi for a mass and maybe 
 Padre Vilelli will get your father to buy you 
 another horse." 
 
 He remembered then how her scorn and 
 incredulity had first shocked, then interested 
 him. But between then and now long years 
 had elapsed, years during which she had 
 become the Principessa Veroni and followed 
 the doctrines of her race. Yet it was just 
 because of this tinge of liberty in her ideas 
 that the Prince had fallen in love with her. 
 
 A shadow of disappointment crossed his 
 face. She too dared not speak. But to- 
 night he was too full of revolt. No man 
 who was straight could follow blindly at the 
 dictation of a religion whose priests could 
 act as Buonavoglio had. 
 
 " But all priests are not like him," she 
 pleaded. " Thank God ! " she added. 
 
The Magic of Rome 123 
 
 " Yet if I asked redress in this matter the 
 Pope would give him reason, would say that 
 if he had acted unwisely he had acted in a 
 good cause." 
 
 " Yet he would get you back your child." 
 
 "You think so?" He looked at her 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " How do I know that he has not fulfilled 
 a mission?" Lowering his voice, he went 
 on : "I have always suspected that my 
 brother was spirited away somewhere. The 
 Church of Rome loses something like 100,000 
 lire a year if Sant Angioli has not a papist 
 at its head." 
 
 "It would be infamous," she murmured. 
 
 " Yet nothing apparently is infamous that 
 is not directed against Rome." 
 
 " Your wife's influence is beginning to 
 tell." There was a touch of mischievousness 
 in Gloria's voice. 
 
 " I assure you, no. If anything has influ^ 
 enced me, and I think I speak from the 
 fulness of my heart only, it is two things. 
 First of all my talks with my brother, who 
 was, though I say it, the best man that ever 
 lived, and again these deceitful acts, the 
 contradictions that one is always tumbling 
 
124 The Magic of Rome 
 
 against whether we will or not. Do you 
 tell me that when a man's mind can roll 
 along unfettered and free, leap as it were 
 from rock to rock, across the great chasms 
 and precipices of science and learning, rise 
 to enthusiasm, to fanatic patriotism at the 
 voice of politics, quiver and writhe, go mad 
 almost in the presence of love, and know 
 all the torturing frenzy of hate, that religion 
 alone is to have the power of cooping up, 
 restraining thought, happiness, argument, 
 imagination, till one's mind is chloroformed 
 into an unresisting quiescence that holds 
 within it nothing that is natural ? I s it possible 
 that God can call white black and black white? 
 that in this century we who want to know 
 all, see all, understand all, are to be put off 
 with the puerile arguments that are given 
 us, and when those fail hold that arguments 
 and discussions are of the evil one ? " 
 
 Gloria looked almost frightened at his 
 vehemence. 
 
 " Yet you have a remedy," she replied. 
 " You can change your faith. No one can 
 prevent your doing that." 
 
 " Ah, if we were sure," replied the 
 Marchese. " If one could tell if one is 
 
The Magic of Rome 125 
 
 right, would one hesitate for one instant, 
 although it would mean a lifetime of petty 
 persecution ? " 
 
 " You must talk of this to Ubaldo one 
 day," she said ; "he thinks a great deal like 
 you. He too hates Buonavoglio." 
 
 " Ah ! " There was a world of hatred in 
 the Marchese's exclamation, a world of 
 disgust and loathing. 
 
 " It is all very difficult," he mused, as he 
 took up his hat and gloves from the table. 
 " But this time he has gone too far. Priest 
 or no priest he shall be made to feel." 
 
 Then he raised her hand to his lips and 
 kissed it. 
 
 " Farewell, dear cousin. It has been a 
 pleasure to see you again." Then, as her 
 eyes met his anxiously, he answered, 
 " Your secret is safe with me." And 
 refusing her offer that he should stay to 
 dinner and meet Ubaldo, he left the room. 
 
 The same night he took the train for 
 Sant Angioli, and arrived at his house late, 
 cold and unexpected. A few moments after 
 his arrival he sent a message to Padre 
 Buonavoglio, requesting him to come to his 
 apartments. For one instant the arrogant 
 
126 The Magic of Rome 
 
 priest thought of sending him a message to 
 say that he was overwhelmed with cor- 
 respondence and would be glad to defer 
 the interview till the morning, unless the 
 Marchese would come to him ; but he 
 realised that to defer would be to own fear, 
 and to refuse to go to the master of the 
 house would be to irritate a man it was his 
 whole interest now to conciliate. 
 
 With an attempt at dignity he followed 
 the servant downstairs and entered the 
 Marchese's study. 
 
 The Marchese looked tired and harassed, 
 and Padre Buonavoglio found him pacing up 
 and down the room. He nodded coldly to 
 the priest and bade him be seated. 
 
 But the priest stood erect. He would 
 allow himself no disadvantage of position 
 in the wordy warfare that he knew was 
 about to take place. 
 
 " Signor Prete," began the Marchese, 
 standing with his back to the window and 
 with folded arms, " I have requested you to 
 do me the honour of coming to my apart- 
 ments in order to ask you what you have 
 done with my son," 
 
 The silence and the certain conviction 
 
The Magic of Rome 127 
 
 with which he pronounced the words gave 
 a fearful import to them. 
 
 " Your son ! " The priest assumed an 
 expression of feigned surprise that was too 
 transparent to have weight. He himself 
 felt that it was colourless. 
 
 " My son," repeated the Marchese. 
 
 " But surely you are aware that the child 
 died? It is very unfortunate. I understand 
 your distress, but ..." 
 
 " My child is not dead. Padre Buona- 
 voglio." 
 
 " You speak in riddles to me, Marchese." 
 
 "Are they riddles, Signor Prete? Is the 
 riddle not rather only that because my son, 
 by the traditions of my house, should have 
 been a Protestant he has been filched 
 away, robbed from me, stolen, kidnapped — 
 put it how you will — just as my brother was 
 before him ? " 
 
 The priest started. 
 
 "Yes, Padre Buonavoglio, the man who 
 stole my son knows where my brother is, 
 and, as Heaven hears me " — the Marchese 
 raised his hand to heaven as he spoke — 
 "both shall be found." 
 
 " Your wife has put these absurd ideas 
 
128 The Magic of Rome 
 
 into your head." The priest had turned 
 his back on the Marchese and was fidgeting 
 with the knick-knacks on the chimney-piece. 
 He was so close to the fire that the skirts of, 
 his sottana singed itself, and the smell of 
 burning cloth pervaded the room. But 
 neither man heeded the occurrence. 
 
 " Do not mention my wife's name, you 
 who have done your best to kill her." Then 
 he went on. " You will not tell me ? " said 
 the Marchese, and his voice was thick with 
 anger. " Very well then, to-morrow the 
 whole story shall be laid before the Pope." 
 
 " Come with me to the vault," gasped the 
 priest. " When you see the child lying there 
 you will believe." Now for the first time he 
 saw the flaw in his arrangements. 
 
 " I have been to the vault. There is no 
 child there." But, for his mother's sake, he 
 did not mention the letter he had found 
 there. 
 
 The priest caught his breath, A vehement 
 denial of all knowledge of the business was 
 on his lips, but he was too old a diplomat to 
 disclaim what might afterwards be pressed 
 against h'im. If it came to the Pope's ears 
 he could always plead his zeal for the 
 
The Magic of Rome 129 
 
 Church, but it must not be said that he 
 denied his act. What the Vatican was most 
 down upon was lack of moral courage. For 
 a few moments silence reigned in the room 
 while the priest revolved the situation. If 
 he told him that the child was with the 
 Principessa, the Marchese would naturally 
 claim his child, and his. plot with Gloria 
 would be disclosed. How far would this 
 affect him ? Not much. Gloria and the 
 Prince would be silent for their own sakes,. 
 and he alone would suffer. As he remem- 
 bered her words the last time he had seen 
 her, he was glad to think that she would 
 suffer most, that the happy reconciliation 
 between herself and her husband would 
 once more be severed. Yes, they would 
 be silent. His plan had been frustrated, 
 frustrated by the love the Marchese bore 
 Giselda, frustrated, as dark deeds are, by 
 love and truth, God's strongest emis- 
 saries in this poor, wretched, dark world ; 
 but it would be better to acknowledge the 
 truth than opent out the scandal which lay 
 looming before him. With quick resolve, 
 his face of a ghastly yellow, his eyes quiver- 
 ing in their attempt to look straight at the 
 
 I 
 
130 The Magic of Rome 
 
 Marchese, and with a touch of insolence in 
 his manner, which tried to ape bravery, 
 Padre Buonavoglio spoke. 
 
 " I confess that it pained me to see Sant 
 Angioli dominated by the spirit of heresy. 
 It has been my endeavour for many years 
 past to obtain from His HoHness a revoca- 
 tion of the will of your ancestors. In taking 
 your child away from the bosom of evil I 
 consider that I did right. I feel sure that 
 His Holiness would approve my act. It is 
 the sad duty of the Church to have to put 
 up even with misjudgment in the cause of 
 right and duty." The Marchese made a 
 gesture of impatience, and the priest hurried 
 into the next phrase. 
 
 " But if you demand^ your child, if you 
 do not see how wrongly you act for the 
 good of the child, for the good of religion, 
 then I have no right. to withhold it from 
 you. The child is with your cousin, the 
 Principessa di Veroni." 
 
 " You lie." With clenched fists and eyes 
 that cut like knives into the eyes of the 
 priest, Sant Angioli stepped close to him. 
 
 The priest stepped back a step. The 
 movement fired the Marchese with scorn. 
 
The Magic of Rome 131 
 
 "Ah, you are afraid!" 
 
 "You forget yourself, Marchese." The 
 priest drew himself up. " I can prove my 
 words. Come with me to Rome to-night 
 and I will show you the child." 
 
 " And I — I tell you that I come now from 
 the Palazzo Veroni, and that the child my 
 cousin has adopted — adopted at your 
 request, is a girl ! " 
 
 " A girl ? " There was no feigning in 
 the priest's manner. 
 
 "We have been fooled!" he gasped. 
 The immensity of what lay spread before 
 him was too vast for him to grasp, yet it 
 was sufficient to curdle his blood. 
 
 "We have been fooled, all of us, even 
 me." And his words were like a hoarse 
 whisper on the night air. 
 
 "You should choose your creatures with 
 more astuteness, Signor Prete." The 
 Marchese's voice had almost a laugh in it. 
 
 And then bit by bit the priest told him 
 what he knew, told him everything except 
 of the birth of Graziosa's child, yet he 
 knew, as if Beppina had told him, that 
 she had substituted her niece's child for 
 the Marchesa's. 
 
132 The Magic of Rome 
 
 "Only women are stronger than the 
 Church," he thought to himself. Small 
 wonder that the Church held over them 
 the power of the confessional. 
 
 " My son must be here by to-morrow 
 night," said the Marchese in measured 
 tones, "or it will be the scandal of the 
 whole world, and more of the Church. 
 Rome, the Vatican, Italy itself will be the 
 derision of nations, for I will leave no 
 stone unturned to find my son, I warn 
 you not to return without the child, or 
 I will kill you as you killed my brother. 
 Life for life, blood for blood, that was a 
 law I believe before St Peter's existed, 
 before the Holy See sat in proud dictator- 
 ship to the world on the throne of the 
 Vatican, That law will be enforced by 
 me. Go, as you value your life, and I 
 fancy such as you value it dearly. Go." 
 
 The Marchese pointed to the door and 
 the priest departed. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The sitting-room of the Principessa Sperata 
 was at the back of the Palazzo Veroni. 
 Gloria didn't like her having the room. 
 Often and often she begged her to take 
 the front room above her boudoir on the 
 second floor. 
 
 " You look on such dark things, Sperata." 
 For behind the palazzp lay a labyrinth of 
 small streets where the poor wrangled and 
 made love, wept and laughed with a coarse- 
 ness of utterance that were not in keeping 
 with her delicate upbringing. 
 
 " Oh, Madre mia, don't take my room 
 away. There are two things that are 
 worth all the rest to me — the dirty little 
 children and the organ." For, back to back 
 with the narrow street lay the Church of 
 the Reparatrice, and it was Sperata's great 
 delight to lean on her window and listen to 
 the voices of the nuns singing vespers. 
 
 133 
 
134 The Magic of Rome 
 
 And Gloria would laugh. What she 
 loved in her adopted daughter was her 
 love of music and her love for the poor. 
 
 Sperata was seventeen now and very 
 beautiful, but with a beauty that was not 
 like Gloria's. Tall, resplendent as Juno, 
 she yet had a look that reminded one of 
 the people. Somehow it was this very look 
 that pleased Gloria. It held in it her secret. 
 It was the key to the enigma of her life. 
 
 "Ah, how I love the people, Madre 
 mia," Sperata would say ; " they have nothing 
 that we have, and yet they are so good." 
 
 Seventeen years and Gloria had not told 
 Ubaldo. At thirty - eight she was still 
 beautiful and wonderfully young looking. 
 The haunting dread lest the Padre Buona- 
 voglio should reappear in her life, or that 
 her secret should be revealed, had gone from 
 her. Sometimes, in the wakeful watchings 
 of the night, she remembered the telegram 
 she had received from Padre Buonavoglio : — 
 
 " Regret to break conditions, but must see 
 you." 
 
 And with satisfaction she remembered the 
 telegram she had sent back : — 
 
The Magic of Rome 135 
 
 " Know all, but cannot help you. Cannot 
 see you." 
 
 He, too, remembered that telegram. How 
 completely it had wiped him out of Gloria's 
 life, thrown him back on himself at a moment 
 when even he, vile as he was, demanded 
 pity. 
 
 It was all old history now — how he had 
 gone to Rome hoping to glean some infor- 
 mation, and how she had refused to see him. 
 Then he had sought out Beppina and been 
 unable to find her in Rome, or Graziosa 
 either. He remembered, with a shudder, 
 a second interview with the Marchese. How 
 he had pleaded with, and abased himself 
 before, the man he hated, and finally per- 
 suaded him that he could not find his son. 
 
 " You may do what you like. Go to the 
 Pope or not, I cannot find him," he said, and 
 the very abasement of the man — his servile 
 terror, his nothingness — had aroused pity in 
 Sant Angioli's heart. All attempts to 
 discover the whereabouts of the child had 
 been of no avail. Beppina had given up her 
 place as lavandaia to the Vatican. For five 
 years Sant Angioli had employed the police. 
 
136 The Magic of Rome 
 
 and then he, too, had given up the search. 
 It was clear that Beppina had either killed 
 the child or left the country, taking it with 
 her. Yet every time the Marchese met a 
 little stray urchin in the street he scanned its 
 features and gave it a gold piece lest it might 
 be his own. 
 
 Since those days Giselda had become a 
 mother twice. A second son and a little 
 daughter made the dark walls of Sant 
 Angioli echo with their laughter — little 
 children who knew nothing of heresy or of 
 the darkness of life. But these children 
 were as nothing compared to what her first 
 would have been. 
 
 " We should have been one in faith as 
 well as love," she said sometimes, pathetic- 
 ally, to Orazio, and he would smile and 
 say,— 
 
 "Yet it seems to me that your other 
 children have pretty much your faith," 
 And Giselda was content, principally be- 
 cause Buonavoglio had passed out of her 
 life. Sant Angioli had forbidden his return, 
 and he had not returned. To his mother 
 Sant Angioli had never mentioned a word 
 of all that had happened. To do so would 
 
The Magic of Rome 137 
 
 have been to tell his mother what he thought 
 of her and to break the poor old heart that 
 was so near breaking. 
 
 A few years afterwards, when she died, he 
 was glad that he had not done so. Half an 
 hour before her death she had implored him 
 for her sake to visit the vault where the 
 coffin of his little son lay, and he had 
 answered, — 
 
 " Do not trouble, mother. I know 
 all." 
 
 And she had died murmuring the word 
 " Forgive." He had forgiven her, for he 
 was great enough in nature to know how 
 "weak humanity can be. 
 
 And as Giselda's daughter grew up they 
 went sometimes to Rome, for Gloria and 
 Giselda had become fast friends, a friendship 
 which carried on its being in the fast intimacy 
 that was growing up between Sperata and 
 Margherita di Sant Angioli. 
 
 Only to Margherita did Sperata confide 
 the romance of her life, and Margherita 
 looked solemn and was not quite sure that 
 she should not tell her mother. And this 
 was Sperata's romance, a romance that made 
 Jier love the back streets of the palazzo even 
 
138 - The Magic of Rome 
 
 more than the organ or the dirty children 
 that flocked beneath the Principessa's window 
 to catch the gold she scattered. 
 
 Sperata was passionately fond of birds. 
 Her balcony was full of cages. Most of all 
 she loved the little Cardelino, a goldfinch 
 that fed from her hand and came on to her 
 finger notwithstanding the din of the street. 
 Then , she had a quantity of pigeons that 
 came whirring to her window with a noise as 
 of angels' wings. 
 
 Then one day, while she fed her pigeons, 
 she had seen at the window of a dark house 
 opposite a face — the face of a beautiful youth. 
 She had seen him open his window and 
 place a cage on the window-sill where the 
 sun could catch it, and for many days the 
 face haunted her, as faces and expressions 
 do haunt us, whether we remember where 
 we saw them or not. And then one day 
 the tamest of all Sperata's pigeons had 
 alighted on the window-sill close to the 
 thrush's cage, and the window had been 
 thrown open and the handsome youth had 
 let. the pigeon in. But the days went by and 
 the pigeon did not return. 
 
 Then one day she had bidden one of the 
 
The Magic of Rome 139 
 
 little children she knew so well tap at the 
 window and ask for the pigeon. 
 
 " Ask him why he does not bring me 
 my pigeon " — with a touch of impatience — 
 and a crowd of children had gathered round 
 the window, and presently a tall, graceful 
 woman of about thirty-eight, with a face 
 beautiful as Sperata's own, had opened the 
 window and let the pigeon fly, and she stood 
 long at the window and looked at Sperata. 
 
 Then one day she had whispered from 
 the balcony to the children, "Who is it?" 
 and the children had whispered back, 
 "II figlio del prete," and Sperata had 
 grown rosy red and closed her window, for 
 she knew she must not hear such things ; 
 and for many days she did not go to the 
 window, yet she longed to look. 
 
 And then one summer, when the days 
 were long, she had leaned again on her 
 window-sill while the organ played " Ora 
 pro nobis." 
 
 " Sancta Maria, Sancta Maria," chanted 
 the voices, and the face of the hand- 
 some youth had come to the window to 
 listen to the music, and Sperata, impulsive, 
 a passionata daughter of the people, had 
 
140 The Magic of Rome 
 
 thrown him a bunch of roses from her waist- 
 belt Then quickly she closed the window, 
 and directly she was sorry for what she had 
 done. 
 
 This was the romance Sperata told 
 Margherita. 
 
 Who could ever tell what had prompted 
 Beppina to exchange one child for another? 
 She hardly knew herself. She had had her 
 orders from Buonavoglio, She was to take 
 the heir of the Sant Angiolis straight to the 
 Principessa's at Florence. Then on the road 
 a thousand ideas had come to her cunning 
 peasant's brain that was yet shrewd enough 
 to enact a tragedy to compass the well-being 
 of its own flesh and blood. 
 
 She knew well enough all the advantages 
 that would accrue to her niece's child if she 
 were substituted for the infant boy. Com- 
 plications might arise, but for their own 
 sakes all would be silent, she knew. The 
 priest for his; the Principessa for hers. 
 Life, she knew, was full of complications, but 
 so far she had seen those complications 
 generally righted by one party or the other 
 preferring silence. Down in the very depths 
 of her heart she Wcis glad to think that the 
 
The Magic of Rome 141 
 
 priest might be annoyed. Then again, 
 would not a boy be of far more use to 
 Graziosa and herself than a girl? — a tire- 
 some girl one had to spend half one's time 
 in guarding from the clutches of men. Who 
 was she not to consider her own flesh and 
 blood first? To Gloria it had been an 
 infinite joy that the child they had brought 
 her was a girl. 
 
 The difficulty now had been to avoid 
 an explanation with the Padre. The Princi- 
 pessa had been munificent in her gift to 
 Beppina, and the night after she had de- 
 posited the child with Gloria she had flitted 
 from the tiny street close to the river, taking 
 with her Graziosa and the tiny boy. But 
 Graziosa was inconsolable at the loss of her 
 child. All the promises of greatness were 
 as nothing compared to the loss of the little 
 Disperata, and to console her Beppina 
 had taken rooms back to back with the 
 palazzo. 
 
 " You can see the child every day," she 
 had said to her niece, and gradually she had 
 grown comforted, and began to lavish on the 
 little Uberto the love that craved for a hiding- 
 place. And now other thoughts came crowd- 
 
142 The Magic of Rome 
 
 ing to Beppina's brain. The donzella was 
 big and very lovely, just like her Graziosa 
 had been at her age when the priest had 
 fallen in love with her, if love was the name 
 to give to his gross passion. 
 
 "And she had thrown flowers to Uberto. 
 Who could tell ? Who could tell ? " 
 
 But things were going too quietly for the 
 old woman, who had grown restless with all 
 the untoward and tragic events of her life. 
 There was the boy Uberto, a fine boy and 
 well-born. The congruous artistic spirit 
 that is the grace of Italy forbade her allow- 
 ing him to do hard work. Surely it was 
 time now to make profit of her secret, to 
 worry the priest or the Principessa. Yet to 
 worry the Principessa would be perhaps to 
 put an end to the idea that was budding on 
 the balcony of the dirty street behind the 
 palazzo. Of the priest she was afraid. How 
 would it be to go to Sant Angioli and 
 divulge the secret ? Yet here again fear 
 came to arrest her projects. What would 
 not be her punishment for kidnapping the 
 child ? And night and day the old woman 
 pondered, and while she sat silently Graziosa 
 would say, — 
 
The Magic of Rome 143 
 
 " Zia, what have you now in your 
 brain?" 
 
 " More than in your little toe," the old 
 woman would answer. But what came to 
 pass was not of her own seeking, though 
 perhaps a little her fault ; yet again, not so 
 much her fault as the natural result of what 
 she had experienced. 
 
 She had implanted in Uberto a sound 
 dislike of priests and aristocrats. They were 
 all selfish, all wicked, all untruthful. They 
 trampled on the poor, made them work for 
 them, slave for them if needs be, and then 
 laughed at their rough, uncouth ways. Ah, 
 she could tell tales if she liked of girls 
 betrayed by the nobiltcL left to bear their 
 shame and misery ; of sons of cardinals 
 forced to beg their bread, to rob and steal 
 even to live, and then the priests spoke of 
 confession and absolution. Ah, the priests ; 
 where would they all be at the Judgment 
 Day ? Yet for all that Beppina went to mass 
 and lighted her candles to St Anthony when 
 she had lost anything. If you didn't do that 
 you got no help from priests or nobles. 
 Such was life, and the young Uberto grew 
 up with these ideas, only he wasn't going to 
 
144 The Magic of Rome 
 
 be a humbug and go to mass and listen to 
 the mumbling of the priests, not he. 
 
 " Figlio della liberta " was he, and pre- 
 sently one of the Socialisti took him up. 
 It was on youths such as he that Italy 
 depended for its greatness. He must learn 
 to read and write. So night and day 
 Uberto studied. Then presently he bought 
 a picture of Garibaldi and hung it over 
 his bed, and in the evening, when the 
 workmen returned from their labours and 
 sat in their doorways, he would read them 
 the paper and expound to them La 
 Liberta as he understood it, and then 
 one night, when the woman he called 
 mother was asleep by the side of the 
 snoring old great-aunt, he stole out alone 
 in the moonlight, his heart beating with 
 excitement, for to-night he was to be 
 sworn in as a follower of the Societa — the 
 Anarchists and Socialists of Rome. 
 
 As he paused under the windows of the 
 palazzo he broke out into a song which 
 had nothing in it of libertd, and as 
 Sperata half woke the words " adoro" and 
 "amore" reached her and she smiled and fell 
 asleep again. 
 
The Magic of Rome 145 
 
 But his presence to one member of the 
 Societci had been like the apparition of a 
 ghost that for years had ceased to haunt 
 some favourite spot. 
 
 " Who is that young man ? That one 
 with the dark hair and pale face ? " It was 
 Buonavoglio who put the question. 
 
 Forgetting the march of years, its ruth- 
 less tramp, it seemed to him as if the 
 brother of Sant Angioli stood before him. 
 The same high forehead, the same keen, 
 inspired eyes, the same haughty bearing, 
 the same pointed fingers — everything the 
 same except the rough peasant's dress. 
 
 "Ah!" The man next him lowered his 
 voice. "He yonder. He is supposed to 
 be your son. You see no likeness, eh ? " 
 and the man laughed coarsely. 
 
 The Padre drew himself up. 
 
 " Your words are unseemly, but, of course, 
 you jest, my friend." 
 
 "Oh, I do not say what I think, only 
 what I hear — what Rome says," replied 
 his informant. 
 
 " Rome says a great deal were best left 
 unsaid," replied the priest. Yet for the 
 rest of the evening he could hardly take 
 
 K 
 
146 The Magic of Rome 
 
 his eyes off the youth. Foul, coarse- 
 minded, black-souled as he was, yet there 
 was something repugnant to him in the 
 thought that the Sant AngioHs' descendant 
 should be herded with that crowd of dis- 
 solute men whose aim and object was to 
 destroy the very race to which he belonged. 
 Faintly the picture rose up in his mind of 
 the peaceful villa. The old Marchesa with 
 her black laces falling over her powdery 
 hair, the lovely, piquante face of the 
 young Marchesa with her illumined expres- 
 sion and childlike, confident look. And he 
 saw another vision, the vision of a youth 
 scarcely older than this one, with eyes true 
 as steel. He could see again the terrified 
 expression in them, then the calm, unflinch- 
 ing immovability that succeeded it, and hear 
 the words, " God will deliver me from your 
 hands." 
 
 Without knowing why he did it, Padre 
 Buonavoglio followed the young man out 
 of the room into the street. He must learn 
 where he lived, what had become of Beppina 
 and Graziosa. The reappearance of the 
 young man was dangerous. Sant An- 
 gioli was in Rome, at any moment he 
 
The Magic of Rome 147 
 
 might discover, and a scandal at this 
 juncture in his life would mean ruin. 
 Step by step, and under the kindly wing of 
 the Cardinal, who was a creature too noble 
 to disfcriminate guilt, he had risen to great 
 favour at the Vatican. He was even dis- 
 cussed as a possible if not a probable 
 cardinal. Should the Marchese come 
 across his son and the whole story transpire, 
 there would indeed be an end to all great- 
 ness. He had sufficient excuse for acqost- 
 ing the youth, through the fact of their 
 confraternity in the Societa. 
 
 Soon he had caught him up and was 
 talking amicably with him. 
 
 " You are young," he began, " to take an 
 interest in the politics, in the sufferings of 
 your country. Do not be over-hasty. 
 When one is young one is anxious to upset 
 everything. It needs patience and experi- 
 ence to teach one what to touch and what 
 to leave alone." 
 
 "Ah, my mind is made up," said the 
 youth, with a tone .of conviction that sur- 
 passed his age. "All I am fighting for is 
 liberty of opinion. The first obstacle in 
 the way of that is the priesthood. Ah, if 
 
148 The Magic of Rome 
 
 the people were free they would soon 
 dictate terms to the King. He is not so 
 bad after all." Here he shrugged his. 
 shoulders with contempt. " But what is 
 the good of killing Umberto while the 
 priesthood are there? Why, it would be: 
 worse than ever. He at least keeps the 
 balance ; while he is alive there is someone 
 to pull the other way and think a little of 
 the poor, but the priests, they have kept us. 
 down for years." 
 
 Padre Buonavoglio was silent. On his. 
 lips were the words, " And you talk like that 
 to me, a priest ? " Then he remembered that 
 he was not in priest's garb, for as " Brother 
 Ulysses" he wore an ordinary suit of clothes. 
 
 " What do you know of the priests ? " 
 he said, smiling, and pushing his hat a. 
 little back lest his tonsure be visible. 
 
 " A great deal too much," replied the lad. 
 " I am the son of a priest." 
 
 The priest waited an instant and the boy 
 went on: "Yes, I am the son of a priest,- 
 and if I saw him now I would shoot him. 
 Look, I carry this about with me, and in 
 case I ever meet him I shall do like this." 
 He raised the pistol with his left hand and. 
 
The Magic of Rome 149 
 
 held it close to the priest. Padre Buona- 
 voglio turned away his head. 
 
 " Take care what you are about." 
 
 "Ah! I know what I'm about," replied 
 the youth, replacing the revolver in his 
 pocket and nodding his head sagaciously. 
 
 " And what is the name of your father?" 
 Padre Buonavoglio's heart stood still while 
 he waited for the answer. 
 
 " Ah ! if you could tell me. My mother 
 won't. She is afraid. You know what 
 women are." 
 
 The priest breathed again. Beppina and 
 Graziosa had been silent 
 
 " You must forgive, forgive, figlio mio. 
 Besides, you might be mistaken." And then 
 he asked the boy his address, and the two 
 parted. 
 
 iFor many days this interview with Sant 
 Angioli's son haunted him. The boy must 
 be got rid of — got rid of at all hazards and 
 without delay. At any moment they might 
 be thrown across each other's path, and then 
 would the boy believe that he was not his 
 son ? For one instant there flashed across 
 his brain the possibility of reuniting father 
 and son, of undoing, to a certain degree, the 
 
150 The Magic of Rome 
 
 harm he had done. But there was no senti- 
 ment about Padre Buonavoglio. He looked 
 at nothing except from the one point of view 
 of how it affected his own interests. What 
 would not be the result of this act of common 
 justice ? First of all, all that he had aimed 
 at would be undone. The boy, imbued 
 already with hatred for the priesthood from 
 his childhood, embittered by the knowledge 
 of the priest's treatment of him, his new 
 life supported, solaced, fed by an aroma of 
 heretic belief, would not the young Sant 
 Angioli embody in his person one of the 
 bitterest,' most ardent, foes of Rome ? 
 Would it not be to revive all the scandal 
 that now lay dead, and that would spread like 
 wildfire through Roman Society when it 
 became known that the heir of the Sant 
 Angiolis had come to life again ? Often and 
 often Padre Buonavoglio wondered why Sant 
 Angioli had not denounced him. To himself 
 he tried to say that it was fear. But this he 
 knew was not true. Sant Angioli knew not 
 what was fear. It was for Giselda's sake 
 that he kept silence. She had mourned her 
 little son and now found comfort. What 
 good to let her know that her son roamed 
 
The Magic of Rome 151 
 
 the world alone, uncared for, perhaps shiver- 
 ing in rags or leading the life of a criminal. 
 Would not this be a horror to haunt her 
 whole life and sap all its sweetness out ? For 
 her sake, having done all he could to find his 
 son and failed, Sant Angioli kept silence, 
 yet, as in the heart of all Italians, lay a 
 fearful thirst for vengeance, a longing that 
 the priest should one day be punished as 
 he deserved. And so the years had stolen on 
 and Padre Buonavoglio's fears had been laid 
 to rest. The secret was dead, and he smiled 
 to himself as he thought of what a kick he 
 had given the world. And now, just when 
 his conscience slumbered peacefully, lulled 
 into a rest that resembled the sleep of the 
 just, to be re-awakened, perhaps, only at 
 the trump of angels, and then, perhaps, 
 through the crafty condonations of his faith, 
 to find mercy and forgiveness for the heinous 
 crime that it enfolded, the young Uberto 
 had stolen across his path like the phantom 
 of a past that claimed its right to live and 
 have its say. 
 
 Long into the night mused the priest, 
 and while he mused he congratulated himself 
 that it was he who had first met the youth 
 
152 The Magic of Rome 
 
 and none other. Surely he had the right to 
 think that his life was a charmed life. And 
 now the bells of Rome rang out, and from 
 sheer habit the priest muttered a prayer, but 
 his thoughts marched still. How should he 
 get rid of the son of Sant Angioli ? 
 
 He had rooms now in the Vatican, and as 
 he paced them instinctively he shuddered 
 at the thought that came over him as he 
 retired to rest. The problem had not yet 
 been solved, and as sleep visited his eyes it 
 seemed to his weary brain that perhaps, 
 after all, it would be best to let sleeping dogs 
 lie. But all the machinations of the wicked, 
 the trembling prayers of the righteous, are 
 as nothing compared to the swift, crushing 
 thunderbolts which the gods shoot down on 
 earth in order to bring about crises that have 
 had no prelusory flood-tide. So it was that on 
 the night of the day on which the young Sant 
 Angioli had met the priest at the Society,, old 
 Beppina, who had always been much older 
 than she seemed, and felt much older than 
 she was, fell ill, and, shaking her niece in her 
 bed, bade her, with a sound in her throat 
 that was the ghastly precursor of a death- 
 rattle, send for a priest. Surely in this lies 
 
The Magic of Rome 153 
 
 the greatness of Rome — that in death her 
 children turn to her rather than to God, 
 crying for the bosom they have scoffed at, 
 turned from, dreaded, hated even, turn to it 
 again, perhaps, only because Rome has taken 
 good care that they should have nothing 
 else to turn to. Little wonder if Rome 
 stretches her neck complacently and smiles. 
 
 The secret was so great he must shape 
 and form it to his mind, become master of it, 
 before he could deal with it. The heir of 
 the Sant Angiolis ! He a member of the 
 race he detested, or thought he did, for the 
 whole of Socialism is a mirage. What could 
 he do with his new-found position ? To 
 return to it seemed to him to be treacherous 
 to his doctrines, yet what good could he do 
 the cause .■* Yet somehow a picture seemed 
 to rise in his mind — a vision of great palaces, 
 of bowing menials, of untold wealth. He, 
 the bastard, restored to the honour of men, 
 even if that honour was not worth much. 
 He, the laundress's son, raised to the dignity 
 that hangs about the personality of men of 
 birth in every age, in every country. For 
 the moment there was no thought of vGnge- 
 
154 The Magic of Rome 
 
 ance in his heart. Since Graziosa was not 
 his mother, what need had he to avenge her ? 
 What was most noble — to renounce all that 
 lay within his grasp for the sake of the cause 
 to which he had consecrated himself, or to 
 return to what was his right ? He wondered 
 what his mother was like, his father, his 
 brothers, his sister. Pah ! he would be a 
 stranger to them. There would be none of 
 the links of reminiscence between them. 
 They would be ashamed of him, with his 
 rough speech and unpolished manners. 
 Was it not one of his boasts that love and 
 blood ties were nothing ? that only one's 
 country and the cause mattered ? the 
 freedom of our brethren from that engulf- 
 ing dcrouissement which is the poor man's 
 reading of luxury ? And then another 
 thought crept slowly to him. What a 
 blow he could deal the priesthood and 
 the aristocracy by telling this story, for 
 hone of the jealous reserve that is born 
 of refinement formed part of his plebeian 
 mind. If inheritance is strong, then inocu- 
 lation of upbringing is far stronger. 
 
 Yet there was a thought that, pressing 
 in with these into his startled brain, bore 
 
The Magic of Rome 155 
 
 with it a sweetness, an argument which 
 swamped all the others. If he was Sant 
 Angioli's son and Sperata was Graziosa's 
 daughter, what might it not mean to him ? 
 Slowly he took from the small box in which 
 all his few possessions were locked the bunch 
 of roses she had thrown him, and pressed 
 them to his lips. Surely never had there 
 been such resolution of heart and soul 
 and brain as came to him to-day — the 
 morn of the night in which Beppina died. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Once, twice, thrice rang out the bell of Padre 
 Buonavoglio's private door. In the many- 
 other apartments the priests heard it faintly 
 and turned to sleep again, thankful that it was 
 not they who were wanted. Slowly the priest 
 rose, then he struck a light and went to the 
 door, and pushed back the little grating. A 
 pair of eyes looked in against the bars. 
 
 " A woman is dying. She is my aunt. 
 She wants a priest." The voice sounded 
 familiar to Padre Buonavoglio. 
 
 " I will come." Rapidly he dressed, albeit 
 cross enough at being roused. What a farce 
 it was, he thought, this ceremony of confession 
 and absolution to the dying poor, who had lived 
 in ignorance and sin, and who, for the most part, 
 at the eleventh hour were in such a state of 
 lethargy and semi-unconsciousness that the 
 words they spoke or listened to had no mean- 
 ing. Yet it was part of the whole network 
 156 
 
The Magic of Rome 157 
 
 of self-deception, part of the powerful fabric 
 on which Rome is built up, the very sap of 
 power the Vatican holds to so dearly. It 
 must be gone through. The night was frosty, 
 the moon shone brilliantly, and the priest, 
 holding the sacred hostie in his hand, peered 
 into the face of the youth who had come to 
 fetch him. He started involuntarily as he 
 recognised the boy he had met that day, 
 Uberto Santioli di Sant Angioli. 
 
 " Who is dying ? " and his voice was thick 
 with emotion. 
 
 " Beppina Penisi, my mother's aunt." It 
 seemed to the priest as if his knees were about 
 to give way. How could he go to this 
 woman's deathbed, in the presence, too, of the 
 youth who had openly declared that he was 
 ever waiting to wreak vengeance on the 
 seducer of his mother ? 
 
 "Is she alone .'' " he questioned as the two 
 walked side by side. 
 
 " My mother is with her ! " 
 
 " Graziosa ! " The old woman would not 
 matter so much — but Graziosa. Would not 
 her cry of recognition betray him to the boy ? 
 He could see it, feel it almost. The quick 
 flash, the rapid bullet sinking into his brain 
 
158 The Magic of Rome 
 
 while he stood there with the hostie uplifted. 
 Ah ! it seemed to him now as if at last the 
 hand of fate gripped him in an iron vice. 
 Surely the vengeance of God had fallen at 
 last. Yet what was he to do ? To refuse was 
 impossible. This boy, with his hatred of the 
 priesthood, his faint glimmerings of the wrong 
 that had been done him, would bruit the story 
 all over Rome. Report him, perhaps. Surely 
 Nemesis was too awful in its unexpected, 
 abrupt afterclaps. And slowly they walked 
 on together, while great beads of perspiration 
 broke out and gleamed on the priest's fore- 
 head. Could he feign illness, sink down a 
 fainting mass on the curbstone? What a 
 babble it would make in the town. Probably 
 bring about with triple velocity the secret he 
 would feign keep from the lad at his side. 
 They had turned down the street now in 
 which the woman lived. It seemed to him 
 as if there only remained to him to rush on to 
 death, and perhaps in all Rome there was no 
 man less prepared for death or who dreaded 
 it more. 
 
 "It seems that your great-aunt is not such 
 a disbeliever in the priesthood, since she sent 
 for me, as you are," he said presently, and his 
 
The Magic of Rome 159 
 
 voice sounded ghostly to himself as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " Ah, women ! " The youth shrugged his 
 shoulders. " Religion is made for women. 
 It keeps them straight sometimes, and com- 
 forts them when they are bad." The boy's 
 cynicism grated uncomfortably on the priest. 
 If the boy thought like that it was his fault. 
 Once more there came to him the faint re- 
 membrance of the Villa Sant Angioli and the 
 fair, refined women who had sat there. What 
 would they say, he wondered, if they knew 
 that their son and grandson spoke and 
 thought like this ? Suddenly there came to 
 him a gigantic proposal of compromise with 
 Heaven. He would confess all to the boy 
 to-night in the presence of Death and the 
 Holy Communion, and when the boy knew 
 he was not his father he would forgive, per- 
 haps. But Heaven won't be compromised 
 with, and as the thought framed itself com- 
 mon sense told him that the youth at his side 
 would probably avenge the betrayer of 
 Graziosa whether she was his mother or not. 
 What was worst of all to him now, when only 
 a few steps divided him from the door of the 
 dying woman, was the impossibility to foresee 
 
i6o The Magic of Rome 
 
 or to fathom to the full extent to which the 
 nest of hornets he had brought about his ears 
 would stretch, develop, spread. Most of all 
 he feared the flight of the hornets into other 
 nests or their free abandonment to the winds 
 of heaven, that might blow them into the very 
 face of his enemy. 
 
 But on the very threshold of the door, 
 while Sant Angioli raised his hand to knock 
 for admittance, an inspiration came to him, 
 one of those inspirations by which the devil 
 aids his own and lifts them once more over 
 the slough, albeit he knows that there are 
 othef quagmires waiting for them. 
 
 "Good heavens! I have forgotten the 
 oil ! Quick, my son, run back and fetch it. 
 Knock three times and old Anna will wake 
 and give it thee, but hasten, my son." 
 Quickly the boy darted off, and for one 
 instant Padre Buonavoglio stood looking after 
 him, while an intense thankfulness, that held 
 in it perhaps the sublimest moment of his 
 life, took hold of him. But there was no time 
 to lose. The boy would run quickly. There 
 was much yet to be settled. With a moment's 
 respite all the daring insolence of the priest 
 had returned. 
 
The Magic of Rome i6i 
 
 "You sent for me. Someone is dying," 
 he muttered. 
 
 And Graziosa stood back to let him 
 pass. 
 
 Then, as she pushed the inner door open, 
 their eyes met over the lamp. 
 
 " Dio, di Dio, you." 
 
 It was no time to bandy words. 
 
 " Sh ! Silence ! " 
 
 " Ha ! " Graziosa's voice sounded hysteric- 
 ally between her trembling teeth. " You to 
 confess. You to absolve." 
 
 " Yet the Church is built upon St Peter, 
 who sinned greatly." There was something 
 humble in his voice she had not met there 
 before. 
 
 "Ah, well! So long as she dies peace- 
 fully." 
 
 But the'death of Beppina seemed to him a 
 small matter at that instant. 
 
 " Graziosa, I want to see you before I go 
 to her." His blanched face turned to the 
 window in a listening attitude.' It seemed to 
 him that he heard the lad returning. 
 
 Graziosa placed the lamp on the kitchen 
 table. 
 
 "Paolo." She used the soft "thou" to 
 
 L 
 
1 62 The Magic of Rome 
 
 him, obUvious of his priesthood. In her 
 heart she was glad to see him again. 
 
 " The lad does not know me. He must 
 not know who I am." A cunning expression 
 came into Graziosa's face. 
 
 " Ah, you are afraid ! " 
 
 The priest set down the hostie upon the 
 table, close to the lamp. 
 
 " He threatens to kill his father. You 
 have made him think his father is a priest." 
 
 Graziosa lowered her eyelids. 
 
 " Che Veiole ? " She shrugged her 
 shoulders. " We had to tell him something." 
 Far away footsteps rang out on the cold 
 air. 
 
 "He is coming. Tell her it is I and that 
 she must be silent." 
 
 Graziosa had none of Beppina's cunning. 
 She took her lamp and preceded him into 
 the room where the old woman was dying 
 alone, as the poor often die, untended. She 
 shook her almost roughly. 
 
 "The priest is here. It is Buonavoglio. 
 Do not tell the boy." 
 
 A flicker of intelligence crossed the 
 woman's eyes. 
 
 " What good is he ? " And Graziosa bit 
 
The Magic of Rome 163 
 
 her lips for laughing and looked across the 
 bed at the priest. 
 
 " He will do as well as another," she whis- 
 pered, and she left them alone. 
 
 A strange meeting this after seventeen 
 years, to meet again in the presence of death, 
 and that he who had taught her to sin should 
 be asked for his forgiveness of her sins. 
 
 " Ah ! " murmured the dying woman, " it 
 is you. What have you come for ? Can you 
 not leave me in peace ? Better to die un- 
 confessed than have to have the hostie at 
 your hands." 
 
 " Be quiet, woman. If you talk like that 
 I shall leave you alone to die in your sins." 
 
 " I'm thinking it would be as well," said 
 the woman, wearily. The priest took his hat 
 to go. Then vaguely there came over her 
 the glimmering remembrance of her child- 
 hood's faith, the horror that had seized- her 
 then when she heard that some one or other 
 had died without absolution. After all, 
 perhaps, this man knew better than she what 
 was in the mind of God. 
 
 " No, stay, Padre. I'll try to forget that 
 it's you so that you promise to do by me 
 rightly and all in order." 
 
164 The Magic of Rome 
 
 The priest hesitated in the doorway and 
 turned back to the bedside. 
 
 " I'm glad to see you have grown sensible, 
 for to die in your sins — " The priest 
 shrugged his shoulders and looked heaven- 
 wards. " There is a great deal for you to 
 put right before you die," he went on. 
 " You have brought up this boy to think 
 that I am his father. It is very wrong." 
 
 '• I will tell him before I die that he is the 
 son of the Marchese." . 
 
 " You may not have time to tell him. 
 The hand of Death moves swiftly," he went 
 on relentlessly, and the old woman shuddered. 
 "You must write," he said, and as he spoke 
 he took from the chimney a pen and an ink 
 bottle that stood there. 
 
 " Ah, how can I write ? Have you priests 
 not seen to that? Told us that we are 
 not to write or read." 
 
 " Well, I will write for you," said Padre 
 Buonavoglio, an eager look coming into his 
 eyes, " and you shall set your mark." 
 
 "Ah, who knows if you will write the 
 truth." 
 
 The priest left the unflattering remark 
 unanswered. Slowly he wrote a few lines 
 
The Magic of Rome 165 
 
 upon the paper, and then Death came to his 
 aid. The woman was sinking fast, wearied 
 out by the discomfort of her interview with 
 Buonavoglio. 
 
 Faintly, and almost half unconscious, she 
 scrawled her mark upon the paper he held 
 to her, and the priest slipped it into his 
 pocket. Then rapidly he heard her con- 
 fession and administered the sacrament, but 
 there was no fervour in his shriving as there 
 was no comfort to the poor, tortured soul 
 that longed for pure air and knew not where 
 to find it. 
 
 And now, his work ended, he hurried 
 from the room without a word of farewell 
 or encouragement of hope to the woman 
 who had been the partner of his guilty plots. 
 Inwardly he rejoiced that one at least of 
 those who might bear witness against him 
 was struck off the list. And now he slipped 
 out through the next room into the passage, 
 and Graziosa held the lamp for him and Sant 
 Angioli opened the door. 
 
 " You will have expenses to-morrow," said 
 the priest, slipping a gold piece into Graziosa's 
 hand, and she, who had forgotten the shame 
 and anguish of her blighted girlhood, took it 
 
1 66 The Magic of Rome 
 
 with a smile, and the priest slipped out into 
 the street with a lightened heart. 
 
 The heavens were still dark with night, 
 but here and there they were streaked with 
 fissures of gold that looked like straggling 
 streams of water in a dark morass. On the 
 road homeward he met two or three bands of 
 workmen starting before dawn to reach their 
 work. By the time the light met them 
 Beppina would be gone. Graziosa would 
 not speak. If only the boy could be wiped 
 out of her path. When he reached his rooms 
 he! took the paper to which Beppina had 
 affixed her mark and read it over, smiled to 
 himself, and locked it away in a safe. What 
 secrets that safe held ! 
 
 But Beppina was not dead yet. When 
 Graziosa came back into the room she found 
 the woman had rallied and was half raised 
 upon the pillow. 
 
 " Quick ! bring me the boy," she said. 
 "He made me write something. I know 
 not what it is, but I do not trust him. 
 Uberto, Uberto ! " she almost screamed, as 
 Graziosa did not stir, and the lad entered 
 the room. 
 
 " Quick, listen while there is time ; and 
 
The Magic of Rome 167 
 
 you are clever with your pen," The lad 
 obeyed* 
 
 " These are the last words of Beppina, 
 the lavandaia of the Vatican, and she speaks 
 after confessing to the priest and receiving 
 the extreme unction, and what she says is 
 true." The boy wrote word for word, and 
 :hen, with halting breath and many gasps 
 and sighs, and now and then a lapse of 
 several minutes while the woman fought for 
 life, just for a few minutes' life to tell her 
 tale, she told the lad the story of his birth 
 and disappearance, and of her having ex- 
 changed him for Sperata; who was the 
 daughter of Graziosa and the priest, and 
 who was now with the Principessa di Veroni. 
 Everything she told him, and then she set 
 her mark with clutching fingers that were 
 already icy from the hand of Death, and 
 then she lay back, and while the shadows 
 came and went, and the great darkness of 
 within struggled to pierce the veil, she 
 wondered, as much as her poor wavering 
 brain would permit, what the legacy of the 
 secret would be worth to him in the future, 
 to the boy she had so wronged. And he, 
 he was too amazed, too thunderstruck, too 
 
1 68 The Magic of Rome 
 
 all-absorbed in what she told him to feel, 
 aught of revenge or anger. It seemed to 
 him that the tale was the most beautiful h^ 
 had ever heard. Life seemed to danc^ 
 before him with rosy lights. He, who haa 
 thought himself the bastard son of a priest 
 and a laundress, the heir of the Sani 
 Angiolis. Could it be true, or was this the j 
 wandering hallucination of a fading brain ? ' 
 But when he turned to speak to her, to ask 
 her more, a hundred questions flying to his 
 lips, death had come and gone, had delivered 
 his message in silence, and Beppina was 
 dead, and from sheer inability to frame 
 thought to realise the greatness of the un- 
 foldings of events, Uberto went out into the 
 street and wandered about the streets till 
 dawn. 
 
 And Graziosa, who had heard and seen 
 all, resolved to warn the priest. The cloak 
 of Beppina's cunning had fallen upon her ; a 
 terrible inheritance, but the only one she had 
 to leave. 
 
 " Beppina is dead," she told the priest 
 early the next morning, "and before she 
 died she told the lad everything and he has 
 written it down." 
 
The Magic of Rome 169 
 
 An oath escaped the priest's lips. In the 
 presence of Graziosa there was no necessity 
 to keep on the mask. 
 
 " And you would not stop her ? You 
 would not keep the boy away?" His fists 
 were clenched. To arrive at this after these 
 long years, during which the witnessing 
 voices had been silent and secrets had 
 feigned death. How would it end ? he 
 asked himself. The boy would come to 
 him, kill him, perhaps ; and once more the 
 suspense and dread he had felt the night 
 before returned. But there were other 
 things to fear now, worse a thousandfold. 
 Fool he had been? not to wait and see the 
 last flickering of Beppina's life flame. The 
 secret of Sperata's birth was abroad. What 
 harm the story might do him he feared to 
 think, for while the Church of Rome winks 
 at secret scandal, it swoops down with very 
 lightning shaft on scandal that has been 
 unearthed. This for its own sake. What 
 profit would that astute, awakened youth 
 make of his knowledge ? 
 
 The secret of Sperata that he had made 
 so safe, he thought, by the words he had 
 written for Beppina to sign. Nay, more 
 
170 The Magic of Rome 
 
 than safe, by which he had prepared an 
 infamous vengeance to wreak on those who 
 had defied him ! 
 
 For once his cool-headedness deserted 
 him ; for one instant the manhood in him 
 deserted him, as it does often in men turned 
 by priesthood into womanishness, and sank 
 to pleading a woman would be ashamed to 
 have recourse to. 
 
 " Graziosa," he came close to her, 
 " Graziosa, you will not let him harm 
 me." 
 
 The cowardice of his words did not revolt 
 her, the Graziosa who had been too kind, 
 the Graziosa of the people, who thought 
 men a wonderful and terrible creation, as 
 the poor do. 
 
 " Comme si fa ? Comme si fa ? " (What 
 will happen ? What can we do ?) 
 
 The words brought scant comfort. 
 
 And now for many days the Padre waited 
 for the visitor who came not. He had ex- 
 pected a sudden outburst, a flash of boyish 
 wrath, threats of revenge, bitter invectives, 
 but they came not, and the silence of it 
 seemed worse to bear. Had the lad gone 
 straight to Sant Angioli with his tale? 
 
The Magic of Rome 171 
 
 Was he taking advice, or had Graziosa 
 prevailed upon him to keep silence? Day 
 and night, while the priest said mass in the 
 church of Santa Chiari or visited the sick, 
 listened to confessions, attended Socialistic 
 meetings or waited on cardinals to glean 
 from them information he could turn to 
 account in the great scheme he had mapped 
 out for himself, in every act and in every 
 course of his life there met him the gaunt 
 ghost of uncertainty, the spectre of mis- 
 giving, which whispered to him, " What 
 does the lad ? Where is he ? " But if 
 Uberto had inherited the pride and inde- 
 pendence of his race he had also no little 
 measure of his mother's patience and for- 
 bearance. 
 
 As a matter of fact, he found it difficult to 
 realise the story that had been told him, 
 and, for the sake of his principles, he 
 was trying to tell himself that he did not 
 care. So long had he become accustomed 
 to look upon Graziosa as his mother that 
 the thought had become more than a habit. 
 It was a part of himself. And now counter 
 instinct came to force his silence. The image 
 of the girl at the window, the image of 
 
172 The Magic of Rome 
 
 Sperata di Veroni, the secret of whose birth 
 he knew and she did not. What triumph 
 if she learned to care for him, the poor 
 peasant boy, and then to tell her who he 
 was. The very fact of his birth brought 
 her closer to him. It was like a beautiful 
 novel, a story to be told in the evening to 
 his comrades when the crimson rims of 
 colour ran along the soft edges of the clouds 
 and they stormed in golden flashes of wrath 
 at the coming night. 
 
 And day and night a smile lingered on 
 his lips, the mysterious smile of him who 
 has pleasant secrets and will not divulge 
 them, and Graziosa wondered what had 
 come to the lad. And new life sprang up, 
 full of extraordinary fertility, of surprise 
 redolent with the buddings of possibilities, 
 indeed, of all that had seemed dreamlike, 
 mythful, gradually clothed itself with realistic 
 shapes, and life, from excess of the miracu- 
 lous, became fact — fact swayed, altered, 
 encompassed, dominated by strong love, 
 and almost every day he said to himself, 
 " There is a castle in the Tyrol where 
 I can be master one day if I choose, and 
 at Rome the Palazzo di St Angioli is mine." 
 
The Magic of Rome 173 
 
 And the very nearness of it all kept him 
 back from asserting his rights. 
 
 To be sure, it lay with him to tell the tale, 
 to see her sweet face marred by all the 
 cruel pigments of abased pride, to have 
 her seek him humiliating, quivering, ex- 
 posed, because he, the Marchese di Sant 
 Angioli, had offered her his heart and home 
 as a refuge from the crushing disillusion- 
 ment, the hideous revelations she had found 
 beneath the world's wrappings. 
 
 But this was not the love the boy de- 
 manded, the love of Orazio's son, Orazio who 
 had so loved his mother. Youth — his 
 exactings that bridge over the decrees and 
 determinations of human beings — to youth 
 belongs the world, and youth can deal 
 with it better than experience-sodden man, 
 for the freshness of dew is of the 
 womb of the morning. Real love, no 
 spurious echoing of it, no remote phantasy 
 of passion would Uberto be put off with, and 
 he had the right to claim it, for it is the 
 birthright of every living being. Each 
 human being has the right to demand real 
 love. It is the one utterly pure possession 
 a man has the right to claim, a treasure that 
 
174 The Magic of Rome 
 
 improves by keeping burning, a spark 
 that may burn a humble ember on 
 every hearth yet partake of the corrus- 
 cating refulgence of the divine. It is 
 the cry of sympathy -from heaven to the 
 children of men. The mystic wailings of true 
 love will burst into symphonious diapason 
 of unfettered, triumphant, re-echoing peals 
 long after the last blast of the trump of 
 the Angel of Death has quivered away 
 into silence behind the mountains, long 
 after the song of adoring choirs of angels 
 has hushed itself into rippling murmurs 
 in the presence of the Most High, in 
 the light of whose appearance even the 
 hallowed melody of music will seem power- 
 less to create rhythm and measure fit for 
 the expression of its praise, and the sublime 
 pealing of even an orison of cadence seems 
 blasphemy. For while worlds cease to be, 
 and what is, what was, what shall be are 
 chased by heavenly decree beyond the in- 
 finite, while day and night, and time and 
 measure cease to be, there yet will hover 
 between the unending folds of the inter- 
 minable that wonderful, ever-renascent love 
 
The Magic of Rome 175 
 
 which God has made eternal, lest it should 
 end with space and time that elysium of 
 sublime thought that makes of earth the 
 divine, and of the divine human. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 To appreciate a country, or, at anyrate, to 
 understand a country's character, its moods 
 and metamorphoses, one should visit it at 
 the time of year when only its own country- 
 men — its own home-born native offspring — 
 people it. Rome, if one may be permitted 
 to say so, is as ridiculous as a carnival when 
 it is full of tourists. There is something 
 incongruous in the groups of badly-dressed, 
 essentially respectable, but semi-illuminated 
 Britishers who stand gaping about on the 
 venerable ground of the Csesars and around 
 the hallowed ruins of the Eternal City, who, 
 on her very ruins, raise up everywhere fresh 
 interest, fresh poetry, fresh awe. Rome full 
 of gay, chattering shoppers crowding the 
 Cartoleria for Christmas cards and quarrel- 
 ling with the percettore over lost parcels, 
 has nothing to do with the silent, dignified 
 grandeur of Rome, across which breathe at 
 
 last unoppressed the cool, spring winds from 
 176 
 
The Magic of Rome 177 
 
 behind the Sabine Mountains. But Rome 
 when the cobbles lie basking in the sunshine, 
 and shadows as black as the etchings on a 
 copper-plate lie stretched across from house 
 to house, slanting cornerwise at the angles of 
 streets ; and the goatherds, all harmony 
 of greens and browns and dirty reds and fur, 
 walk lazily across the piazzas behind their 
 clattering, tinkling flocks, or stopping to milk 
 them in the streets ; and the mountain straw- 
 berry and icy water-melon and acqua acetosa 
 are sold in the streets ; when the old women 
 doze on the doorsteps and the little children 
 sleep outstretched upon the pavement, with 
 the flies gathering thick upon their temples, 
 and the cries of the hawkers seem to rise in 
 plaintive appeal to the silent, darkened, 
 curtained windows of the great houses : then 
 at night, when one listens not to silence but 
 to the sounds which, from their clearness, 
 form stillness in one's mind ; and, as if to 
 mourn the departure of day, or as if love 
 revived again in the cool air of the night, 
 there steals athwart the air the clanging of 
 many bells, the silver tinkling of the mandolines 
 and guitars ; or towards the sleeping heart of 
 one who is beloved there steals, laden with 
 
 M 
 
178 The Magic of Rome 
 
 the flowery scents of night, the hot, caressing 
 strains of some Sicilian love-song — that is 
 real Italy ! That is the unswathed bosom of 
 Rome — a lethargy of passionate beauty, 
 across which steals harmony and poetry in 
 golden rifts of sweetest music. Even to be 
 sad is sweetness in Italy. 
 
 And now spring burst with lilac fragrance 
 in the Dorian gardens, and love spoke to 
 nearly everyone he met on the road, whether 
 he knew them or not. 
 
 Sperata would own it to no one, but it 
 had seemed to her once that Uberto had 
 been leaning over her when she awoke, 
 looking , like a beautiful bronze statue, and 
 with a dazzling white shirt, like the dress of 
 the gondoliers of Venice, thrown open at the 
 throat, and the dream seemed so clear that 
 she could not think of it without a wave of 
 shame, as if their lips had met. But that 
 was before Easter, and she had had to 
 confess it all to the priest, and he had been 
 very angry, and told her that it was scan- 
 dalous for a Principessa di Veroni to think or 
 dream of such things, and, for a penance, he 
 had told her to go and tell her mother, but 
 she had not done so, for she was very naughty 
 
The Magic of Rome 179 
 
 in those days was the Principessa^ — full of 
 laughter and mischief, and so intelligent that 
 she wasn't afraid of the priests, not she. 
 
 " What can a dried-up old man like the 
 Padre Sellaci know of girls and love ? " 
 
 Sperata had not been presented yet, for 
 it was a difficult matter for the Prince and 
 Princess to decide. The Prince was 
 liberale enough to wish her presented at 
 the Quirinal. He was an open supporter of 
 the House of Savoy, and was daily becoming 
 one of its most ardent adherents, and Gloria 
 never differed with him so that he loved her 
 still. The episode of the Padre Buonavoglio 
 had done a good deal towards changing the 
 current of her thoughts and beliefs, but, like 
 a good Catholic, she told herself that if one 
 swallow does not make a summer neither 
 does one priest form a religion. And her 
 friendship with Giselda, the pure simplicity 
 she expressed in her actions and wdrds, and 
 the beautiful way in which she had brought 
 up her children, had had no little influence 
 on Gloria's mind. Gloria, who from the first 
 had welcomed the lovely foreigner to Rome 
 with all the warmth of an affectionate kins- 
 woman, and to which was added a strange. 
 
i8o The Magic of Rome 
 
 solemn link, born of the mysterious know- 
 ledge Gloria dared not impart to her, but 
 which was on her lips a thousand times an 
 hour when Giselda was with her. 
 
 But to present Sperata at the Quirinal was 
 a step that was so decisive, a step that meant 
 so much, that the days went by without a 
 decision being come to. The Malezzis were 
 of the blackest of the blacks. " Black," 
 Sperata would say laughingly, " as the scara- 
 forei in summer." To present Sperata at 
 the Quirinal would be to cause a complete 
 family rupture, and it would be to offend the 
 Pope beyond recall or hope of forgiveness. 
 And Gloria, simple as she was, was well 
 aware that it would mean a total change in 
 their social position in Rome, for the greater 
 part of the aristocrazia, three-quarters of 
 the Almanack de Gotha, were politically 
 at one with the Vatican, and certainly most 
 of the good partis she desired for Sperata 
 were young men belonging to the most 
 Papal of families, who would naturally with- 
 draw their friendship, if not their acquaint- 
 anceship, for Romans have a very decided 
 way of expressing their views. 
 
 "Was it not a mistake," she said to her 
 
The Magic of Rome i8i 
 
 husband, " to break with the best Roman 
 families just when Sperata needed it most ? " 
 And the Principe would shrug his shoulders 
 and say, — 
 
 " I don't want her to marry anyone but an 
 honest man, who will make her happy. He 
 can be black, or white, or speckled for aught 
 I care," and a great wave of joy would rise 
 to Sperata's heart without her exactly know- 
 ing why. 
 
 But there were other reasons too that kept 
 Gloria from being in a hurry to present 
 Sperata. What if after she had done so some 
 revelation came out about Sperata's birth? 
 Would they not be angry with her at the 
 Vatican and Quirinal alike if she had pre- 
 sented the girl as her own, although to all 
 intents and purposes she was their own by 
 adoption ? By this it will be seen that the 
 haunting ghost was not quite laid, nor ever 
 would be, Gloria knew, while Buonavoglio 
 lived. Was it very wicked, she asked her- 
 self, to wish sometimes that he would die and 
 leave them all in peace ? Some day, she did 
 not quite know when, she meant to consult 
 someone about it all. Perhaps Giselda or 
 Orazio, perhaps the Cardinal Merlini, but 
 
1 82 The Magic of Rome 
 
 certainly not her confessor. No, Gloria had 
 made a vow seventeen years before that 
 never again would she allow any priest to 
 mingle in her daily life. " They mix a great 
 deal too much in everything — poKtics, society, 
 finance — but they shall not mix up in my 
 private life," she said. No, she was glad as 
 the years went by that she had had the 
 courage to wipe Buonavoglio out of her life 
 while it had lain in her power, to strike a 
 bargain, although sometimes she wondered 
 how she could ever have found the pluck to 
 do so. Still more, she wondered now and 
 then how it was that he had not avenged 
 himself or attempted to break through the 
 conditions she had fastened upon him. 
 
 " Perhaps after all he isn't so wicked as I 
 thought." 
 
 And Sperata's life was very happy in those 
 days. Adored by her father and mother, who 
 were enlightened enough to give her a good 
 education, intelligent enough to appreciate 
 the liberal, broad ideas of her parents, uncon- 
 scious of her birth, and handsome enough to 
 bring a host of admirers and lovers around 
 her even if she had not been the reputed 
 heiress of the Veroni millions. It seemed to 
 
The Magic of Rome 183 
 
 Sperata that the life of a little Italian princess 
 was about the most enviable in the universe. 
 
 Although not " out " in the general accepta- 
 tion of the word, she was yet always allowed 
 to attend the many little after-dinner parties 
 and dances that Gloria occasionally gave, 
 more, as she herself said, to try and remem- 
 ber her friends than for them to remember 
 her, for society was not a part of Gloria's 
 life. 
 
 And then one day Ubaldo came home with 
 the news that an Anarchist plot to assassinate 
 the King had been discovered just in time 
 and that a priest was inculpated. , 
 
 " Upon my word, I'm beginning to think 
 that the Vatican is at the bottom of half the 
 Anarchists' plots." He laughed as he spoke, 
 but there was a tinge of conviction in his 
 voice. But the idea was too preposterous, 
 too absurd to be entertained for a moment. 
 Gloria laughed too. The Pontiff of the 
 World, the Vicar of Christ, plotting a 
 murder ! 
 
 "Oh, Ubaldo, really you are too funny, 
 the things you say, really." 
 
 " What is the difference of murdering one 
 man or killing hundreds, yet the Pope would 
 
184 The Magic of Rome 
 
 sanction war to-morrow, and so would all the 
 followers of the Vatican ; the Catholics of the 
 whole world would, if they thought they were 
 likely to restore the temporal power oP Rome. 
 The good of Italy, the peace of Italy, what is 
 that to them so that the whole country 
 returns to the dark slavery of soul of years 
 ago? 
 
 Gloria's eyes opened wide. 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me that the Pope is 
 not single-minded in his wish for temporal 
 power, that he has any private ambition in 
 his desire to govern Italy? Oh, surely not, 
 Ubaldo ! Why, to think that would be to 
 lose faith in our Church, in God almost. It 
 would be to rank the Pope a rebel instead of 
 a patriot, an adventurer instead of a good 
 Roman." 
 
 The Prince shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Where do you get your ideas, Ubaldo ? 
 You are like Giselda, who says that she can- 
 not imagine anyone loving a Pope who wears 
 a crown or tiara, that St Peter was a poor 
 fisherman, and that he who wishes to show 
 that he is the real representative of St Peter 
 should walk about without scrip or purse, and 
 be without where to lay his head." 
 
The Magic of Rome 185 
 
 " Ah, one would believe in a man like 
 that," said the Prince. "Of course the 
 question of personal infallibility is rapidly 
 becoming a thing of the past. I am told that 
 lots of English Catholics don't even pretend 
 to believe in it, but they all believe — we 
 all do — in the infallibility of the tradition." 
 
 "And where do they get the tradition?" 
 Ubaldo laughed again. It pleased him to 
 upset Gloria's " narrow Malvezza ideas " as 
 he called them. 
 
 "Ah, caro mio, don't ask me obtuse 
 questions. I never was clever, you know. 
 Where do they get them ? Well, I will 
 tell you. From the Bible." 
 
 "You read the Bible?" 
 
 " Certainly," replied her husband. 
 
 "Oh, caro! We shall all end by being 
 excommunicated." Gloria was still laughing. 
 
 "From the Bible," he went on. "The 
 Pope himself would tell you so. He would 
 say, ' The gospel says that Christ said, 
 "On this rock will I build My church,"' 
 and he forgets that in the same gospel 
 Christ says, ' My kingdom' is not of this 
 world,' and again, ' Let him who is greatest 
 amongst you become as a servant, and when 
 
1 86 The Magic of Rome 
 
 He was asked who was the greatest in the 
 kingdom of heaven He set a child in the 
 midst of them.' " 
 
 Gloria had grown quite serious. "You 
 frighten me," she said. "You talk like 
 Giselda. Really, you and she ought to go 
 and convert the Pope." 
 
 " Oh, it will come," said the Prince, " or 
 it would come if it were not for the crowd 
 of rapacious, power-loving men around him, 
 nearly all men chosen from the middle or 
 lower classes." 
 
 " For their talent," mused Gloria, " or 
 their lofty ambition ? Then you look upon 
 the whole of the upbuilding of the Roman 
 Church as upon a sort of religious long-firm 
 swindle, as they call syndicated frauds in 
 England," 
 
 " Certainly I do to a certain extent. Of 
 course there may be an honest man here 
 and there, just as on the board of rocky 
 companies there is generally some honest 
 man who becomes chairman in the inno- 
 cence of his heart as the result of his belief 
 in the representations of the other members, 
 or his want of belief in the rascality of 
 mankind." 
 
The Magic of Rome 187 
 
 "Yet there are good priests, I have 
 known them." 
 
 "Yes, as there are trusty members in 
 these bogus companies ; often enough poor, 
 trusting men in the country who cannot 
 cope with corruption." 
 
 " Really, Ubaldo, you take my breath 
 away. Are you going to become a Pro- 
 testant ? " 
 
 "Ah, that is another thing," and Ubaldo 
 walked to the window of the palazzo and 
 looked out on to the busy street, on to the 
 rustic carts returning to the country from 
 market, swaying to the uneven gait of oxen, 
 and beyond to the little pilazza where the 
 contadini were dancing the Salterella in 
 front of the little cafds. Now and then he 
 bowed occasionally or waved his hand as 
 some pretty Roman lady of his acquaintance 
 drove past or some club friend strolled 
 leisurely by smoking a cigarette. 
 
 " Swa Eminenza, the Cardinal of Merlini." 
 
 Gloria stooped and kissed the large 
 glistening ring on the Cardinal's hand. 
 
 " Ubaldo." He turned quickly from the 
 window and greeted his priestly guest with 
 the same ceremony. 
 
1 88 The Magic of Rome 
 
 " Ah, Signor Cardinale, you come as good 
 people do when they are wanted." She 
 looked mischievously at her husband. 
 
 " We were having a religious discussion." 
 
 " And coming as usual to no conclusion. 
 Ah, figlia mia, there is something better 
 than religious discussion, and that is religious 
 peace." Gloria noticed for the first time 
 that he looked very weary. Some coffee 
 still stood in a tray close by. She poured 
 it into a cup and handed it herself to the 
 Cardinal. 
 
 " One is always spoilt here." 
 
 " Do not say that till you have tasted 
 this." Ubaldo poured out a glass of Mare- 
 schino di Zara. 
 
 " Ah, dear, dear. What temptations ! " 
 The Cardinal drew off his red gloves. 
 
 " How picturesque he looks," thought 
 Gloria, as the red scarf with the half-hidden 
 cross emerging from the , waistband shone 
 with almost painful radiance in the after- 
 noon sun, which stole across his forehead 
 too. Gloria made a sign to her husband 
 to draw down the blind. 
 
 " How thoughtful these young people 
 always are," said the Cardinal, and the look 
 
The Magic of Rome 189 
 
 he gave Gloria was one of real fatherly 
 affection. 
 
 " Certainly, if I ever tell anyone I will 
 tell him," was the thought that crossed 
 Gloria's mind. 
 
 And now the Cardinal, having gulped 
 down the little glass of liqueur and been 
 relieved of his cup by Ubaldo, went on, — 
 
 "Ah, yes, my dear children, peace, peace 
 at any price. You have heard the news, 
 of course ? " 
 
 " S'imagin. It is too horrible." 
 
 "And have you heard how it was dis- 
 covered ? " 
 
 " No, we have heard no details. Ubaldo 
 heard it at the club and came on here to 
 tell me," 
 
 " But it is horrible," said the Cardinal. As 
 he spoke Sperata glided into the room, went 
 quickly through the ceremony of kissing the 
 Cardinal's ring and crept to her favourite seat 
 in the window, where she took up her work. 
 
 "Well, it appears that they had engaged 
 some boy to deal the blow. He lives, by-the- 
 bye, close to you, here at the back." Sperata 
 dropped her work and listened. " And he, 
 it appears, babbled the story to his mother, 
 
190 The Magic of Rome 
 
 who, not knowing whether it was treason or 
 not, rushed to the police." 
 
 " Good heavens ! What a mercy ! " 
 
 " Don't you think ? " — it was Gloria's soft 
 voice that spoke — " don't you think, your 
 Eminence, that in a case like this there would 
 be no offence to the Vatican if one wrote 
 one's name at the Quirinal ? Simply I mean 
 to show one's sympathy with and one's own 
 horror at so dastardly a deed." 
 
 " Surely, surely, my child. At a moment 
 like this all personal feelings, all political 
 and party feeling should be submerged into 
 one feeling of sympathy. The only chance 
 for us in these days is unity ; the only way to 
 stamp out these infernal Socialists is to work 
 hand in hand." 
 
 " If everyone thought like your Eminence." 
 
 " They will one day. I am one of the 
 hopeful ones. It is all very well to cry out 
 day and night, ' Everything is wrong ! 
 Everything must be altered!' We should 
 do infinitely more by patience — patience 
 and a little charity. These two united are 
 the strongest weapons of the present day." 
 
 "Ah, how right you are ! " 
 
 " I suppose you haven't heard what names 
 
The Magic of Rome 191 
 
 are implicated in this dreadful business?" 
 said Ubaldo, looking keenly at the Cardinal. 
 The Cardinal had heard Buonavoglio's name 
 mentioned, but first of all he would not 
 believe the news, and secondly, he Certainly 
 could not betray treachery in his own 
 camp. 
 
 " No, no, not anyone of importance — not 
 yours, for instance," and he laughied at his 
 own facetiousness, for it was well-known that 
 Ubaldo was devoted to the King. 
 
 " Ah, when my name appears it will be in 
 a plot against the Vatican." The Cardinal 
 laughed his good-tempered, hearty child's 
 laugh. 
 
 "And you. will draw me into it, I expect. 
 His Holiness was speaking of you the other 
 day." 
 
 Ubaldo knew that this meant that his 
 absence from the Quirinal had been com- 
 mented upon, but he left the remark un- 
 answered. "Ah, my children," said the 
 Cardinal, getting up to go, although, if he 
 had followed his inclinations, he would gladly 
 have sat on for an hour or more, " when you 
 are as old as I you will realise that while we 
 are of this world we must not have too 
 
192 The Magic of Rome 
 
 marked predilections for this or that. We 
 must be tolerant. We must forgive. That 
 is the great lesson — the difficult one. It is 
 all very difficult, but, Grazie a Dio, it won't be 
 long before we understand, A Rivederci 
 figli miei" (Bless you all), and he laid his 
 hand on Sperata's pretty dark head as she 
 stood close to him ready to hand him his 
 hat. Then, standing at the door, he smiled 
 at Sperata. " What little thoughts are coming 
 into that little head?" he said, smiling 
 paternally. 
 
 " None yet, I hope," said Gloria, linking 
 her arm in that of the girl she loved as 
 tenderly as if she were her own. The 
 Prince descended the stairs with the Car- 
 dinal, and as the door closed Sperata fell 
 into her mother's arms and sobbed passion- 
 ately. " Sperata, Sperata, what is it ? Has 
 the news of the attempted assassination of 
 the King affected you as much as all that ? 
 But, caro, it is nothing, it is all over." But 
 Sperata would not speak, only rushed to 
 her room with flaming face. 
 
 Then later, quite late that night, when 
 everyone was sleeping in the big palazzo, 
 Gloria stole to Sperata's room, the thickly- 
 
The Magic of Rome 193 
 
 carpeted marble corridors giving no echo to 
 her soft tread. 
 
 At the door of Sperata's apartments she 
 stood still a moment to listen, as she always 
 did, whether the girl slept or not. If she 
 were still aAvake she generally went in and 
 chatted with her for an hour or more while 
 she undressed, or sat on her bed in the 
 darkness and discussed a thousand topics, 
 for the two had few secrets from each other. 
 
 " I wonder if she will ever know," she 
 said to herself as she stood on the landing, 
 still hoping that she would hear the ring 
 at the door, " and if she ever knows, will 
 she, I wonder, grow to hate me.''" Her 
 thoughts were full of discomfort to-night. 
 It seemed as if they were full of angles that 
 would not fit her brain, " Does every action 
 of our lives jump out upon us again ? " she 
 asked herself, and wondered if the deception 
 she had practised had been very, very wrong. 
 As she stood at her adopted daughter's door 
 she thought she heard a sound. Turning 
 the handle she came upon the unwonted 
 sight of Sperata leaning over her balcony in 
 the moonlight and sobbing. 
 
 " Carissima ! " All the real love Gloria 
 
 N 
 
194 The Magic of Rome 
 
 felt for the young girl was evident in her 
 anxious voice. 
 
 "Ah, mamma!" The girl leaned her 
 head on her mother's bosom. " They have 
 taken him, the poor, mad boy." 
 
 ^ " I know, dear, I heard to-night and 
 thought of you, but it is not worth making 
 yourself miserable about. Orazio di Sant 
 Angioli has been here to-night and has gone 
 to see someone about it all. He says they 
 will surely let the lad go because of his 
 madness." 
 
 " But he isn't mad, madre mio ; and 
 Uberto is noble. He never meant to kill 
 the King. Read this." And, unable to 
 keep her secret any longer, Sperata handed 
 her mother a letter, which she had folded 
 and placed in the bosom of her stays. 
 
 This was no time for fault-finding, but the 
 seriousness of Sperata's attitude towards this 
 common peasant boy did not escape Gloria. 
 She re-lighted the room to read the letter, 
 and Sperata remained on the balcony. Sad 
 as it all was, Gloria could not help smiling 
 at the thought of the little idyll that had 
 been going on without her noticing it. Was 
 it, she wondered, Sperata's origin asserting 
 
The Magic of Rome 195 
 
 itself that had drawn her into sympathy with 
 the low-born lad ? 
 
 " SiGNORA MIA, — Imperatrice del mio," it 
 began, and Gloria tried to repress a smile 
 at the opening lines. " When you read this 
 I shall be in prison, accused of attempting to 
 kill the King. It may be that they send me 
 to Nisida for life, or to a casa di matt. It 
 may be that, to save others, I have to keep 
 silence. This matters not, only I would 
 have you know, beautiful donzella, that for 
 your dear sake I did not intend to shoot 
 the King, even if the Societa killed me 
 afterwards or thought me a coward. I 
 would have you know too, Belissima Dona 
 Sperata, that I love you, and will always 
 love you, and that if I dare raise my eyes 
 to you, and lay my heart at your feet, it is 
 because I am not the poor peasant lad I 
 appear to be, but as well-born as yourself. 
 All this I would have you know, Principessa, 
 lest I do not see you again, so thaj; you 
 should not be ashamed sometimes to say a 
 prayer or give a thought to your ever pas- 
 sionately-devoted slave, who will love you 
 till death. 
 
 " Uberto Santioli di Sant Angioli." 
 
196 The Magic of Rome 
 
 A cry escaped Gloria as she read the 
 signature. Oh, why, why did Orazio not 
 return ? What would she not give to show 
 him this letter ? What light might it not 
 throw on the whole situation ? Orazio's son 
 imprisoned for attempting to assassinate the 
 King ! It was too tragic. The events of 
 that evening were almost more than she 
 could grasp, but this much was clear to her. 
 The youth, the supposed son of a priest, 
 Sperata's protigi, was Sant Angioli's stolen 
 son. Ah, how many hours must elapse 
 before she could send her information to 
 Orazio ; and then, with what caution, lest 
 Giselda should see the letter ! Giselda, 
 who would at last see her long-lost son. 
 How could he be saved from the law, this 
 youth who, nursed in Socialism, had joined 
 the dangerous Society. Ah, she saw it all 
 now. Buonavoglio trusted to this to save 
 himself, but what^ — what would transpire 
 regarding herself and Sperata when this 
 thing became known ? It seemed to her 
 that she stood on ground beneath which 
 earthquakes quivered and threatened, but 
 it was characteristic of her nature that she 
 tried to keep all thoughts of- self aside. It 
 
The Magic of Rome 197 
 
 would He between her and Ubaldo the 
 trouble that was coming, but the unfortunate 
 lad must be released. These children must 
 not be made to suffer. 
 
 " You are not angry with me, mamma 
 mia ? " Sperata had stolen to her mother's 
 side and knelt to her, laying her head on 
 her lap. 
 
 " Angry ? No, bimba mia, but you should 
 have told me sooner." 
 
 " I was so afraid." 
 
 " Afraid of me ? " 
 
 " I thought perhaps it was very wrong." 
 
 " It is not wrong to love," said Gloria, 
 " but to have secrets from those who love 
 you — that is wrong." She stroked the girl's 
 dark hair as she spoke. 
 
 " Now you know, madre mia." 
 
 " Yes, I know." 
 
 " And you will try and get him released ? " 
 
 "Yes, I will try." I will speak to you . . . 
 to Ubaldo when he comes back to-morrow. 
 But meanwhile, darling, don't speak of it to 
 anyone." 
 
 " Do you think he belongs to our Sant 
 Angiolis, madre?" 
 
 Gloria hesitated a moment. 
 
igB The Magic of Rome 
 
 " Yes, carissima, I think so." 
 
 " Then I may love him ? " 
 
 " If it is true, and if he is good and noble, 
 yes." 
 
 " Oh, madre, if you could see him. He is 
 beautiful as an angel ! " 
 
 " We don't know what the angels are 
 like." Gloria smiled, and Sperata was com- 
 forted now that her mother knew and was 
 not angry. Soon she was asleep, the 
 letter crushed in her hands beneath the 
 pillow. 
 
 Gloria looked at her sadly. 
 
 " Would Uberto, she wondered, want to 
 marry her when he knew who she was ? She 
 was beginning to feel very, very anxious about 
 the future, very nervous at what she had done. 
 What if Sperata should break her heart over 
 this youth.? Had Buonavoglio known all 
 the time that this was Sant Angioli's son? 
 Would they succeed in rescuing him from 
 the hands of the law? And now another 
 anxious thought crossed her brain. If this 
 was Sant Angioli's long-lost son, he was 
 born to be an eretico. Would the marriage 
 with Sperata be possible ? Oh, it was all 
 horribly complicated, and through it all she 
 
The Magic of Rome 199 
 
 felt certain of one thing, and that was that 
 the truth about Sperata's birth was going to 
 come out. How would Ubaldo take it? 
 What would Rome say? These were two 
 terrible problems to solve, and with it all 
 was the sinister, sickening foreboding. At 
 five o'clock in the morn'ng Gloria fell into 
 a troubled sleep, from which she started 
 every now and then, assailed by strange 
 fears. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Perhaps since the triumphant day when the 
 House of Savoy entered the gates of Rome 
 and bayoneted the Pope into his corner in 
 the Vatican, which after all it need not have 
 done if it had not been fervently Catholic, for 
 it could have turned him out neck and crop 
 had it liked, there had been no moment more 
 triumphant, more jubilant, than this for the 
 monarchy. A plot discovered against the 
 King, in which there figured the eldest son of 
 one of the hitherto blackest of houses and a 
 priest of the Vatican. Oh ! what a morsel 
 for the delectation of kings, what an outorto- 
 laning of ortolans and outcyprusing of Cyprus 
 wine. Hydromel indeed was being seethed in 
 the skulls of enemies. For many days the Vati- 
 can and the Quirinal looked at each other as a 
 cat and dog do from each side of an iron gate. 
 Which would spring first ? Rome looked on 
 and held its breath, and neither power knew 
 200 
 
The Magic of Rome 201 
 
 all that lay between and beneath. Un- 
 doubtedly it was the Vatican that was most 
 afraid. The scandal there was and the 
 scandal there must of necessity be, for the 
 breathings of it were already hot in the land ! 
 What shivering to atoms of the papal power, 
 what trembling of the house of cards of which 
 the Eternal Infallible faith is built up ! Yet 
 to ask silence of the King, would it not be a 
 silence so eloquent that it would ape the 
 street heralds ? 
 
 And the Quirinal paused too. There were 
 many stories afloat, stories that were too 
 grotesque to be believed, others so tragic 
 that they wrung the heart. Surely some of 
 it all was true. And now the dog on the 
 outside of the gate began to bark, for he knew 
 that the cat on the inside could not escape 
 him. There was no tree for her to run up, 
 only scanty bushes and evil weeds that could 
 not shelter her long when the dog broke 
 through the railings. 
 
 All the Vatican was astir this morning, for 
 a message had come from the Quirinal, 
 brought by a messenger of high degree. 
 He who had not entered it for years, who 
 would not have entered it now but for the 
 
202 The Magic of Rome 
 
 courtesy of a king who knew no guile, who 
 could not do a mean act nor take advantage 
 of the weak position of an enemy. With 
 firmness, but in all courtesy, the messenger 
 told His Holiness that a priest of the Vatican 
 was mixed up in this plot, that the prefettura 
 were about to arrest him ; yet, from respect 
 to His Holiness, nothing would be done in 
 any way to offend. If His Holiness would 
 instruct the priest to attend at the prefettura 
 there would be none of the scandal of an 
 arrest. All due respect would be shown to 
 the priest in prison, and the case hurried on 
 as quickly as possible. In vain His Holiness 
 pleaded, on sentimental grounds, that for the 
 sake of religion this thing should not be. 
 Twice during the interview he called his 
 devoted servant, the man who knew all the 
 weak spots in the armour of the Vicar of 
 Christ, in the great Pope who is also a great 
 man, but who even, while he professes to 
 follow the great example of the Man- God, 
 who had not where to lay his holy head, and 
 coveting the mammon of this world, wishing 
 to be ministered unto instead of to minister, 
 forgets the very words of the God whose 
 servant he professes to be — "Whoever of 
 
The Magic of Rome 203 
 
 you will be chiefest shall be servant of all." 
 Asking for restoratives which indeed he 
 looked in sore need of. The emissary 
 of the Quirinal was courteous still, but 
 firm. 
 
 "It would not be fair to the others," he 
 said ; " what would the police say ? " and then 
 the Pope grew angry, as he alone can be, 
 imbued as he is with the belief that even his 
 wrath is divine, and spoke things that were 
 better left unsaid, how that the King was 
 making capital out of the position, hinting at 
 excommunication, eternal condemnation and 
 what not ; and then the trusty messenger of 
 the King broke loose and told His Holiness 
 of the ugly stories that were rife, of which 
 the papers spoke freely, namely, that the 
 Vatican was aware of the plot, that it not 
 only favoured the Anarchists but had had a 
 share in this scheme ; and then the Vicar of 
 Christ, from very horror, grew silent and 
 turned promptly, as if with magic wand, into 
 the sensible man of the world, and asked for 
 twenty-four hours of thought, which was 
 granted him, provided that he pledged his 
 infallible word that Buonavoglio would not 
 leave Rome. This was exactly what His 
 
204 The Magic of Rome 
 
 Holiness had meant he should do, but he 
 gave his word, and of course it would never 
 do for him to break it. One must say one 
 thing for the Papal See, and that is that of 
 late years no personal scandal has ever over- 
 shadowed it or been made public if it existed. 
 This is perhaps the strongest remark that can 
 be made in its favour. 
 
 Hardly had the emissary of the Quirinal 
 departed than messengers were dispatched 
 right and left to all the available cardinals. A 
 matter like this would have to be well con- 
 sidered ; yet, as each arrived in haste at the 
 summons of their pontiff, the Pope received 
 them in private audience, for this reader of 
 men knew well enough that many of them 
 would speak to him alone very differently 
 than they would before each other. 
 
 Flight was what one and all suggested. 
 There were many orders of priesthood in 
 England which he could join, but here His 
 Holiness informed them that he had pledged 
 his holy word, and as he said it his face 
 grew convulsed with anger. It was too 
 monstrous a condition this, it showed all the 
 malice of the King, else what a simple way 
 out of the difficulty. 
 
The Magic of Rome 205 
 
 Poor dear simple Cardinal Merlini brought 
 down the papal wrath on his head and lost 
 for ever the chance of becoming a cardinal- 
 bishop by suggesting that Buonavoglio's 
 non-appearance at the trial might defeat the 
 ends of justice and call for comment that 
 would be still more damaging to the Vatican. 
 
 " I thought he was your friend," the Pope 
 remarked in scathing accents. 
 
 "And indeed he is, Your Holiness." Car- 
 dinal Merlini felt that he had put his foot in 
 it, and said nothing beyond this. 
 
 Perhaps from irony Cardinal Merlini was 
 finally dispatched to inform Padre Buona- 
 voglio that either he must by some means 
 extricate himself from the imbroglio he had 
 involved himself in or surrender to his trial. 
 What other instructions His Holiness gave 
 privately to Cardinal Merlini are not re- 
 corded. 
 
 It was with streaming eyes that the Car- 
 dinal sought the priest in his own apart- 
 ments, an unusual occurrence indeed, but 
 that day there was no time to think of 
 conventionality or clerical etiquette. The 
 good, simple-minded soul was miserable to 
 think that such dire catastrophe should 
 
2o6 The Magic of Rome 
 
 overtake any priest, but one for whom he 
 had entertained friendship. It was too 
 terrible. With all the kindliness and sym- 
 pathy he was capable of — and he had the 
 warmest of hearts — he delivered his message. 
 What he was not prepared for was the 
 cold indifference with which Buonavoglio 
 received him. He had had time to think, 
 and the thinking had brought counsel. He 
 smiled to himself as the Cardinal spoke of 
 the grief of the Pontiff, the shame to the 
 Church, the desire to quash scandal, of 
 social ruin. " God forgive me if I advise 
 you wrongly, but I would advise, in the face 
 of the Pope's promise, flight. Under 
 ordinary circumstances I should say fight it 
 out like a man, but we are not our own 
 masters, there is the Church to think of, 
 and Heaven knows she needs screening 
 rather than exposure in these days. You 
 could get away to-night and I would bear 
 the blame. I feel sure that His Holiness 
 will not be blamed. He cannot be respon- 
 sible for your movements. I have money. 
 There is our dear brother Francesco at 
 Fulham in London. You shall go to him. 
 You thought, I know, to do wisely, but ah, 
 
The Magic of Rome 207 
 
 my friend, what have we priests to do with 
 politics ? " 
 
 Once more the kind, fatherly man was met 
 with a disdainful, cynical smile. 
 
 " And what does His Holiness suggest as 
 compensation for my social ruin, for the 
 wreck of my life, for this immolation for the 
 honour of the Vatican and the Mother 
 Church ? " 
 
 The words swished across the room like 
 lightning or wires of flexible steel. The 
 Cardinal could not believe that he had heard 
 aright. 
 
 "Compensation?" The Cardinal looked 
 twenty years older, aged by the vain effort to 
 understand. 
 
 " I presume that His Holiness does not 
 pretend not to have been aware that I 
 belonged to the Society ! " 
 
 "His HoHness aware ? Surely, Padre 
 Buonavoglio, are you mad?" 
 
 Ah, yes, he was mad, that was the secret. 
 
 " If you do not believe, ask Cardinal 
 Shertoli." Cardinal Merlini gasped but said 
 nothing- He felt as if he had missed a step 
 and fallen to the bottom of a flight of stairs. 
 " I am grateful to your Eminence, very 
 
2o8 The Magic of Rome 
 
 grateful." Padre Buonavoglio held out his 
 hand, which Cardinal Merlini took mechanic- 
 ally without knowing why he did so. " But 
 tell His Holiness that if I am to wreck my 
 life by ignominious flight to save the Church 
 the disgrace of my arrest I must have the 
 equivalent. My conscience is clear. I re- 
 ceived my orders and I carried them out ; 
 my conscience is perfectly clear." 
 
 The Cardinal felt a singing in his ears. 
 All the mainstays of life seemed to him to 
 have given way. He took his hat and tottered 
 out. For the first time in his life Padre 
 Buonavoglio did not accompany him to the 
 door. Hardly had the outer door banged 
 than the priest slipped on his coat and hat 
 and went out into the street. It was all very 
 well to threaten the Vatican, to pretend to 
 the Cardinal that he could make terms with 
 the Pope. He might be careful for the 
 future when time and many other events had 
 obliterated the remembrance of this scandal, 
 but between now and the morning something 
 must be arranged. Either Sant Angioli 
 must be forced to appeal to the King or 
 the priest must fly. Full well he knew the 
 confidence he could place in the loyalty of 
 
The Magic of Rome 209 
 
 those that had incited him to this deed. 
 Although Shertoli had hinted that the Pope 
 knew of the plot and was cognisant of the 
 fact that the priest was mixed up in it, he 
 had no written proofs that this was so. He 
 was beginning to think that Shertoli had 
 misled him, intentionally, perhaps, in the wish 
 to get him into trouble. Could this be so ? 
 He remembered his words, " In a case like 
 this one must rest content to rise or sink 
 alone." 
 
 Anyhow, one thing was certain. He could 
 count on no one's support at the moment of 
 trial. It was now a question of flight or 
 saving himself by his wits. Hitherto his 
 wits had saved him, and he counted on them 
 still. He looked upon the kidnapping of the 
 Santioli infant as upon the luckiest act of his 
 life. Where would he be now had it not 
 been for the pressure he was able to bring 
 upon Sant AngioH ? for with Sant Angioli 
 lay the whole key of the position. The 
 Quirinal would do anything, anything to 
 win to their ranks the powerful and wealthy 
 black family. It would be a triumph as 
 great as the unearthing of conspiracy in the 
 bosom of the Vatican. Little cared the 
 
2IO The Magic of Rome 
 
 priest now if the Sant Angiolis were 
 wrested from the Mother Church or not. 
 The great thing was to save his own skin, 
 at the cost of everybody else's if need be. 
 And this could only be done in one way. 
 Late as it was he must obtain an interview 
 with Gloria. If nothing came of it, anyhow, 
 the Pope would have a bad quarter of an 
 hour. Why he wished this was not quite 
 clear to himself; fright and misfortune 
 brought out all the evil that was dormant 
 in him, and he resented the treatment he 
 was receiving at the hands of the Vatican. 
 Such services as he imagined he had ren- 
 dered, or was ready to render, deserved 
 better treatment at his hands. He should, 
 at least, have been granted an interview, 
 his story been heard instead of a message 
 being sent him by Cardinal Merlini, the 
 least favoured, probably because the least 
 intriguing, of all the cardinals. 
 
 There was no particle of nobility in 
 Buonavoglio's composition, no grain of good 
 breeding, nor even the chivalry some of 
 Nature's gentlemen can claim. Her pride 
 should be abased if his name was dragged 
 in the mire. If the Vatican made a scape- 
 
The Magic of Rome 211 
 
 goat of him and delivered him over to the 
 tender mercies of the Quirinal, and if none 
 of the powerful intervened on his behalf, he 
 would not sink to ignominy without dragging 
 with him the fair fame of many noble families. 
 He too had holds upon them. Why, people 
 would say, had Orazio not prosecuted him 
 for the theft of his infant son ? Would 
 Rome believe that Orazio had been silent 
 for the love of Giselda ? Would anyone 
 believe that Buonavoglio had not acted 
 under instructions from the Vatican ? Then 
 there was that affair of Ugomonte — the 
 duel that had been so successfully hushed 
 up and the cause of it so cleverly quashed. 
 Then there was the intt-oduction of Sperata 
 into the Palazzo Veroni, the secret between 
 Orazio and Gloria, finally the letter, most 
 precious weapon of all to wield against the 
 Principessa and her allies — old Beppina's 
 death confession. Ah, it would be a terrible 
 smash, a scandal that would echo from one 
 end of the world to the other if Buonavoglio 
 were arrested ! He had known what he was 
 about, this cunning priest, when, after due 
 deliberation, he had seen that his only 
 chance of salvation lay in the intervention 
 
212 The Magic of Rome 
 
 of one or other or both of these great 
 families of Rome. They were the two 
 families whose allegiance the Vatican 
 coveted most, and whose attitude caused 
 the most anxiety. It had been rumoured 
 even that both were adherents of the 
 Quirinal, and had not openly declared 
 themselves so in order to still obtain 
 favours of the Vatican or to discover its 
 secrets. Others, again, declared that it 
 was Giselda's way of thinking alone that 
 prevented Sant Angioli declaring himself 
 a loyal supporter of the Vatican. The 
 crucial moment had now arrived when 
 three families would have to arraign them- 
 selves on one side or the other ; and if 
 either desired a favour of the Vatican or 
 the Quirinal, it would be the moment when 
 either power could exact its own price and 
 make its own conditions. So far everything 
 looked in favour of the Quirinal, but there 
 were other complications. It might be that 
 the influence of Veroni and Sant Angioli, 
 their wish to hush up family secrets and to 
 avert scandal, would have power with the 
 Quirinal, but it might also be that, when 
 action on their part was stayed, the Vatican 
 
The Magic of Rome 213 
 
 might rise with the secrets it had discovered 
 and demand an explanation, making the 
 price of its silence an open declaration of 
 devotion to the Holy See and loyal support 
 of temporal power. Even if the little episode 
 of Graziosa came to the ears of the Pope, 
 was it not more than likely that services of 
 such magnitude would obtain every pardon 
 as their reward? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 He could not for that refuse to go and see 
 the Cardinal Merlini, who had written to 
 him to come and see him, nor could he 
 prevent the further revelations the police 
 might unearth. To discover immediately 
 some way out of the difficulty, or to fly. 
 To fly meant failure, and Buonavoglio 
 would not believe that he had been born 
 to failure. It seemed so unlikely. Almost, 
 it seemed, better to him that disgrace should 
 fall upon him rather than failure ; a disgrace 
 that would involve others was preferable to 
 flight. He knew quite well why Cardinal 
 Merlini had been chosen to act the comedy 
 of reproach dictated by the Vatican. The 
 very simplicity of Cardinal Merlini's single- 
 minded nature would make him act with a 
 genuineness that would avert suspicion, and 
 if he failed, if someone was to suffer, Merlini 
 
 was the cardinal whose services could be 
 214 
 
The Magic of Rome 215 
 
 most dispensed with, because he was not a 
 bigot. He was known to be a Liberal, a 
 frequenter of the society which had not 
 declared itself either on this side or that. 
 If a scandal came to light it would be 
 quite easy to make a scapegoat of Merlini. 
 The visit to him, Buonavoglio knew, meant 
 nothing ; what was far more urgent was to 
 discover a way out if the Quirinal became 
 tiresome. Slowly there flitted to his brain 
 a scheme which it would take time to 
 mature, and then he started for his visit to 
 Cardinal Merlini, whom he found just finish- 
 ing his luncheon. Merlini's face bore the 
 saddened expression of one who is really 
 sorry when a friend, or even a stranger, is 
 found tripping. 
 
 "Ah, my dear Buonavoglio, what is all this 
 I hear.-" How did it all come about? You 
 to be mixed up in such a thing. Tell me all 
 about it." He assumed the encouraging, 
 inspiring tone that had been his when he had 
 to hear confessions as a priest. He had ex- 
 pected to see a man covered with confusion, 
 penitent, disturbed in mind, but the priest 
 knew too well Napoleon's maxim, "On vant 
 ce qu' on vent valoir." To show one sign 
 
2i6 The Magic of Rome 
 
 of flinching would be to own himself at the 
 mercy of the Vatican. He had a bolder 
 stroke than this to play. It was with a touch 
 almost of insolence that he seated himself at 
 the opposite side of the table, and, crossing 
 his legs, retorted, — 
 
 " All this means that I have obeyed my 
 orders too well, perhaps, for in these days 
 discretion is better than obedience." 
 
 The Cardinal leaned half-way across the 
 table, in his astonishment and horror, while 
 Buonavoglio unfolded his extraordinary tale, 
 which had so many touches of real truth 
 interwoven that it appeared like one long 
 chain of fact. 
 
 " Ah, my son, my son, why did you not 
 come to me ? " 
 
 " I wish indeed that I had." 
 " You know that I am one of those who 
 cannot believe, even for a good cause, that it 
 is right to do wrong. It seems to me con- 
 trary to all the traditions of common sense 
 and religion. We have no account of such 
 a thing in any of the Scriptures. Except per- 
 haps in the case of Jacob and Esau, God has 
 always shown most plainly that swift punish- 
 ment visited the erring even when they in- 
 
The Magic of Rome 217 
 
 tended good by their error. The wrath of 
 Moses was just wrath, but he was punished 
 for it." 
 
 The priest had no sympathy with the 
 Cardinal's scruples or precedents. But he 
 was anxious to get to the subject-matter of 
 his visit. 
 
 " I may have been wrong," he said, in a 
 tone that implied he didn't think so, " but it 
 was not my business to question." 
 
 Cardinal Merlini was beginning to get a 
 little angry with a wrath like that of Moses. 
 
 " And then you must forgive me for allud- 
 ing to it, but, figlio mio, there is the question 
 of the boy — the boy that is supposed to be 
 yours. That, after all, was not by order of 
 the Vatican." Neither saw the humour of the 
 Cardinal's remark, which remained unnoticed 
 by the two men. If they noticed it, neither 
 commented upon it. 
 
 " There is no truth in that statement. The 
 son of that peasant woman is not mine. On 
 the contrary, I believe him to be — in fact, I 
 know him to belong to one of the oldest 
 families of Italy." 
 
 Even the dear old Cardinal could not pre- 
 vent a gleam of eagerness overspreading his 
 
2i8 The Magic of Rome 
 
 features, for where is the Roman who loves 
 not gossip ? It is nectar to him. Besides, 
 he was immensely relieved to find that his 
 friend was innocent of the grosser crime 
 attributed to him, for one can make so much 
 out of a partial truth. The priest grew almost 
 lachrymose at the injustice of the accusation. 
 Almost it was on his lips to tell the Cardinal 
 the whole story, but here again the Cardinal 
 was not likely to be sympathetic, nor likely 
 to condone the kidnapping of the child on 
 account of the good it was supposed to 
 bring to the house of Sant Angioli or the 
 Church. 
 
 But there was little comfort or counsel to 
 be gathered from his visit to the Cardinal. 
 The danger did not for the moment lie with 
 the Vatican. There were too many im- 
 brogliati for them to covet a scandal. The 
 difficulty lay with the Quirinal. Action on 
 their part must be stopped, and the priest, as 
 he walked back to his apartments, for he was 
 none too anxious to be seen abroad, wondered 
 how he could best stop that action. It would 
 have to be done through one of the families 
 who had influence on both sides. 
 
 And now the evening paper men shrieked 
 
The Magic of Rome 219 
 
 out in the streets and beneath the windows 
 of Merlini and Buonavoglio, — " Arresto 
 del assailante del Re." He had grown 
 to the dimensions of an assailant, this 
 poor boy who had never meant to attack the 
 King. Startled from the perusal of a bundle 
 of letters, Buonavoglio paced his room. If 
 someone was arrested and not he, evidently 
 suspicion had not yet fallen on him. Yet 
 which was it of them who had been arrested? 
 Was it one who would betray or be silent ? 
 Was it one of the Societa at all, or were they 
 on the false scent ? That was the most likely. 
 The newspaper man's cry was dying away 
 already when he called Anne from the 
 kitchen and bade her, at the risk of leaving 
 the roast ortolans she was preparing for his 
 supper to burn, to run after the man and buy 
 the paper. Anne thought she had never 
 seen him so excited. 
 
 And now, as he spread it out beneath the 
 dim oil lamp, he felt sick at heart, for who 
 could tell what secrets would be revealed by 
 the arrest of the would-be assassin ? The 
 paragraph was startling enough in all con- 
 science, although it did not mention his name. 
 It was a brief account of how a young lad, 
 
2 20 The Magic of Rome 
 
 supposed to be the son of a priest, had been 
 arrested as the suspected one of a crowd of 
 Anarchists who had been in the habit of 
 meeting in the Piazza Tivoli. The young 
 man assumed an attitude that was at once 
 callous and dignified. He refused to* give 
 his name or give the names of accomplices of 
 his. He was described as very good-looking. 
 He behaved with docility and calmness. 
 
 It was no good delaying matters any 
 longer. The only people in the world who 
 could save the situation were the Sant 
 Angiolis, and the only way to approach 
 them was through Gloria. Without giving 
 himself time to consider further, the priest 
 sent a note down to Gloria : — 
 
 " You must forgive my attempt to break 
 through your conditions, but there are events 
 in life which make even the breaking of a 
 promise permissible. For your sake I must 
 see you for a moment. — Your respectfully 
 devoted Buonavoglio." 
 
 As Gloria received the letter it seemed to 
 her as if all the past she had most hated, all 
 the discomfort of conscience, the dreads had 
 
The Magic of Rome 221 
 
 returned, as if phantoms rose and mocked 
 her with gaunt fingers. The years that lay- 
 between the then and now had made it even 
 more painful, this sudden unloading of her 
 youth's casket, and worst of all she had no 
 one of whom to ask counsel. No one but 
 Orazio, for even Giselda could not be ap- 
 proached on this subject. Yes, she would 
 have liked to see Orazio first, to ask him if 
 it was necessary that she should see this 
 man — the man whose presence and physiog- 
 nomy seemed to take years off her life, and 
 certainly off her peace of mind. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 To-day was to be a difficult day, for Gloria 
 would not be alone with her perplexity nor 
 able to work out in peace the problems 
 presenting themselves to her, for there was 
 Sperata's anxiety to be assuaged — Sperata's 
 anxiety which had such close links with 
 Gloria's and yet which was so different. 
 
 There was also to tell Ubaldo of the 
 letter Sperata had received. What would 
 he say when he knew that the youth who 
 cared for Sperata was in prison awaiting 
 his trial for being interested in the plot 
 against the King? Perhaps, much as the 
 lie she had acted had weighed on Gloria, 
 it had never weighed on her so much as 
 to-day, when speech or silence held such 
 importance, would weigh so easily the 
 balance either way on which things serious 
 almost to sacredness were poised. 
 
The Magic of Rome 223 
 
 There are few of us who do not one day 
 meet face to face the lie we have told, and it 
 seems to us as if it asked us the road it 
 should take, and we stand there and cannot 
 tell it, for if we bade it go straight on the 
 world would scoff us to death, and if we 
 bid it turn, then, perhaps, there's death itself 
 — death of the soul. 
 
 She knew quite well that Ubaldo would 
 refuse his own daughter's hand to the youth 
 who had plotted against the King. Was 
 it then to be that Sperata's heart must 
 break (for Roman courage never breaks, 
 but Roman hearts do) or Gloria confess her 
 secret ? It looked like it. Yes, in the pre- 
 sence of all that sunshine it seemed as if 
 there was no way out but the straight one. 
 Gloria leaned on her balcony and wondered 
 whither the straight road would lead, for 
 on the straight road there are many toll- 
 gates of pain. She thought of these seven- 
 teen years of happiness and silent triumph, 
 the triumph of love, of a love that speaks 
 not for very happiness and pride. Was she 
 to go back to those first years when she was 
 always alone? Only now it would be ten 
 thousand times worse with the knowledge of 
 
224 The Magic of Rome 
 
 a long, long secret, a long-drawn lie of 
 seventeen years. And then the scandal if it 
 all came out ! No, it would not come out, she 
 knew that ; Ubaldo would never allow such a 
 scandal. He would save his own name and 
 her own, but it would be to drag him into 
 the living lie — to ask him, for her sake, 
 to share the secret he would scorn and 
 loathe. Oh, how she cursed herself for the 
 folly with which she had purchased those 
 seventeen years of bliss ! The crisis of her 
 life had been reached and she did not know 
 how to meet it. There was a fearful con- 
 fusion in her thoughts. There was a great 
 deal that she must do and arrange, but 
 hovering over her, like a bird of ill-omen with 
 black wings, was the horror and dismay 
 whether she must tell Ubaldo, whether the 
 events that were to follow would unearth her 
 secret. But first and foremost her duty was 
 to tell Orazio that his son was found. What 
 would he say ? what would he feel when 
 he was told that his son was the arrested 
 Anarchist ? Would he not wish him dead ? 
 Would he not kill the priest who had thus 
 filched from his son his proud inheritance of 
 noble, lofty thoughts just as he had filched 
 
The Magic of Rome 225 
 
 the son from his parents ? She was begin- 
 ning to see more clearly through the tangled 
 web of complications that had been woven by 
 intrigue around the witchery of the " Magic 
 of Rome." If the boy was Sant Angioli's, 
 then she had no doubt that Sperata must be 
 the child of the priest. Buonavoglio's child ! 
 Almost for a moment there sprang up a 
 hatred of the child. How had he dared? 
 Yet who was she to blame duplicity? — she 
 who had stooped to duplicity for over seven- 
 teen years — over seventeen years. 
 
 At that moment the old Maggiordomo 
 announced the Marchese Orazio, who had 
 come in answer to a note from Gloria. With 
 infinite gentleness she told him what she 
 had discovered, and as she spoke, putting 
 more tenderness, perhaps, than she knew into 
 her voice, the two remembered how they had 
 stood over Sperata's cradle together and 
 watched her sleeping. What she was not 
 prepared for was the effect the story of 
 her discovery made upon Orazio. Throwing 
 his arms across the table by which he had 
 been seated he sobbed like a child, and 
 all the words Gloria could distinguish, as she 
 tried to soothe him, were, — 
 
 p 
 
2 26 The Magic of Rome 
 
 " Giselda, my poor, poor Giselda." 
 
 As he hurried back to his palazzo he 
 wondered how she would bear it. Perhaps 
 it was the ending of their happiness and 
 confidence. It would be a dreadful double 
 shock to Giselda, this sudden joy mingled 
 with shame and grief, and a wonderful reve- 
 lation, but it must be done. There had 
 never been any secrets between these two 
 but this one, no secrets even of thought ; he 
 knew how she despised his religion and its 
 deteriorating effect on the nations and people 
 that professed it, and she knew how near 
 he was to believing like herself, only dared 
 not, and now, after all these years, he won- 
 dered if each believed in or loved each 
 other well enough, if their confidence was 
 great enough for each to grasp the want of 
 confidence that had been forced upon him. 
 What was there in the faces of the servants, 
 in the strange stillness of the house, that 
 seemed of evil augur? 
 
 " Where is the Marchesa ? " he asked 
 involuntarily. 
 
 Old Domingo came forward and whispered 
 in the Marchesa's ear, so that the footmen 
 should not hear, " The Excellenza went for 
 
The Magic of Rome 227 
 
 a drive an hour ago, but returned suddenly- 
 looking very sturbata. She is in her bed- 
 room." 
 
 Sant Angioli understood. He was too 
 late. She had heard. He did not know 
 that the street was ringing already with the 
 news that the would-be assassin of the king 
 was the son of a well-known Roman noble- 
 man. But it was by one of those swift 
 coincidences that are almost accidents, and 
 yet which make up life, that Giselda had 
 heard the news. She had been trying on 
 clothes at Maconi's, and through a thin 
 wooden partition she had heard, without 
 wishing to hear, the following conversation 
 between the Duchessa de Savioli and the 
 frivolous little Contessa OHvo. 
 
 " Isn't it too extraordinary ? Sant Angioli's 
 son after all these years ? And- a socialito ! 
 What a blow for the Sant Angiolis, although 
 I have heard that since his marriage he 
 grows whiter every day." 
 
 "His hair certainly does." It was the 
 frivolous Contessa Olivo that spoke. 
 
 " Enough to make it. They say even 
 the Marchesa thought it was dead." 
 
 " Ah, those priests, my dear ; they are 
 
228 The Magic of Rome 
 
 wonderful people! If we ordinary mortals 
 did half the wi — " 
 
 "Hush, hush!" It was a very Black 
 duchess who spoke. Their voices were 
 low, and the names of Gloria Veroni and 
 Buonavoglio were mentioned, but Giselda 
 had heard enough. Her knees trembled, 
 she felt faint and dizzy. It seemed to her 
 as if she must stagger into the next cubicle 
 and ask these women what they meant, but 
 the truly well-bred woman's horror of a 
 scandal rose in her mind. She told the 
 woman who came to try her on that she 
 felt ill. Indeed, the shop people had 
 wondered to see her at all, for the story 
 that it was her son who had been arrested 
 was already all over the town, and she had 
 not seemed to them a hard, vain woman, or 
 one who cared nothing for others. Like 
 one in a dream she told the servants to 
 drive home. It seemed to her as if she 
 were choking, and slowly, slow as the frosts 
 of winter turn slowly to icicles in the rain- 
 pools, so gradually her love for Orazio 
 turned to hate. . He had deceived her for 
 seventeen years. He and his mother and 
 the priest, they had deceived her, taken her 
 
The Magic of Rome 229 
 
 little one, the little one who would have 
 thought and believed like her, and let him 
 be brought up amongst bad people. Ah, 
 they were all bad, these Papists ; false as 
 hell, cruel, selfish, malicious, barbarous even, 
 so that 1 they could stride along their ambi- 
 tious way untrammelled. What did it matter 
 to them if a soul perished, so that it perished 
 not in the hated faith they dread and loathe 
 at once, and can only defeat by craft and 
 lying .'' A quick shrivingj the muttered 
 words, Joseph, Marie, Jesu, and Jesus last, 
 the hostie and a little holy oil, and the erring 
 one is quickly brought into the fold. 
 
 Where lay the glory now to Rome of what 
 it had done ? Was it bettef so ? The child 
 arrested for complicity in the murder of a 
 king, or growing up an honourable gentle- 
 man, albeit a heretic, beneath his mother's 
 care ? And with all the sorrow, all the 
 shame, was a fierce, vindictive joy, that was 
 not like Giselda, that they had been foiled 
 by the might God alone possesses, neither 
 of craft nor scheming, but strength — ^of 
 strength — and who can bring whatsoever He 
 will to pass in despite of all man's planning, 
 for " there is no king saved by the multitude 
 
230 The Magic of Rome 
 
 of an host. A mighty man is not delivered 
 by much strength. An horse is a vain thing 
 for safety, neither shall he deliver any by his 
 great strength." 
 
 He was alive after all, if in chains, the 
 heretic heir of Sant Angioli. Something 
 within her whispered that he would yet 
 possess the land. To be sure, it would 
 make a difference to her second son, but 
 he would not mind, she had brought him 
 up to regret the death of the little brother 
 he had never known. If she knew him as 
 well as she thought, he would hate and 
 loathe the priestcraft that had done this 
 thing, and as she drove along hot tears 
 welled to her eyes and she held her parasol 
 close over her head lest any friend should 
 see her and wonder what ailed the Marchesa 
 after all those years of joyous peace. Little 
 wonder if her tears fell, for the trust and 
 confidence that had broken down within her 
 after all these years, after all these years. 
 To some natures there is something in 
 falseness which withers and appals. It 
 seemed to Giselda as if she must leave 
 Rome at once lest she should be swallowed 
 up in the moral earthquake that trembled 
 
The Magic of Rome 231 
 
 beneath her feet. Orazio false, false to the 
 extent of allowing her son to be taken from 
 her, aiding the priests, telling her a lie, 
 knowing where he was and not telling her, 
 oh, it was cruel, cruel, and she paced her 
 room like a mad woman. She locked her 
 door, and when her maid and children 
 knocked and begged for admittance she 
 would not answer them. There was no sen- 
 timent, no pretence, no hysteria in her grief, 
 but only the massing of a hundred disillu- 
 sions round her heart, the gathering of 
 many pain - clouds that flashed forked 
 tongues before her eyes and rolled in sullen 
 thunder to her heart, and while she paced 
 the room she wrung her hands and sobbed, 
 " My son, my son ! Where is my son ? 
 Where have they taken him?" To her grief- 
 stricken heart it seemed that even now they 
 would keep him from her, and then it was 
 that Orazio sprang up the stairs to face all 
 that he knew lay before him, and tried the 
 door of his wife's room and called out, 
 " Giselda, Giselda ! I have news for you, 
 open." Had she gone mad ? he asked 
 himself, and then at last she unlocked the 
 door and threw it open, but this pale, proud 
 
232 The Magic of Rome 
 
 woman, with tear-stained face so pale, with 
 haggard eyes, was not the Giselda he had 
 known till then. It was the woman whom 
 he had deceived for seventeen years, whose 
 child had been taken from her by the Magic 
 of Rome. 
 
 When Giselda faced Orazio at the door of 
 her bedroom he realised for the first time 
 fully how hard it would be for her to believe 
 that he had had no part in this. She would 
 blame him bitterly for not having prosecuted 
 Buonavoglio. She could not blame him more 
 than he blamed himself. , At the moment it 
 had seemed to him that it was useless to 
 bring scandal on the Church, especially as he 
 had satisfied himself that the priest, once he 
 had been found out and once he had owned 
 the deception Beppina had practised, had 
 done everything to find the child. But now 
 face to face with the wild, piteous look of 
 Giselda, the strange, cold look that was so 
 unlike her, he realised that all Rome should 
 have been stirred up. The King and the 
 Pope should have been appealed to to punish 
 this man who had robbed the heir of Sant 
 Angioli not only of his birthright of wealth 
 and grandeur, but of his birthright of educa- 
 
The Magic of Rome 233 
 
 tion, religion, affection, the birthrights which 
 alone make existence possible. And now, as 
 he stood before the woman he so lov^d and 
 who had suffered more than he knew for the 
 sake of her faith, he felt guilty. He felt 
 ashamed of his religion, his Church, his Pope ; 
 ashamed of a people that could act thus 
 crookedly, calling right wrong and the 
 crooked straight. 
 
 " I must go to him," she said feverishly. 
 " Where is he? " In her eyes there was all 
 the agonised look of the mother who dreads 
 that they will still keep her child from her. 
 
 " You shall go," he said, as he entered the 
 room. " You shall go at once, the carriage 
 is still waiting downstairs." There was a 
 slight, very slight, relaxation of the tension 
 over the eyes at his words. " But before 
 you go you must hear the story, you have 
 not seen him till now. I was about to break 
 to you to-day the news that it was our son 
 who is ^X ^& prefettura." 
 
 " Ah, my poor, poor boy ! It is not his sin, 
 not his sin. It is the fault of those who so 
 cruelly robbed him." As she spoke he could 
 read in her eyes that she thought he had been 
 a party to this thing. 
 
234 The Magic of Rome 
 
 "And this is what you call" religion?'^ 
 She shuddered as she spoke, shuddered with 
 horror and disgust, and with dull misery. 
 " I must go to him," she said suddenly, 
 beginning to fasten the lace at her 
 throat, 
 
 " And I am coming with you." Sant 
 Angioli's voice was grave and full of reproach. 
 It seemed to say, " When have I deceived 
 you in all these years that you should not 
 believe me now ? " Ah ! how little she knew 
 all the concessions he had made from his 
 religion to hers. All he had gone through 
 for her sake from relations, friends, and from 
 the Vatican. Yet now she turned from 
 him. 
 
 " You ? " she exclaimed. ' ' You can bear to 
 come too ? " Yet in her heart she was glad, 
 for she was afraid, terribly afraid of this 
 interview with the son she had never 
 known. 
 
 " Giselda, you must hear me." He tried to 
 take her hand, but she held them both close 
 to her, and he let his arms fall by his side 
 with a gesture that was full of pain. " As 
 you will," he said, and then while she stood 
 there he spoke and told her all he had done. 
 
The Magic of Rome 235 
 
 How he had visited the little cofifin at the 
 dead of the night, and of how he had 
 employed the police for years to try and find 
 the child, and as she read between the lines 
 the love that had kept this secret from her 
 for seventeen years, her tears fell fast, and, 
 speechless, she stretched out her two hands 
 to her husband, and he drew her close to him 
 and kissed her as he had kissed her twenty 
 years ago, and drew her tiny hands that were 
 so cold with grief under his coat and held 
 them tight to his heart, the heart that beat so 
 loudly for her alone, notwithstanding the 
 " Magic of Rom^." And then the two went 
 together to the prefettura to see their son — 
 the son to whom they owed seventeen years 
 of love and happiness. It was that same 
 evening that Giselda had gone to Gloria's 
 house, and that -tne three women had cried 
 together, and that Gloria had cried too, 
 although there was no apparent reason for it. 
 It was of course all over Rome that Sant 
 Angioli's son had been found. Some of the 
 stories were distorted enough in all con- 
 science, but it was wonderful how some people 
 got at the truth all the same. The name of 
 Sant Angioli was on every lip, and naturally, 
 
236 The Magic of Rome 
 
 perhaps, the names of friends and acquaint- 
 ances of theirs were drawn in too. Especially 
 that of the Veroni's, for they were supposed 
 to have very much the same political leanings 
 as the Sant Angiolis. All Rome wondered 
 now what Sant Angioli would do to save his 
 son. The Blacks, as a matter of fact, would 
 have preferred to see him go over to the 
 King rather than have this hideous scandal 
 for the Church laid open. Rumour had it 
 now that the child was Gloria's, that Veroni 
 was going to divorce her, and that Giselda 
 had left Rome. This was the gossip of Rome, 
 but it had not yet reached the ears of the two 
 families concerned. Early in the morning 
 till late at night people speculated as to what 
 was going to happen. It seemed likely to 
 none that the House of Savoy would lose 
 this opportunity of slating the Vatican. Still 
 less did it seem probable that Sant Angioli 
 would not make some appeal to save his son. 
 To be sure it was rumoured that the boy was 
 mad. It would not go very hard with him, 
 but a casa di Metti is not much pleasanter 
 than a prison. All Giselda's enemies (and 
 the pure and the beautiful have many) were 
 delighted, for her happy married life was the 
 
The Magic of Rome 237 
 
 envy of all Roman matrons. But as yet the 
 public did not see the dark cloud that w^s 
 hovering over Gloria's head — not the real 
 cloud, anyway. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Twenty times that day the good Superiore of 
 the monastery of San Antonio opened the 
 door and looked across the wide, dreary 
 Campagna to see if there was not a carriage 
 coming that way from Rome, and twenty 
 times a day he went to the end of the 
 cloisters, placed his hand on the handle of 
 a little door in the wall, and returned to the 
 monastery without opening it. In such a 
 state of dreamy abstraction was the Superiore 
 that when Padre Leonardo came to report 
 that Padre Guido had eaten meat on Friday 
 he merely muttered, " Cuique groini d'indul- 
 gensa" (Five days' indulgence), instead of 
 pronouncing a penance, and the good monk 
 went away shaking his head. 
 
 " Most certainly the good Superiore had 
 been tasting the Sorbiero," and then a 
 monk came and whispered something to 
 238 
 
The Magic of Rome 239 
 
 the Superiore, and he looked frightened and 
 said, " I will come, I will come." But two or 
 three hours went by and he did not leave 
 his library. Then he pushed them all from 
 him, and got up and paced his room again 
 for quite an hour, till the shadows of even- 
 ing grew long and the sky turned orange 
 with dying glory behind the dark cypresses, 
 and the garden of the monastery looked like 
 one of the backgrounds of Leonardo da 
 Vinci's paintings, for Nature is Art and Art 
 Nature in that land of beauty, where sculp- 
 ture is almost music and pictures are 
 prayers, 
 
 A monk came and whispered that supper 
 was laid in the refectory, and the Superiore 
 <Jid not move. 
 
 " Brother Francesco will say grace," he 
 muttered, yet there was a gleam in his eyes 
 — in his brown eyes that were golden now 
 with the reflected light that hung in the 
 skies — for this was the hour he had waited 
 for, the hour when all the monks would be 
 at supper. He must make haste now, for 
 the monks would not be long at their meal. 
 He could hear the subdued buzzing of their 
 voices as he walked rapidly along the 
 
240 The Magic of Rome 
 
 cloisters. No doubt they were wondering 
 why, after thirty years, he missed coming to 
 say grace. Ah, he had been a fool the day 
 he had listened to Buonavoglio ! Who knew 
 what was going to happen now? In his 
 mind's eye there were vistas of the police 
 entering the beautiful little monastery where 
 he had been so peaceful for so many years. 
 And now he turned the handle of the little 
 door, and paused as he looked down the 
 uneven row of dark stone steps, along the 
 sides of which grew little mosses, lichens 
 and tiny fungi thriving gloomily in the damp, 
 knowing nothing of the sun except from 
 tradition, and now he drew a key from his 
 pocket and gathered up his skirts and bent 
 his head, lest it should touch the slanting 
 wall above which supported the part of the 
 stairs which led upwards. 
 
 As he descended it struck him for the first 
 time how damp it smelt. And now the passage 
 along which he stumbled was pitch dark, and 
 as he groped the key rang out against the 
 stone wall with a threatening clang. And 
 now he felt over the door he had come to 
 with his hand till he came to the keyhole. 
 The key was in the lock, and still he hesi- 
 
The Magic of Rome 241 
 
 tated. It was twenty years now since he 
 had entered here. Twenty years is a long 
 time. The Superiore had been a middle-aged 
 man then, tall and erect ; now he was over 
 sixty, with only ten years before him of the 
 allotted span of existence. Twenty years, 
 no, nearly twenty-one, now that he remem- 
 bered the day and the month. Twenty-one 
 years of darkness, of loneliness, of speechless- 
 ness, of forgetfulness. How well he remem- 
 bered that night ! He could see it now, and 
 he groaned as he remembered it. The tall, 
 slim, young figure, the boyish face, the closed 
 eyes, the arms as they hung down with 
 stupor as he and Buonavoglio had carried 
 the figure along in the dark, except for the 
 lantern Padre Francesco held high above 
 them. He remembered how they had laid 
 him down, and how quickly Padre Buon- 
 avoglio had turned away. And the Superiore 
 remembered more still. He remembered 
 how the sleeping figure had stirred, and 
 fearing lest it should wake he had quickly 
 followed the Padre and banged the door after 
 him ; and now as he stood there he remem- 
 bered, too, how as they hurried along they 
 had heard a terrific noise of someone beating 
 
 Q 
 
242 The Magic of Rome 
 
 against and tearing at the door. He remem- 
 bered, too, how he had sat up all that night 
 and wondered if he were doing right, for 
 Padre Buonavoglio had left without a word. 
 And after twenty years how could he face the 
 figure that had lain there for twenty years 
 and more? What would he see or hear 
 when he opened the door? But it must 
 be done. Supper was nearly over. The 
 prisoner was ill, ill unto death, Francesco 
 thought. What was best, that he should live 
 or die ? If he died to-night they could bury 
 him and all would be well, unless — unless 
 they came and asked for him. The Superiore 
 was sore afraid as he turned the key in the 
 lock, his heart beating and his face two 
 shades whiter than its usual yellow, jaun- 
 diced, unfed hue. The door was open now, 
 and through the bars of the tiny window, a 
 little more than a grating that was cut in 
 the opposite wall of the room, the orange 
 glory was turning slowly to sapphire, and 
 the Superiore noticed that a tiny star had 
 climbed close to the dying sun, perched like 
 a swallow on the edge of an eagle's nest, 
 looking wan and white in the midst of so 
 much refulgence, like a daisy alone in a field 
 
The Magic of Rome 243 
 
 of saffron buttercups. And with pitying, 
 farewell glance a faint ray of evening sun 
 rested on a huddled, groaning mass in the 
 darkest corner of the room. The Superiore 
 closed the door carefully after him. Then 
 he approached the figure. 
 
 " You suffer ? " he said kindly, and at- 
 tempted to help him to raise himself. The 
 figure crouched further away, terrified, and 
 raised its hand as if to ward off a blow, proof 
 sufficient of how Padre Francesco had kept 
 his trust. 
 
 "Ah, Poveretto ! I do not come to hurt 
 you." The creature looked up with the 
 glance of a wounded animal seeking sym- 
 pathy in the eyes of the passers-by. 
 
 He crossed his hands in front of him and 
 gazed down with pity and the dawning of a 
 terrible remorse on the human wreck before 
 him. For the first time he asked himself 
 why he had listened to the counsel of Buon- 
 avoglio and obeyed him thus blindly. Why 
 had he obeyed the man without any apparent 
 compelling on his part, except that strongest 
 of all compelling, the ascendency of a strong 
 brain over a weak one, the strong influence 
 of an imposing personality which is greater 
 
244 The Magic of Rome 
 
 than the prerogative of kings. He recalled, 
 as he looked at the sort of man-beast that 
 cowered there, unconscious of the presence of 
 its soul, if soul there still could be in one so 
 lost to all the rights of humanity and man- 
 hood, how Padre Buonavoglio had told him 
 that it was the Pope's wish that this man 
 should disappear, that his presence was 
 dangerous not only to the Vatican but to the 
 cause of the Church, the cause of Christianity, 
 to the good of all Italy. He had imagined 
 that the nameless youth that had been 
 brought to the monastery late at night, osten- 
 sibly to hear Padre Guido play on the organ, 
 was a dangerous Nihilist or Anarchist, or at 
 least an Atheist perverting the doctrines and 
 morals of the Roman Church. He could 
 remember now the way the youth had stag- 
 gered from the refectory, and how Buona- 
 voglio had led him to an arm-chair and bade 
 the Superiore come away and leave him to 
 rest, and how presently the lad had fallen 
 into a heavy sleep and sunk to the ground, 
 and then how at dead of night the two had 
 carried him to the half-cellar, half-dungeon 
 in which, in the years of the Inquisition, many 
 a mysterious prisoner from the Vatican had 
 
The Magic of Rome 245 
 
 lived and died, and only been taken from 
 it to be buried in the little cemetery side by 
 side with the dead monks who had died 
 to the outer world so many years before they 
 were buried; And as he looked at the 
 creature before him, the huddled figure, the 
 dirty, long nails, the begrimed, unshaven 
 face, the clogged, heavy meshes of hair that 
 hung over his face, the drawn expression of 
 one who had not eaten or slept properly for 
 over twenty years — over twenty years — -the 
 Superiore grew suddenly wiser with a wisdom 
 that terrified himself. 
 
 "What right has anyone?" he asked 
 himself, " to deal thus with a fellow-creature ? 
 What was he to do ? Perchance the man 
 might die that night. It would be better 
 so, but if he lived ? " A horrible thought 
 crossed his mind for one instant. There was 
 no doubt in his mind that Padre Francesco 
 had ill-treated this poor creature reduced to 
 imbecility by the power of the powerful 
 potion, but the thought only flitted past, and 
 as the Superiore raised his eyes towards the 
 sky, as if instinctively to appeal to heaven for 
 counsel, he saw that the sun had dropped 
 behind the dark crest of the hills, leaving a 
 
246 The Magic of Rome 
 
 pale green enamelling behind, that looked 
 like turquoise that had been bathed in 
 streams, and only the little star remained, 
 twinkling stronger now above the copper 
 cypress trees as if it had been on trust by 
 day till morning returned. And the 
 Superiore's heart grew cold within him, for 
 it was quite dark, and he was alone with 
 this human soulless thing, and now it seemed 
 to him as if the creature moved and struggled 
 to its feet, and across the faint gloaming the 
 Superiore could see that Franceso had bound 
 him by a long cord to the bars of the 
 window. The other end was fastened to his 
 wrist. Was it fancy, or in the darkness could 
 be discerned the prisoner's head close to his 
 wrist and detect a slobbering, munching 
 noise as if the man was biting at the 
 cord ? 
 
 Slowly the Superiore moved a step back- 
 wards, slowly, slowly towards the door, but 
 now he fell against the stump of a tree that 
 had been fashioned into a rough seat for the 
 creature's use. He knocked his foot painfully, 
 but he must be close to the door now, yet he 
 dared not turn his head. The creature stood 
 before him now, a dark mass against the 
 
The Magic of Rome 247 
 
 faint gradations of the colours of the sky. 
 Tall, and dark, and slim as the cypress trees 
 outside, stood the man — the man who had 
 had twenty years of his life robbed from 
 him. 
 
 Crash ! What is that and the clanking fall 
 of iron ? The creature had sprung forward,- 
 leaping over the tree-trunk, the place he 
 knew so well even in the darkness, and with 
 the force of his spring — a force no one could 
 have believed he possessed after all these 
 years— the bar of the window had fallen out 
 of its worn stone socket and fell rattling 
 to the ground, together with bits of stone 
 and cement, and the Superiore's heart sank 
 within him. The madman had him by the 
 throat now and was pinioning him to the 
 door, and beating his head against it. 
 The Superiore felt that his last hour had 
 come, and dimly coupled with the fear of 
 death came the thought that after all it was 
 the best way out. Ever since the crucifixion 
 there is not one of us that does not feel that 
 an enforced death means expiation. Life 
 for life, that is the implanted idea, hardened, 
 petrified with the hearts that Moses spoke to 
 and which can never rise to the inexpressible. 
 
248 The Magic of Rome 
 
 the impossible-to-grasp, yet ineffable theory 
 of forgiveness. 
 
 Against the door, flattened almost against 
 it, the Superiore sank to his knees, fainting 
 beneath the colossal strength of the madman, 
 a strength which could not last, because it 
 was borrowed, filched from the supernatural, 
 from the fevered possession of demons of 
 revolt. It was over twenty years' oppression, 
 of slow poisoning of the brain and cheating 
 of life, of light, of love and happiness, that 
 gripped at the Superiore's throat as he slowly 
 fell to his knees. Over twenty years, and 
 now already the madman's strength was fail- 
 ing, and, like the sound of distant music, a 
 beckoning from other lands, athwart the 
 singing, surging of blood to his ears came 
 the sound of tramping of feet, of men's 
 voices echoing in the cloisters. Whether 
 they were friends or foes it mattered not 
 so that they came and this hideous pain 
 ceased. The Superiore lay stretched across 
 the floor in the darkness, and the madman 
 stood and looked at what he had done 
 as Sant Angioli entered the room, and, in 
 the scant glow of the summer night, came 
 face to face with his long-lost brother — 
 
The Magic of Rome 249 
 
 lost twenty years ago by the Magic of 
 Rome. 
 
 And the little star, grown brilliant now 
 in its ebony setting, twinkled away, and 
 looked and looked, but said nothing. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 There were only two plans left by which 
 Buonavoglio, if one or .the other succeeded, 
 could hope to save himself from the social 
 cataclysm that awaited him, and from which 
 he had imagined that the Magic of Rome 
 or the astuteness of his own intelligence 
 would always avert. Of these two plans 
 the first was most distasteful to him, because 
 it savoured of failure. Some inward instinct 
 tojd him that it would be the latter that he 
 would have to resort to. Perhaps what 
 made him think of this only as an ultimate 
 resource was the fact that Gloria had not 
 replied to his note. The days were full of 
 sadness and excitement, and the dual anxiety 
 of Sperata's grief and her own dread of what 
 would presently transpire seemed to swamp 
 Gloria's time and thoughts, and underneath 
 everything lay the dread of seeing the man 
 she so hated What could he have to say ? 
 25c 
 
The Magic of Rome 251 
 
 She wondered, yet it was not wonder that 
 possessed her, it was certainty — the certainty 
 that he wished to appeal to her for help, to 
 threaten, to make capital of the secret they 
 held between them — the shared offspring of 
 their united brains. But if it were not 
 to-day it would be to-morrow or the next 
 day. Worse, perhaps, if she refused to see 
 him. Yet, as the days wore on, it seemed 
 to her more difificult daily to make up her 
 mind, and, from fear, she scanned Ubaldo's 
 face each time he returned home to see if 
 anyone had yet whispered into his ears the 
 story that would in all probability ruin her 
 life for ever. There were but two ways oiit 
 — one, to appeal to Sant Angioli, and to 
 threaten ; the other, to threaten, and then, 
 if that failed, only to threaten Gloria. If 
 these failed, there remained flight or suicide. 
 Somehow the priest hardly felt afraid that 
 he would fail. A frightened woman will do 
 a great deal to stop a scandal. 
 
 Domizio almost fell back as the Padre 
 Buonavoglio, after all these years, stood at 
 the door of the Palazzo Sant Angioli and 
 demanded admittance. From sheer be- 
 wilderment he admitted him to the presence 
 
252 The Magic of Rome 
 
 of the Marchese. For one moment, as the 
 two Romans faced each other, it seemed to 
 Orazio as if he must fall upon the priest and 
 rend him ; crush the life out of the man who 
 had robbed him of his son, who had filched 
 from Giselda all the joys of motherhood 
 and given her instead shame and dis- 
 grace. 
 
 In one instant Buonavoglio felt just a touch 
 of shame, and then of fear, in the presence of 
 the man he had injured. He did not know 
 that he came late with his information, 
 that Orazio already knew that the lad who 
 lay in the suffocating prison of xh& prefettura 
 was his son. As he pronounced the words, 
 " I have come to try and make some 
 amends, to tell you something that will save 
 you and your family from scandal," a smile, 
 that was almost diabolical in its wrath, 
 curved the lips of Orazio, and he laughed 
 as he retorted, — 
 
 *' Are you not rather come to buy your 
 own safety at a price ? " Then, as the priest 
 gazed with ill-feigned surprise at him, he 
 rose from his seat and strode towards an 
 inner door, which he threw open, and the 
 priest turned a shade of pale yellow as his 
 
The Magic of Rome 253 
 
 eyes met the lights disclosed within. In the 
 centre of a room, draped with black, with the 
 arms of the Sant Angiolis in silver, stood a 
 coffin on trestles, a black velvet pall, richly 
 embroidered in silver, thrown over it. At 
 the foot two nuns knelt and prayed beneath 
 the lights of tall wax candles. There were 
 no wreaths of flowers or other signs of 
 mourning or of death, only the silence of 
 death and the soundless trembling of the 
 nuns' lips as they prayed. 
 
 " How dare you seek me ? How dare 
 you sully my house with your presence 
 while he lies there whose body and mind 
 you have destroyed ? — ^yes, perhaps whose 
 soul too, for aught we know— the mind and 
 body and soul of my brother." 
 
 And Padre Buonavoglio resolved that he 
 had only one trump card left to play, and in 
 the clutches of death he felt less sure of 
 whether that trump card would win. Then, 
 before he could respond, as he stood there 
 with bared, humiliated head, the Marchese 
 pointed to the door. 
 
 "Go!" he said. "Go while I can still 
 control myself sufficiently to let you depart 
 alive." And both remembered how once 
 
254 The Magic of Rome 
 
 before, nearly eighteen years ago, the 
 Marchese had bid him depart from the 
 castle. 
 
 And still Rome waited to see what Sant 
 Angioli would do. In the Black drawing- 
 rooms no one discussed the Sant Angiolis' 
 matter. It was much too painful, much too 
 delicate a question. Some even went so far 
 as to say that the story of the two successive 
 heirs being kidnapped by the priest had been 
 invented by the Whites, set abroad by the 
 Sant Angiolis to cover the disgrace of their 
 son. 
 
 But still Sant Angioli would not go to the 
 King. How could he ask a favour of the 
 man his son had plotted to kill ? To be sure 
 he knew that the Quirinal would only too 
 gladly receive him and do what he requested. 
 It would be easy enough to plead that the 
 boy was half-witted. After all, there had 
 been a plot, but no one had fired on the 
 King ; but Sant Angioli was the proud 
 descendant of a long line of proud men. 
 
 Ah, yes, Giselda, too, felt certain of this. 
 Perhaps if she begged Ubaldo he would go 
 to the King, but she knew what it would 
 cost him. They could plead madness, but 
 
The Magic of Rome 255 
 
 they knew quite well that he was not mad. 
 And would not his fate be a thousandfold 
 more terrible shut up for years, perhaps, in 
 a madhouse, detained at the King's pleasure. 
 Yet as daily she grew weaker it seemed to 
 Orazio that he must, for her sake, put aside 
 all pride and go and intercede with the 
 King. Surely when he knew that his 
 mother had not seen him for seventeen 
 years he would be touched. Yet to tell the 
 King the whole story of the deceit that had 
 been practised was to betray the Vatican's 
 most jealous secrets, and as Orazio gazed 
 round the tiny room he was sitting in it 
 seemed to him impossible that a Sant 
 Angioli, one whose family owed their very 
 origin to the Popes, could be so basely 
 disloyal as to do such a thing. The walls 
 were hung with portraits of Popes and 
 Cardinals ; on shelves and tables lay rare 
 books that had been gifts, chronicles, old 
 books of history, in which the name of Sant 
 Angioli figured always in closest connection 
 of loyal devotion to the Mother Church, A 
 Sant Angioli had been a cardinal. A Sant 
 Angioli had given his life for a Pope in the 
 earliest ages. A Sant Angioli had murdered 
 
256 The Magic of Rome 
 
 his wife because she had deserted the Church. 
 A Sant Angioli had mortgaged his estates to 
 feed the rapacious demands of some Pontiff 
 in the fourteenth century. Everywhere Sant 
 AngioHs, looming blacker than the black, till 
 that strange accident, caused by the pro- 
 fligacy of one Sant Angioli, an accident 
 which hitherto had been looked upon as a 
 curse and a punishment, when, to keep his 
 estates, a Sant Angioli had been obliged to 
 sell his freedom of faith to a heretic, and 
 the hated thing of error had crept in straight 
 into the very fold of Popery. Was it possible 
 then that centuries and customs had so 
 changed that now a Sant Angioli would 
 have once more to sell himself and his faith 
 again, impelled by the compelling force of 
 emergency ? Was it then Fate that ordered 
 once more this strange submission of the 
 traditions of his name ? Or was it, could it, 
 be a voice from Heaven calling once more 
 to the Sant Angiolis to come out and 
 separate themselves ? Filled as he was 
 with many of Giselda's ideas, it seemed to 
 him as if this was so, yet ... if it were not, 
 if it were only a terrible temptation of the 
 evil one? . . . 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 But while so many hearts suffered, while 
 Uberto waited in prison for the fiat he knew 
 must be pronounced, and which would once 
 more separate him from the parents whose 
 love was only just beginning to become 
 familiar to him, while Orazio inwardly re- 
 volted against the tyrannies of his Church, 
 yet feared to openly resist them, while 
 Giselda prayed for the body and soul of 
 her long-lost child, and Sperata cried out 
 her heart in her room on the back street, 
 there was one who was suffering more than 
 all the others, and this was Gloria. With, 
 all this gloom and sadness there had come 
 to her an intense loathing for the part she 
 had played, an intense longing to unburden 
 herself that was alone kept in check by an 
 incessant dread. Almost daily came a note 
 from Buonavoglio, sometimes pleading, some- 
 times threatening, but daily more insistent. 
 R 2S7 
 
258 The Magic of Rome 
 
 " If you will not see me," he wrote at 
 last, " you will drive me to using desperate 
 methods." The priest, too, was in no amiable 
 mood of thought. As the days advanced it 
 became more and more necessary for him to 
 take some decisive steps. It had been 
 respectfully submitted to the Vatican that 
 one week of respite only would be granted. 
 If between this and then the Vatican would 
 undertake to punish this erring priest the 
 matter would be dropped, if not, he would 
 be arrested as the others had been and the 
 whole scandal would be exposed. It was 
 clear enough that something decisive must 
 be done at once, and equally clear that no 
 influence was available but that of the 
 Veronis', and that only obtainable through 
 Gloria's fear of detection. And once more 
 the priest was compelled to appeal to the 
 good heart of the woman who had been his 
 mean but ready tool for so long. If the 
 Princess would not assist him, if she per- 
 sisted in ignoring his letters, some means, 
 must be found of frightening her. But 
 Graziosa was no longer to be so easily 
 manipulated ; her peasant cunning awakened 
 to the fact that Buonavoglio was now a wan- 
 
The Magic of Rome 259 
 
 ing star in the horizon of her welfare. The 
 secret of Uberto's identity was at an end, 
 he was reconciled to his parents. The 
 Sant Angiolis were far more worth keeping 
 in with than the priest, who, for aught any- 
 one knew, would soon be in prison. To be 
 sure there was the Principessa's secret to be 
 made use of, but Gloria had been very good 
 to Sperata, and the Italian peasant is grate- 
 ful. Besides, if the secret came out it might 
 end the glory of Sperata's position. It was 
 a new and awakened Graziosa that Buona- 
 voglio had to deal with. All she would 
 consent to do, under promise of a hundred 
 lire, was to obtain an interview with the 
 Princess. Under pretence of bringing news 
 from Sant Angioli to Sperata she obtained 
 admission to Gloria's presence, and there, in 
 subdued whispers, she informed her that the 
 priest threatened to go and reveal the whole 
 story to the Prince if Gloria would not 
 see him, and terrified, and with the convic- 
 tion that a terrible certainty was better than 
 the suspense she had gone through growing 
 strong upon her, Gloria consented to slip 
 away that night and meet him in Graziosa's 
 rooms. With a feeling of horror that seemed 
 
26o The Magic of Rome 
 
 to weigh her limbs down as with lead she 
 had followed the woman into her house. 
 What had the Principessa Veroni fallen to, 
 to traverse the streets at night following a 
 lavandaia into the presence of a low-born 
 priest, who could make terms with her, who 
 would make the worst, she was sure ? Oh, 
 how she hated him! She had committed 
 murder, was committing murder in her heart 
 if so the thought is deed, for if she could 
 have seen him lying dead she would have 
 laughed for joy. Oh, was there no one who 
 would tear this ugly weed out of her life ? 
 
 "You will stay with me." Gloria spoke 
 like a frightened child, and Graziosa, who 
 knew what she had felt in the presence of 
 Buonavoglio, said soothingly, " E E Ex- 
 cellenza, don't fear." But when they had 
 entered the dreary room the priest bid her 
 leave them, and Gloria was too frightened 
 to tell her to stay. 
 
 " You would not care for her to hear what 
 I have to tell you, Principessa." He pushed 
 a chair towards her, a rough, wooden chair, 
 but she would not sit. From sheer terror 
 she had grown calmer. She stood there 
 against the old carved wooden cupboard that 
 
The Magic of Rome 261 
 
 had belonged to Beppina's grandmother. Her 
 laces fell around her and the soft air of the 
 night clung to her, and despair made her eyes 
 wide and dark, and she looked inexpressibly 
 lovely. 
 
 "Ah, Principessa," said the priest, "you 
 could have done with me wha^ you would, 
 you could have made a slave of me." 
 Gloria's heart beat. There was passion in 
 the thick utterance of his throbbing voice. 
 She hoped Graziosa was near. 
 
 "You wished to speak to me?" The 
 voice sounded chilly and set, a world be- 
 tween him and her, a world which even his 
 high calling could not bridge over. The 
 low-born man ; the patrician Princess with 
 the blood of Roman Emperors in her veins. 
 The evil-sodden man ; the virtuous woman. 
 What had these two in common ? 
 
 " Well, since you will it so." He made a 
 gesture as if he resigned himself to be at 
 daggers drawn when she could have bound 
 him by chains of love. 
 
 " It is well that we understand each other," 
 she said scathingly. 
 
 " I am not sure that we do," he said, " but 
 we shall," he said menacingly. Her beauty 
 
262 The Magic of Rome 
 
 maddened him to-night, her tone incensed 
 him. He was bordering to-night on two 
 sensations, walking as it were in a very river 
 that divided two tempests, of emotion, love, 
 adoration on the one side, revenge, hate on 
 the other. He could have crushed her with 
 passion or slain her either, and like quivering 
 waves upon the air she felt the reverberation 
 of his inmost thoughts. 
 
 " To-morrow I am to be arrested," he said. 
 " The Vatican has deserted me. I am to be 
 added to their long, long list of scape-goats. 
 I must either fly to-night or give myself 
 up to-morrow." He paused, but she did not 
 speak. "You can prevent both or either 
 alternative." 
 
 " Why should I ? " 
 
 "Ah, Principessa, would I could say for 
 my sake." There was something almost 
 genuine in his voice. " What I say is for 
 yours." 
 
 " Mine ? What have I to do with you ? " 
 
 " Ah, my proud Princess, a good deal more 
 than you think. You and I have a great link 
 between us. The link of a secret which, if 
 divulged, means to me nothing, to you every- 
 thing." 
 
The Magic of Rome 263 
 
 " To you nothing ? Are you aware that 
 the Marchese di Sant AngioH knows now 
 that you robbed him of his son ? " 
 
 "He has been aware of that for seventeen 
 years," replied the priest. 
 
 "Impossible." Almost on her lips were 
 the words "You lie," but she restrained 
 herself. 
 
 "An absolute fact." The priest leaned 
 against the opposite wall and crossed his 
 arms and looked at her. 
 
 And she, seeing that she was powerless, 
 face to face with so much that was strange 
 and altogether incomprehensible, had re- 
 course to cold sneers. 
 
 "You wished to speak to me," she said. 
 " Please be brief. It is late. I must be 
 going." 
 
 "If you do not hear me out you will regret 
 it." 
 
 His voice was cold and menacing. It 
 pleased him to wring her heart with grief 
 since he could get nothing else out of it. 
 
 She remained silent, and he proceeded. 
 
 " A few nights ago," he began, and be- 
 tween his words he paused as if while he 
 spoke he measured the effect of his words 
 
264 The Magic of Rome 
 
 and felt his way, planned his actions as he 
 went along, " I was sent for by that poor 
 mad boy to attend the deathbed of an old 
 woman — her aunt and protectress," and he 
 jerked his head towards the door by which 
 Graziosa had gone out. ''At the last moment 
 she seemed desirous of making a written 
 confession, but she was too far gone to write 
 herself, and this is what she bade me write, 
 and against it she put her mark." As he 
 spoke he took a portfolio from his pocket 
 and a paper from between the leaves. 
 
 And now he held the tiny square of paper 
 beneath the lamp, holding it tight lest she 
 should wrest it from him. Eagerly she came 
 to the table and bent over the paper. She 
 was close to him. He could feel her soft 
 breath and hear the stirring of her laces and 
 her pearls as she almost panted in feverish 
 anxiety. The flames from the lamp lit up 
 the iris of her dark eyes, and the shadow of 
 each tiny lash stood out upon her eyelids on 
 to her cheeks. 
 
 For one instant he felt he must seize her 
 in his arms and tell her of the fierce love she 
 goaded him into, and then fly from Rome 
 and leave her, having done her no harm. 
 
The Magic of Rome 265 
 
 But the horror in her face arrested 
 him. 
 
 "I, Beppina Perrio, being at the point of 
 death, do declare that the child my niece 
 Graziosa has brought up is not hers, but the 
 son of the Marchese di Sant Angioli, and 
 that the child Sperata is not my niece's but 
 the child of the Principessa Veroni and the 
 priest Buonavoglio, whereunto I put my 
 mark." 
 
 A cry, terrible as if a murder had been 
 committed, shrill as that of the victim when 
 the severing steel first glides between the 
 arteries, rent thfe room, the house, the street. 
 The Principessa di Veroni lay stretched un- 
 conscious across the brick floor of Graziosa's 
 room. Her laces and the pearls about her 
 neck no whiter than her brow and cheeks 
 and chin, or the pure bosom beneath which 
 the heart had seemed to cease beating, face 
 to face with such perfidy as was beyond all 
 power of belief. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Cardinal Merlini was just going to bed, 
 or rather, he was going to settle for the night, 
 which meant that his secretary and his ser- 
 vant were going to bed, that shutters were 
 fastened, lights put out, and that the eminent 
 priest, in slippers and dressing-gown, sat 
 himself down, with a tiny silver lamp before 
 him, to peruse the voluminous correspondence 
 which it seems the prerogative of all highly- 
 placed clericals to be the recipients of — one 
 wonders why. The Cardinal's face had the 
 weary look of one who has lately been 
 troubled. The furrows on his face looked 
 new — he had not yet got over the shock the 
 priest Buonavoglio had given him. It had 
 seemed to him as if some secret door, whose 
 existence even he had not known of, had 
 been suddenly thrown open, and that behind 
 it he had seen unutterable and terrible things 
 
 266 
 
The Magic of Rome 267 
 
 that were not of earth. There had been 
 scores of things that had often troubled him 
 in Rome. Small details of doctrines he 
 could not overcome. A certain sensitive 
 shrinking from some of the prevarications 
 and intrigues which seemed necessary to 
 remove the shoals and loose the springs of 
 the pontifical progress. He had deplored 
 the disunion between Church and State, and 
 in his heart of hearts had wondered how the 
 Pope could reconcile his attitude of unfor- 
 giving, sullen vindictiveness with his office of 
 vicar of a Christ whose very essence was 
 forgiveness and meekness, who had founded 
 His Church, according to the tenets of 
 Rome, on the disciple on whom most of all 
 had forgiveness been bestowed, because, like 
 Mary, he had loved much. Now and then 
 he had been wounded at slights shown him 
 by the cardinals, the original fountain-head 
 of which he knew the source. He had been 
 tempted, often tempted, to desert the Church 
 of Rome, and then again had blamed him- 
 self for being so moved by what after all 
 were mere tiny details in the great whole. 
 Now and again, but very rarely, he had been 
 tempted to acquiesce in avowals that were 
 
268 The Magic of Rome 
 
 against his conscience and scruples for the 
 sake of peace or ambition. Then, again, he 
 had blamed himself for being too pacific. But 
 all these upheavals had been like the waves 
 of the sea, which stand yards high one day 
 and sink to slumbering ripples the next. But 
 now he had really come upon cross-roads. 
 Buonavoglio's words had been a revelation 
 to him, and yet he told himself it could not 
 be. The Pope^no, never, not for one mo- 
 ment did his belief in his chief waver ; but it 
 seemed to him horrible that around His Holi-r 
 ness should be men who could so tamper 
 with his honour and the honour of his 
 Church. Cardinal Merlini felt that he must 
 make a stand of some sort, and what worried 
 him most was that he didn't know what sort 
 of stand to make. One decision he had 
 come to, and it was one that pained him 
 most. Even if he seemed to desert his 
 friend, or the man to whom he had given 
 his protection and friendship, lifting him by 
 that very fact to a standard that was of his 
 own imagining, he could not continue to be 
 mixed up in Padre Buonavoglio's affairs. It 
 was impossible for him to ask the Pope to 
 compensate Buonavoglio. The suggestion 
 
The Magic qf Rome 269 
 
 was an insult which His Holiness might 
 well receive with horror and disgust, and 
 strongest condemnation and displeasure, but 
 to continue to carry messages from the 
 Vatican to Buonavoglio was equally impos- 
 sible in the face of what Budnavoglio had 
 told him. He had contented himself with 
 writing to one of the cardinal bishops and to 
 the Pope's secretary, saying that he had con- 
 veyed the message of His Holiness to the 
 priest, and that he had no plan or compro- 
 mise to suggest, and saw no advantage in 
 his interfering further. This letter had made 
 the certainty still more sure of Merlini never 
 getting beyond the rank of cardinal. This 
 he didn't mind. He had never wished to be 
 an intime of the Vatican. 
 
 But to-night, as he tossed over one letter 
 after the other which the secretary had left, 
 for his private perusal, and as he pencilled on 
 the margin notes for the guidance of the 
 secretary's replies the next day, he wondered 
 faintly what course he should pursue, and 
 whether, if he decided on one, he would have 
 the courage to pursue it. 
 
 Suddenly he started. The bell of his 
 apartment, a first floor in an old palazzo not 
 
270 The Magic of Rome 
 
 far from the Veronis', rang out quickly, im- 
 patiently, on the stillness. He was a man 
 who did not know fear, but the noise startled 
 him. It could only be a message from the 
 Pope. Something, doubtless, to do with the 
 arrest of the priest. What a trouble it all was ! 
 If only His Holiness would understand how 
 useless he was in it all. He took the lamp 
 from the table, drew back the curtains from 
 the inner door and opened it, crossed the 
 parquet floor of the intervening ante-chamber 
 and unlocked the outer door. On the landing 
 outside stood two women. One, a rough peas- 
 ant woman, carried a lantern. The other was 
 the Princess Veroni. Faintly it came to him 
 that only that day some one had mentioned 
 the Princess's name in connection with this 
 tiresome Sant Angioli business, but what had 
 been suggested was so absurd that it had 
 passed out of his mind. 
 
 " Figlia mia ! . . . Signora ! . . . Prin- 
 cipessa ! At this hour ! " (a clock some- 
 where was striking three). It must be 
 something serious that brought her to him at 
 that hour, and he held the door open and 
 bade them enter. 
 
 " Stay, Graziosa ! " The Princess indi- 
 
The Magic of Rome 271 
 
 cated a wooden bench, while she stooped low 
 to kiss the Cardinal's ring. 
 
 " Ah ! my child, what is it ? " In his present 
 frame of mind the Cardinal felt prepared for 
 anything. He stirred up the dying embers 
 of the fire Giuseppe lit every night, summer 
 or winter, and he wheeled an armchair in front 
 of it. With old-world chivalry he helped her 
 to push back her cloak. 
 
 " Pause, my child, and think before you 
 tell me anything. You may have rushed here 
 smarting from some sudden injury, dazed by 
 some mental shock. You may regret having 
 come here. Think quietly, and if you think 
 better of it, return quietly to your home and 
 we will forget you ever came to me." 
 
 "How good you are ! " Gloria's lip 
 quivered. She looked very white, the Car- 
 dinal thought. He got up and went into his 
 large dining-room, carrying the lamp with 
 him, and leaving, her in total darkness. Only 
 a burning coal or two glowed in the stove, 
 then turned to ash and fell in crimson powder 
 to the pan below. 
 
 Presently he returned with a bottle and 
 glass, and now he poured out a glass of 
 Lacrima Cristi and held it. to the dying 
 
272 The Magic of Rome 
 
 embers to warm. She looked at him grate- 
 fully as she sipped the wine, and then sud- 
 denly she remembered all her pain, and great 
 tears came to her eyes. 
 
 " The woman outside, is she to be trusted ? " 
 The Cardinal had not much faith in the 
 lower classes. 
 
 " She? She is Sperata's mother." 
 ' ' Sperata's mother ! " The Cardinal began 
 to scent the beginning of a tragedy. And 
 then Gloria told him the 'story of her life, 
 dwelling pathetically, although she was not 
 aware of it, on the misery of her first years of 
 married life and her longing for a child. Old 
 man as he was, and without having known 
 domestic joys, he yet could read through her 
 tale all the love for her husband that had 
 led to the deception. 
 
 "It was a mistake, my child, a mistake ; 
 but let us not talk of that now,'' And now 
 Gloria went on to tell him of Sant Angioli's 
 son, of his having been stolen by Buonavoglio, 
 of the bullying and blackmailing she had 
 gone through, first through the medium of 
 the confessional, and finally because of the 
 secret he had held over her ; and now she 
 came to the story of her visit to Graziosa's 
 
The Magic of Rome 273 
 
 rooms that night, and of the infamous sug- 
 gestion of the priest, of the paper he had 
 shown her, and, incidentally, she told him of 
 the duel, and now for the first time Cardinal 
 Merlini understood why Sant Angioli had 
 called him out. 
 
 " Had I but known," he said to himself, " I 
 would have died rather than have mixed 
 myself up in it." But he did not tell Gloria 
 who the man was Sant Angioli had wanted 
 to fight with. As Gloria told her tale it 
 seemed to Cardinal Merlini that the very 
 floor gave way beneath him. Then, as she 
 finished and seemed to pause for an instant, 
 he broke in : " Ah ! my child, cara Princi- 
 pessa, there is but one thing now to do. 
 To tell your husband the whole story. The 
 deception was wrong from the first. Now it 
 is impossible." 
 
 " Ah ! Eminenza, listen to the end. You 
 do not know. If I am here to-night at this 
 hour it is not only to tell you the misdeeds of 
 that infamous man, it is to find comfort and 
 counsel for my own sorrow. You say, ' Tell 
 my husband.' I have told him, and he won't 
 believe me," And as Gloria said these words 
 her lips gave way beneath the bitterness of 
 
274 The Magic of Rome 
 
 her grief, for to have reconquered him and 
 then lost him again seemed worse than 
 death. 
 
 " My poor, poor child." 
 
 "Oh, I can't tell you all I have been 
 through to-night. When I read those 
 words on that piece of paper it seemed to 
 me as if my mind were unable to grapple 
 with the falseness and treachery of this man. 
 Something seemed to give way, and I 
 fainted. When I woke I was lying in my 
 own bed with Graziosa beside me, and 
 Graziosa told me that I had cried out when 
 I fainted, and that my husband, awakened 
 by some noise, had gone to my room, and 
 seeing no one had searched the house, and 
 finding me nowhere had gone out into the 
 street, where, guided by the light of the 
 lamp, he found me with that fiend and Graziosa 
 leaning over me in a dead faint. My first 
 instinct when Graziosa told me this tale was 
 to go to him at once. 
 
 " ' What must he be thinking,' I said to 
 myself ' on finding me alone in that state and 
 in such company ? ' Feeling ill and faint, I 
 went straight to his room, determined to 
 tell him the whole truth and demand his 
 
The Magic of Rome 275 
 
 pardon, but the Fates had been before me. 
 Never shall I forget his face as I entered, 
 it was so cold and stern. 
 
 " Then as I began my tale he held out to 
 me the paper that creature — that devil in 
 human form— had shown to me, and said, 
 ' I know all. There is no necessity to 
 fabricate fresh lies, fresh deceits, fresh per- 
 fidy.' Then as I clasped my hands, and 
 assured him that there was no truth in the 
 disgraceful story, which was a foul fabrica- 
 tion of Buonavoglio's, he replied, ' Madam, 
 madam.' Fancy, to me, Eminenza ! ' You 
 will have every opportunity of explain- 
 ing the matter to my man of business.' 
 And then there is no more to tell but that 
 I came here." 
 
 The Cardinal was musing. This seemed 
 to him the answer to the question he had 
 asked himself so often. Surely a religion 
 that could tolerate such actions and leave 
 them unpunished could be worth noth- 
 ing. 
 
 " Do you suppose that Buonavoglio gave 
 him the letter, or that it fejl and he picked 
 it up ? " 
 
 " I cannot tell." Gloria was looking into 
 
276 The Magic of Rome 
 
 the fire despondently, her tears looking like 
 illumined crystals on the edge of her lashes. 
 " What could his reason have been ? Surely 
 there was nothing to gain." 
 
 " The idea was to bring pressure on your 
 husband through you, by threatening to 
 spread about this infamous, unpardonable 
 lie, or at least to communicate it to your 
 husband. Once this was done, what reason 
 could there be for pressure ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know." It didn't seem to 
 matter much to her why or how the secret 
 had been divulged. It was quite bad enough 
 that it had come to pass. 
 
 " What am I do ? " she asked presently. 
 
 " My dear child, surely this woman Gra- 
 ziosa, the mother of your adopted child, can 
 prove something or other. Surely your 
 husband will now bring an action against 
 Buonavoglio ? " 
 
 Gloria shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "Who knows. Oh, Cardinal, what is it 
 about our religion that enhances it with such 
 a surroundment of mystery, painful mystery, 
 that one seems impotent to fathom or pene- 
 trate. In England, for instance, such a 
 thing as this could not happen." 
 
The Magic of Rome 277 
 
 The Cardinal got up as she spoke and 
 paced the room, and Gloria went on, as much 
 to herself as to him, — 
 
 " Surely these ways are not the ways of 
 God ? How can He who cannot lie endure 
 to see and hear such things ? " 
 
 The Cardinal stood in front of her. 
 
 " Yet you, too, my child, have deceived." 
 
 Gloria's eyes fell. 
 
 •' Indeed I have, and bitterly do I repent 
 of it." Then, raising her eyes, she looked 
 full at the Cardinal. 
 
 "Yet, Eminenza, do you know that I 
 believe that if I had not been a Roman 
 Catholic I should not have dared to act this 
 lie? Our whole religious upbringing has 
 nothing in it that instils truth. We begin 
 by trying to cheat God, we cheat ourselves ; 
 is it wonderful, then, that we should also 
 cheat each other?" 
 
 "You exaggerate, my child, for despite 
 our religion we can lead pure lives," 
 
 " Yet your own words betray you, Emin- 
 enza. If we wish to lead good, true lives 
 we must disbelieve half that we are taught 
 by our priests, yet disbelief in the priest is 
 a sin. If we do not believe, then we are 
 
278 The Magic of Rome 
 
 not good papists. Oh, Cardinal, do you not 
 think that more than half of us in Italy are 
 not papists at all, but that we have not the 
 courage to say so ? We are so afraid, fear 
 is so instilled in us that we simply dare not 
 openly declare ourselves. We don't believe 
 in what is taught us, and yet we have a hor- 
 rible dread we cannot explain that when we 
 have let our own faith go we should not have 
 anything to cling to. Down, down in our 
 hearts lie the denunciatory threats of our 
 childhood. It is the old, old story of the 
 child who opened the forbidden door and 
 saw an ogre sitting within. All our lives 
 we are little Red Riding Hoods, plucking 
 the flowers, chasing the butterflies, talking 
 to the wolf who rends us for our disobedi- 
 ence. We have the terrible example of 
 France dangling before our eyes. What 
 has Popery produced there ? Oh, Cardinal, 
 what, what is the Magic of Rome ? " 
 
 " The magic of the Evil One." Those were 
 the words on the lips of the Cardinal, yet he 
 strove still to be loyal. It was heresy even 
 to let this daughter of the Church speak like 
 this. 
 
 " We must not allow ourselves to take the 
 
The Magic of Rome 279 
 
 teaching too literally," he replied evasively. 
 " Intelligent, educated people cannot of 
 course believe a good deal that is intended 
 only for the guidance of the masses — the 
 people." 
 
 " The people ? Oh ! Cardinal, is it not 
 just the people who, like children, need all 
 that is purest, simplest in their faith, a 
 prayer such as the Lord's prayer, with all 
 the pressing needs of life condensed into a 
 few short lines ? The certainty of belief that 
 God is our father and will provide, a prayer 
 for forgiveness, a prayer to be delivered 
 from the evil. What more — what more is 
 required ? " As she spoke, there rose upon 
 the air a choir of voices, from the chapel of a 
 convent near, chanting a salutation to the 
 coming day, the coming day which, as if in 
 answer to the call, burst with pallid yet 
 searching light into the windows of the 
 Cardinal's room. 
 
 Crossing himself, the Cardinal sank upon 
 his knees, tears running down his aged face, 
 and Gloria did the same, and on the morning 
 stillness rose, with a ring of divine truth, 
 these words, — 
 
 " The night is far spent. The day is at 
 
28o The Magic of Rome 
 
 hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of 
 darkness, and let us put on the armour of 
 light. O Christ, help Thy servants ! Help, 
 help, Lord ! " 
 
 The old man buried his face in his hands 
 as he prayed for light — the light of the soul, 
 and neither heard Giuseppe enter and 
 announce the Principe di Veroni, then stand 
 back amazed at the sight of the Cardinal on 
 his knees before the window, and the Princi- 
 pessa di Veroni a little way off standing with 
 her two elbows on the mantel-shelf, sobbing 
 as if her heart would break, while outside, in 
 the ante-chamber, Graziosa, her shawl still 
 round her, slept in the arms of the pale 
 shadows of dawn. 
 
 An exclamation rose from Ubaldo's lips, 
 and at the sight of his wife, whose back 
 was turned to him, he made a movement as 
 if to retire from the room, but the old 
 Cardinal, who had risen, bade him remain, 
 with a gesture at once mingled of entreaty 
 and command. Ubaldo's face hardened ; 
 there came over it an expression of con- 
 tempt, contempt for the woman who, after 
 years of infidelity and deceit, sought the 
 consolations of confession, contempt for a 
 
The Magic of Rome 281 
 
 Church which, by its ready absolution, 
 almost condoned such infidelity and deceit. 
 He knew quite well, or thought he did, 
 all the religious canting jargon that was 
 going to follow. The Cardinal was going 
 to plead the holy beauty of forgiveness, the 
 scandal to the Church, the scandal to Society. 
 Ah ! he knew them well, all these stereotyped 
 phrases by which all the full streams of life 
 were kept from swelling that the whole 
 surface might glide smoothly, suavely along 
 to the end of time. But his mind was made 
 up. He had been fooled, but he would fool 
 no one. He, too, was going to put on the 
 armour of light after the night of agony he 
 had spent. He had come to consult the 
 only broad-minded Cardinal he knew as to 
 what action he should take in this matter 
 against Buonavoglio. He- had imagined 
 that Gloria was in her room. Cold as steel 
 was his heart against the woman whom for 
 seventeen years he had so loved, ever since 
 that night when he had seen her, so pathetic^ 
 ally deserted and lovely, leaning on the 
 balcony in the moonlight. Yet swiftly there 
 passed through his mind how fully she had 
 forgiven him. He could see her gestures as 
 
282 The Magic of Rome 
 
 she turned to him, hear her voice whis- 
 pering, " Oh, Ubaldo ! I love you so." He 
 almost laughed as he recalled that scene. 
 No wonder she had forgiven him so easily, 
 she who had sinned so much. 
 
 And now the Cardinal touched the weep- 
 ing woman lightly on the shoulder, and she 
 turned and saw her husband standing 
 by the window with folded arms, looking 
 away across the roofs and gardens of 
 Rome, 
 
 " Principessa, I will ask you to leave us 
 for a few moments." And as she slowly left 
 the room and passed into an inner chamber, 
 there was something exaggerated almost in 
 the chivalry and respect with which the old 
 Cardinal opened the door for her and bowed 
 as she passed out. 
 
 '• She has fooled him as she fooled me," 
 was the inward comment of the Prince, 
 
 Long the two talked, and the Cardinal 
 found it no easy task to persuade Ubaldo of 
 Gloria's innocence. 
 
 " The mother of the child is there," said 
 the old man, pointing to the ante-chamber, 
 " Presently you shall interrogate her your- 
 self." 
 
The Magic of Rome 283 
 
 " Yet for seventeen years she has deceived 
 me," he repeated sternly. 
 
 " From her great love for you," pleaded 
 th Cardinal. " Believe me, Principe, love 
 like that is more precious than spikenard. 
 No one regrets what she has done more 
 than your wife, but recall even the first years 
 of your married life — the child-wife alone, 
 neglected, deserted, beautiful, courted, yet 
 resisting all temptations — and ask yourself if 
 you have no share of blame. Ah ! Signor 
 Principe, many women would have done 
 very differently. You are as well aware of 
 that as I am." And then the two discussed 
 other matters, for the Cardinal knew enough 
 of men to realise that the Prince had a good 
 deal to forgive and could not climb down at 
 once from the position he had taken up. 
 Yet it seemed cruel to think of the poor 
 woman in the next room with her heart 
 slowly breaking. 
 
 " Cardinal, give me your advice. I know 
 that it will be unbiassed and candid. Should 
 this matter be hushed up .■' Is this man to be 
 isheltered for the sake of the Church ? Are 
 we to become the laughing-stock of other 
 countries, of other religions, to hide and 
 
284 The Magic of Rome 
 
 hush up all that is foul for the sake of the 
 Church ? Can it, I ask you, be for the good 
 of our religion? There is Sant Angioli. 
 He is no more a believer in papal power 
 than I am, not so much, perhaps, and yet 
 some mystic power keeps him from prose- 
 cuting that fiend in the garb of a priest. 
 Are we justified, think you, in keeping 
 silence ? " 
 
 "Most emphatically not." The Car- 
 dinal again grew excited and resumed 
 his old habit of pacing the room. " My 
 mind is made up." It seemed to the 
 Prince that he was making it up while he 
 spoke. " I am going to lay the whole 
 matter before His Holiness to-day, and if he 
 will not expose it and proceed against 
 Buonavoglio, then I will resign my Car- 
 dinal's hat." The Cardinal spoke very 
 emphatically, as if he was encouraging 
 himself to action. 
 
 " Ah, you too are disgusted at last ! " 
 exclaimed Ubaldo. 
 
 Then the Cardinal advanced towards the 
 man he had known from childhood, whose 
 father he had known. 
 
 " Forgive me," he said, "but do not keep 
 
The Magic of Rome 285 
 
 her waiting much longer," and as he spoke 
 he opened the door of the inner room. 
 " Come here, figlia mia," he said, and 
 something in his face told her that all was 
 well ; then, as he would have made for the 
 door and left them alone, she restrained him 
 with a gesture at once respectful and 
 affectionate. 
 
 " No, no, Eminenza. You must not leave 
 us." And there before the old Cardinal, whose 
 eyes were glistening with tears at the sight 
 of joy, the sweetness of which he might 
 never know, Ubaldo took his beautiful 
 Gloria into his arms and whispered, — 
 " Mi perdona, mi perdona, Gloria mia ! " 
 And the dear old Cardinal placed his 
 hand on each of their heads as if Jt were a 
 marriage service, and pronounced the 
 Benediction in Latin. 
 
 While Gloria whispered once more the 
 words that had charmed him seventeen 
 years before — seventeen years before — 
 "Oh, Ubaldo! I love you so," and their 
 hearts were like two chords of music, which, 
 melting into one sound, echo heavenwards 
 in one single strain of divine melody. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 " The Marchesa di Sant Angioli is very ill 
 and not expected to live." That was the 
 message l?rought two days later to the 
 Palazzo Veroni. 
 
 With infinite tenderness Gloria told Sperata 
 the message she had received, and the child 
 cried bitterly, a good deal for Giselda, but 
 more than all for Uberto's sake, and then 
 her lips grew firm and her eyes set with a 
 great resolve. 
 
 Half an hour later she was in Graziosa's 
 tiny room — the very room where part of 
 the tragedy of her life had been enacted 
 although she did not know it. It was 
 of course unheard of that Donna Sperata 
 should even walk across the street alone, but 
 little Sperata cared for this. She had a great 
 scheme to carry out, and no conventionalities 
 nor petty customs could stand in the way 
 of it. 
 
 286 
 
The Magic of Rome 287 
 
 " You must come with me to the Quirlnal," 
 she said, " we must save him. His mother 
 is dying." Instinctively the woman obeyed 
 Donna Sperata. She could never realise 
 that this was her child. 
 
 " But will they let you pass ?" she said, 
 
 " I think so. I have a cousin who is one 
 of the secretaries. If I can only get at him. 
 But quick, make haste, or the Queen will 
 have gone out driving." 
 
 A few moments later Donna Sperata was 
 sitting in an ante-chamber waiting for her 
 cousin. Surprise was depicted on his face 
 at sight of his cousin, but it was more than 
 surprise, it was amazement that his expression 
 depicted when Sperata told him that she 
 must see the Queen at once. 
 
 " But, my dear cousin, it is impossible. You 
 have never been presented at the Court. 
 Your father and mother have never even 
 written their names here, and besides, the 
 Queen is just going out. Look ! here they 
 come." As he spoke Sperata became aware 
 of a bustle in the passage, of the voices of 
 servants bustling in and out, calling for the 
 carriages. She saw a vision of beauty and 
 sweetness passing along, silent and serene, 
 
288 The Magic of Rome 
 
 an expression of imperturbable benignity, a 
 slight rising of eyebrows at sight of Sperata 
 talking alone to her cousin in the ante- 
 chamber. As the Queen passed Sperata's 
 cousin stood at attention and saluted ; and 
 then a sudden impulse seized Sperata, an 
 impulse the thought of which, later on in life, 
 made her colour to the roots of her hair, and 
 which her parents ascribed to the peasant 
 instincts she had inherited by birth — an 
 impulse which filled her cousin's heart with 
 cold horror, which Rome spoke of with 
 shrugging shoulders and expressions of dis- 
 gust and cynicism, which the Pope em- 
 phasised as " Extremely vulgar and un- 
 becoming." Sperata, impelled by her 
 intense love, the thought of Giselda dying 
 away from her son, from whom she had 
 been parted all these years, imbued with 
 a sudden realisation that if there is no 
 time like the present it is because in 
 an instant it becomes the past, Sperata, 
 the supposed daughter of the great house 
 of Veroni, precipitated herself across the 
 path of the Queen and threw herself at 
 her feet. For one instant a frown took 
 possession of the sweet, happy face, but it 
 
The Magic of Rome 289 
 
 was a startled not an angry frown — startled 
 because she had not yet recovered from the 
 scare the discovery of the plot had brought 
 within her ken. For one instant those 
 around stepped forward to push her away, 
 but the King, who was walking behind, re- 
 cognised her as Veroni's daughter, and lifted 
 her from her position with one hand. And 
 as she stood before the two " august person- 
 ages," as the papers would have described 
 them, her cheeks crimson, her beautiful hair 
 escaping a little from beneath her hat, with 
 startled tears in her eyes, she recovered her- 
 self, and sweeping a low and graceful curtsey 
 asked for pardon for what she had done ; and 
 then the two to whom kindness was a practice 
 as well as a habit gave orders that the car- 
 riage should be made to wait, and Sperata 
 was told to accompany the Queen to her 
 private apartments. What passed there 
 while the little court raised its eyebrows in 
 wonder and disgust, till it seemed they would 
 soon be in danger of wandering so far over 
 the forehead that they would never return, 
 will never be known, but one thing is certain, 
 namely, that there was perhaps no one more 
 fitted in the world to appreciate Sperata's 
 
290 The Magic of Rome 
 
 impulsive act than Queen Margherita, who 
 herself loved so much. 
 
 That evening it was rumoured all over 
 Rome that the King had pardoned all those 
 who had plotted against him, for, as the King 
 argued, it would never do for the pepoloto to 
 be able to say that the son of the Marchese 
 alone was liberated. 
 
 When Buonavoglio read it in the English 
 papers he plumed himself once more. His 
 unalterable luck had not deserted him, for if 
 the others were pardoned then he too was 
 pardoned. It struck him as a remarkable 
 appulse of circumstances that it should be 
 his own daughter who had brought about 
 this deliverance. For one instant he re- 
 gretted having left Rome, yet, having come . 
 away, it seemed to him that perhaps it was 
 wiser not to return just yet. 
 
 The Vatican was naturally most displeased 
 at the turn events had taken, for Buonavoglio 
 having escaped no scandal would have been 
 attributed to the priesthood, while the release 
 of young Santioli di Angioli made it im- 
 possible for them to dictate terms to the 
 Marchese or to the Quirinal. 
 
 It was characteristic of the King and Queen 
 
The Magic of Rome 'i 291 
 
 that they never in any way gave the Veronis 
 or the Sant Angiolis to understand that 
 they had conferred a favour on either of 
 them ; they had merely granted the request 
 of a dear little girl that her lover should 
 be released in time to kiss his dying mother. 
 It was equally characteristic of the two houses 
 that they showed no signs of gratitude or 
 recognition that might result in fettering 
 their independence. They preferred to leave 
 the responsibility of the denouement of the 
 tragedy to Sperata, thereby avoiding any 
 burden of obligation. 
 
 But the House of Savoy was growing 
 accustomed to slights and ingratitude, and 
 strange to say, the sweethess of its disposition 
 was never embittered by this. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 It was hardly to be wondered at, perhaps, 
 that Uberto should be dazed by the sudden 
 change in his position. The same evening 
 that Sperata had given way to an impulse 
 which, if it savoured a little of ancient 
 Rome, at the same time recalled the strain 
 of plebeian blood that she had inherited from 
 Graziosa, and probably from Buonavoglio 
 as well, for priests and cardinals are not 
 always patricians. He had been liberated 
 and, accompanied by his father, drove 
 straight to the Palazzo di Sant Angioli. 
 It was, perhaps, but natural that a 
 sullen feeling of resentment against Fate, 
 against everybody and everything, should 
 arise in his heart at sight of the mother 
 whose love he had been cheated of for so 
 many years slowly dying, dying just when 
 life seemed of such importance, for it is 
 wonderful how we poor mortals fancy that 
 
 292 
 
The Magic of Rome 293 
 
 we are each one of us oilers of the great 
 wheel of life. Yet even Uberto could not 
 resist the charm of the surroundings of his 
 mother's deathbed, for to each that chamber 
 was like entering the shrine of a saint, and 
 all around lay the peace which death some- 
 times brings in its train, and the intense 
 charm and goodness that had characterised 
 Giselda's life never, perhaps, burned so 
 brightly as now at its last moments. They 
 came and went, the figures of those that 
 loved her, with chastened footsteps and low 
 voices, in which awe and love were blended. 
 Her mother was dead and father too old 
 and ill to be told of the seriousness of her 
 illness, but Gloria and Sperata and many 
 others who had loved her came and went, 
 while the youngest son and her daughter 
 tried to check their passionate grief in her 
 presence. 
 
 Cardinal Merlini called and sat with her 
 every day, speaking no word of creed but a 
 great deal of Christ. 
 
 Orazio was nearly always with her, except 
 when sometimes he could not bear it, and 
 rushed to his room to try and face out the 
 prospect of the grim, solitary future alone. 
 
294 The Magic of Rome 
 
 But she could never bear Uberto to leave 
 her. She grudged every moment, she who 
 had been cheated of so many. 
 
 One only wish she had left, and that was 
 to hear him say before she died that he 
 believed in God ; but her son could not be a 
 hypocrite. How could he, even to please 
 her, tell a lie ? What had God done for him ? 
 What he had seen of priesdiood and of reli- 
 gion in Rome had been all lies and infamy 
 and infinite deceit, and Giselda had not had 
 time to tell him of other purer faiths ; and 
 now, as she lay there waiting for Death's last 
 beckoning, she wondered what her husband 
 would do when she was gone. Far down in 
 her heart lay a terrible dread lest what she 
 feared most would come to pass. It seemed 
 to her that in all these years she had not 
 drawn close enough to Orazio's mind. His 
 heart was hers, she knew it. It had seemed 
 to her that his beliefs, his trust were hers, 
 and yet, now that she was leaving him, it 
 seemed to her that it had been but her pre- 
 sence that outweighed, magnetised, as it 
 were, his thoughts away from the Magic of 
 Rome. If he trusted her faith, if he believed 
 in her Bible, surely now at the hour of death 
 
The Magic of Rome 295 
 
 he would tell her so. The pastor of her 
 church came daily, but she noticed that 
 Orazio never stayed and joined in the prayers ; 
 she felt like one who, having guided a ship 
 safely into the very midst of the harbour, sees 
 the rope break within the tiny haven, watches 
 it drift back into the open sea. Ah ! how 
 different it would have been if she had had 
 her son to bring up. What an inheritance of 
 pure doctrine she might have left behind. 
 But he had been filched from her by the 
 jealous Church of Rome, which cannot afford 
 to be honest, else had it died long ago. Yet 
 the Church remained, and she passed away 
 and her son remained, the living testimony of 
 the evil doctrines of Rome. For when a 
 Roman Catholic ceases to believe there is only 
 Atheism can fill the devil-scooped vacuum, 
 so cleverly is the hollow prepared to reject all 
 other faiths. How weak, how impotent she 
 felt ! Yes, while she lay there, all the comfort 
 of sky-piercing prayer was realised by her. 
 Surely even through the dark confusings of 
 the faith that enveloped them with its 
 strangulating force there was one who still 
 could guide to where faith and fable, super- 
 stition and creed, faded. Doctrine and belief is 
 
296 The Magic of Rome 
 
 morning mist beneath the sun in the presence 
 of the great " I AM " who is the way, the 
 path and the life. 
 
 And in his library Orazio wrestled with 
 himself, longing, oh ! so hard, for her dear 
 sake, to be able to promise to her before she 
 died the words he knew would make her 
 die happy ; almost he was tempted, for her 
 dear sake, to avail himself of the license 
 offered by his Church to promise her what 
 she wanted, and then with deep humility con- 
 fess his weakness, and cheat alike his dead, 
 his priest and his God. But it was just the 
 spirit of Giselda that kept him from doing 
 this. Giselda had at least succeeded in mak- 
 ing him honest with himself. To make her 
 last hours peaceful by confessing to a faith 
 he had not the courage to belong to would 
 be as base an act as afterwards to recant and 
 confess to a priest a disbelief in a religion he 
 was so intensely drawn to. What was it, he 
 wondered, kept him back from deserting a 
 religion he considered so petty and narrow- 
 minded ? A religion contrary to all common 
 sense and argument. Yes, he knew well 
 what it was, because firmly embedded in his 
 mind was the idea that argument and com- 
 
The Magic of Rome 297 
 
 men sense pitted against the religion of" 
 Rome was in itself a sin. 
 
 Then, as the body grew weaker, it seemed 
 as if the spirit too made concessions. It was 
 as if, in the presence of her impotence, she 
 gave way to the overwhelming force around 
 her, and strove to meet it on its own ground. 
 
 " Caro," she whispered to Orazio, who 
 knelt now by her bed, his head upon the two 
 hands he had loved so, "even if you feel 
 you can't become a Protestant, you will never 
 forget our talks .■* " 
 
 Here indeed he could utter a true and 
 heartfelt "Yes." 
 
 " And you will never let Adeline enter a 
 convent ? " 
 
 " Never, if I can help it, I swear." 
 
 " And our dear Uberto, you will try . . . " 
 
 She was sinking fast now, keeping time 
 with the softly-dropping siin. The streets 
 were silent and a faint breeze from the hills 
 fluttered the window-curtains, as if to assist 
 her laboured breathings. 
 
 Orazio guessed her meaning, and whispered 
 to her, " He must belong to your faith. It is 
 the tradition of our house," and Giselda 
 smiled a grateful smile, faint and beautiful 
 
298 The Magic of Rome 
 
 as the smile of the dying day, and then slowly 
 they all gathered in the room — Gloria, Ubaldo, 
 Merlini, Sperata — and kneeling a little way 
 off, telling her beads with a rapidity that was 
 alarming, knelt Graziosa ; and then old 
 Domizio stole in and stood respectfully still, 
 but sobbing, and Giselda motioned to him to 
 come near that she might grasp his hand, 
 and he remembered how she had grasped it 
 at Sant Angioli nineteen years ago ; and then 
 they all kissed her, slowly, reverently, as they 
 would have kissed the hem of an angel's robe ; 
 and then it was Uberto's turn, and she held 
 him so long that Orazio stepped forward to 
 see if she had fainted, but still her son held 
 her tight ; it was as if their souls had met 
 and could not part. 
 
 It was in her son's arms that she died 
 — the son that would have been all hers had 
 he not been taken from her by the Magic of 
 Rome. 
 
 And now the sun fell behind the hills, as if 
 it had gone to meet her on the other side, 
 and all stole away, all except Orazio, who 
 could not leave the woman who had been 
 life, religion, love, everything to him, and out 
 of the gloom in the streets below came, like 
 
The Magic of Rome 299 
 
 the hoarse groans of unchained fiends choked 
 by the twilight, the cry, " Assassino del Re ! 
 Assassino del Re ! " 
 
 And Rome turned its thoughts from the 
 death of Giselda to the topic of one of the 
 most dastardly and cowardly crimes that have 
 ever stained a country since the Crucifixion. 
 
 It was freely whispered amongst the 
 " Whites " that a priest had something to do 
 with it. The truth of this whisper no one will 
 ever know, but a few weeks later a strange 
 conjuring trick was performed. Cardinal 
 Merlini renounced the Church of Rome, and 
 his place was filled by Padre Buonavoglio. 
 
 This, too, perhaps, was one of the crowning, 
 master-feats, the deftest of all of the Magic of 
 Rome. 
 
 THE END 
 
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