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he had been obliged to adhere to the monarchy, and accept a senatorship.

But then did not Garibaldi himself--Garibaldi his divinity--likewise call

upon the King and sit in parliament? Mazzini alone, rejecting all

compromises, was unwilling to rest content with a united and independent

Italy that was not Republican. Moreover, another consideration influenced

Orlando, the future of his son Luigi, who had attained his eighteenth

birthday shortly after the occupation of Rome. Though he, Orlando, could

manage with the crumbs which remained of the fortune he had expended in

his country's service, he dreamt of a splendid destiny for the child of

his heart. Realising that the heroic age was over, he desired to make a

great politician of him, a great administrator, a man who should be

useful to the mighty nation of the morrow; and it was on this account

that he had not rejected royal favour, the reward of long devotion,

desiring, as he did, to be in a position to help, watch, and guide Luigi.

Besides, was he himself so old, so used-up, as to be unable to assist in

organisation, even as he had assisted in conquest? Struck by his son's

quick intelligence in business matters, perhaps also instinctively

divining that the battle would now continue on financial and economic

grounds, he obtained him employment at the Ministry of Finances. And

again he himself lived on, dreaming, still enthusiastically believing in

a splendid future, overflowing with boundless hope, seeing Rome double

her population, grow and spread with a wild vegetation of new districts,

and once more, in his loving enraptured eyes, become the queen of the

world.

But all at once came a thunderbolt. One morning, as he was going

downstairs, Orlando was stricken with paralysis. Both his legs suddenly

became lifeless, as heavy as lead. It was necessary to carry him up

again, and never since had he set foot on the street pavement. At that

time he had just completed his fifty-sixth year, and for fourteen years

since he had remained in his arm-chair, as motionless as stone, he who

had so impetuously trod every battlefield of Italy. It was a pitiful

business, the collapse of a hero. And worst of all, from that room where

he was for ever imprisoned, the old soldier beheld the slow crumbling of

all his hopes, and fell into dismal melancholy, full of unacknowledged

fear for the future. Now that the intoxication of action no longer dimmed

his eyes, now that he spent his long and empty days in thought, his

vision became clear. Italy, which he had desired to see so powerful, so

triumphant in her unity, was acting madly, rushing to ruin, possibly to

bankruptcy. Rome, which to him had ever been the one necessary capital,

the city of unparalleled glory, requisite for the sovereign people of

to-morrow, seemed unwilling to take upon herself the part of a great

modern metropolis; heavy as a corpse she weighed with all her centuries

on the bosom of the young nation. Moreover, his son Luigi distressed him.

Rebellious to all guidance, the young man had become one of the devouring

offsprings of conquest, eager to despoil that Italy, that Rome, which his

father seemed to have desired solely in order that he might pillage them

and batten on them. Orlando had vainly opposed Luigi's departure from the

ministry, his participation in the frantic speculations on land and house

property to which the mad building of the new districts had given rise.

But at the same time he loved his son, and was reduced to silence,

especially now when everything had succeeded with Luigi, even his most

risky financial ventures, such as the transformation of the Villa

Montefiori into a perfect town--a colossal enterprise in which many of

great wealth had been ruined, but whence he himself had emerged with

millions. And it was in part for this reason that Orlando, sad and

silent, had obstinately restricted himself to one small room on the third

floor of the little palazzo erected by Luigi in the Via Venti

Settembre--a room where he lived cloistered with a single servant,

subsisting on his own scanty income, and accepting nothing but that

modest hospitality from his son.

As Pierre reached that new Via Venti Settembre* which climbs the side and

summit of the Viminal hill, he was struck by the heavy sumptuousness of

the new "palaces," which betokened among the moderns the same taste for

the huge that marked the ancient Romans. In the warm afternoon glow,

blent of purple and old gold, the broad, triumphant thoroughfare, with

its endless rows of white house-fronts, bore witness to new Rome's proud

hope of futurity and sovereign power. And Pierre fairly gasped when he

beheld the Palazzo delle Finanze, or Treasury, a gigantic erection, a

cyclopean cube with a profusion of columns, balconies, pediments, and

sculptured work, to which the building mania had given birth in a day of

immoderate pride. And on the other side of the street, a little higher

up, before reaching the Villa Bonaparte, stood Count Prada's little

palazzo.

* The name--Twentieth September Street--was given to the

thoroughfare to commemorate the date of the occupation

of Rome by Victor Emmanuel's army.--Trans.

After discharging his driver, Pierre for a moment remained somewhat

embarrassed. The door was open, and he entered the vestibule; but, as at

the mansion in the Via Giulia, no door porter or servant was to be seen.

So he had to make up his mind to ascend the monumental stairs, which with

their marble balustrades seemed to be copied, on a smaller scale, from

those of the Palazzo Boccanera. And there was much the same cold

bareness, tempered, however, by a carpet and red door-hangings, which

contrasted vividly with the white stucco of the walls. The

reception-rooms, sixteen feet high, were on the first floor, and as a

door chanced to be ajar he caught a glimpse of two _salons_, one

following the other, and both displaying quite modern richness, with a

profusion of silk and velvet hangings, gilt furniture, and lofty mirrors

reflecting a pompous assemblage of stands and tables. And still there was

nobody, not a soul, in that seemingly forsaken abode, which exhaled

nought of woman's presence. Indeed Pierre was on the point of going down

again to ring, when a footman at last presented himself.

"Count Prada, if you please."

The servant silently surveyed the little priest, and seemed to

understand. "The father or the son?" he asked.

"The father, Count Orlando Prada."

"Oh! that's on the third floor." And he condescended to add: "The little

door on the right-hand side of the landing. Knock loudly if you wish to

be admitted."

Pierre indeed had to knock twice, and then a little withered old man of

military appearance, a former soldier who had remained in the Count's

service, opened the door and apologised for the delay by saying that he

had been attending to his master's legs. Immediately afterwards he

announced the visitor, and the latter, after passing through a dim and

narrow ante-room, was lost in amazement on finding himself in a

relatively small chamber, extremely bare and bright, with wall-paper of a

light hue studded with tiny blue flowers. Behind a screen was an iron

bedstead, the soldier's pallet, and there was no other furniture than the

arm-chair in which the cripple spent his days, with a table of black wood

placed near him, and covered with books and papers, and two old

straw-seated chairs which served for the accommodation of the infrequent

visitors. A few planks, fixed to one of the walls, did duty as

book-shelves. However, the broad, clear, curtainless window overlooked

the most admirable panorama of Rome that could be desired.

Then the room disappeared from before Pierre's eyes, and with a sudden

shock of deep emotion he only beheld old Orlando, the old blanched lion,

still superb, broad, and tall. A forest of white hair crowned his

powerful head, with its thick mouth, fleshy broken nose, and large,

sparkling, black eyes. A long white beard streamed down with the vigour

of youth, curling like that of an ancient god. By that leonine muzzle one

divined what great passions had growled within; but all, carnal and

intellectual alike, had erupted in patriotism, in wild bravery, and

riotous love of independence. And the old stricken hero, his torso still

erect, was fixed there on his straw-seated arm-chair, with lifeless legs

buried beneath a black wrapper. Alone did his arms and hands live, and

his face beam with strength and intelligence.

Orlando turned towards his servant, and gently said to him: "You can go

away, Batista. Come back in a couple of hours." Then, looking Pierre full

in the face, he exclaimed in a voice which was still sonorous despite his

seventy years: "So it's you at last, my dear Monsieur Froment, and we

shall be able to chat at our ease. There, take that chair, and sit down

in front of me."

He had noticed the glance of surprise which the young priest had cast

upon the bareness of the room, and he gaily added: "You will excuse me

for receiving you in my cell. Yes, I live here like a monk, like an old

invalided soldier, henceforth withdrawn from active life. My son long

begged me to take one of the fine rooms downstairs. But what would have

been the use of it? I have no needs, and I scarcely care for feather

beds, for my old bones are accustomed to the hard ground. And then too I

have such a fine view up here, all Rome presenting herself to me, now

that I can no longer go to her."

With a wave of the hand towards the window he sought to hide the

embarrassment, the slight flush which came to him each time that he thus

excused his son; unwilling as he was to tell the true reason, the scruple

of probity which had made him obstinately cling to his bare pauper's

lodging.

"But it is very nice, the view is superb!" declared Pierre, in order to

please him. "I am for my own part very glad to see you, very glad to be

able to grasp your valiant hands, which accomplished so many great

things."

Orlando made a fresh gesture, as though to sweep the past away. "Pooh!

pooh! all that is dead and buried. Let us talk about you, my dear

Monsieur Froment, you who are young and represent the present; and

especially about your book, which represents the future! Ah! if you only

knew how angry your book, your 'New Rome,' made me first of all."

He began to laugh, and took the book from off the table near him; then,

tapping on its cover with his big, broad hand, he continued: "No, you

cannot imagine with what starts of protest I read your book. The Pope,

and again the Pope, and always the Pope! New Rome to be created by the

Pope and for the Pope, to triumph thanks to the Pope, to be given to the

Pope, and to fuse its glory in the glory of the Pope! But what about us?

What about Italy? What about all the millions which we have spent in

order to make Rome a great capital? Ah! only a Frenchman, and a Frenchman

of Paris, could have written such a book! But let me tell you, my dear

sir, if you are ignorant of it, that Rome has become the capital of the

kingdom of Italy, that we here have King Humbert, and the Italian people,

a whole nation which must be taken into account, and which means to keep

Rome--glorious, resuscitated Rome--for itself!"

This juvenile ardour made Pierre laugh in turn. "Yes, yes," said he, "you

wrote me that. Only what does it matter from my point of view? Italy is

but one nation, a part of humanity, and I desire concord and fraternity

among all the nations, mankind reconciled, believing, and happy. Of what

consequence, then, is any particular form of government, monarchy or

republic, of what consequence is any question of a united and independent

country, if all mankind forms but one free people subsisting on truth and

justice?"

To only one word of this enthusiastic outburst did Orlando pay attention.

In a lower tone, and with a dreamy air, he resumed: "Ah! a republic. In

my youth I ardently desired one. I fought for one; I conspired with

Mazzini, a saintly man, a believer, who was shattered by collision with

the absolute. And then, too, one had to bow to practical necessities; the

most obstinate ended by submitting. And nowadays would a republic save

us? In any case it would differ but little from our parliamentary

monarchy. Just think of what goes on in France! And so why risk a

revolution which would place power in the hands of the extreme

revolutionists, the anarchists? We fear all that, and this explains our

resignation. I know very well that a few think they can detect salvation

in a republican federation, a reconstitution of all the former little

states in so many republics, over which Rome would preside. The Vatican

would gain largely by any such transformation; still one cannot say that

it endeavours to bring it about; it simply regards the eventuality

without disfavour. But it is a dream, a dream!"

At this Orlando's gaiety came back to him, with even a little gentle

irony: "You don't know, I suppose, what it was that took my fancy in your

book--for, in spite of all my protests, I have read it twice. Well, what

pleased me was that Mazzini himself might almost have written it at one

time. Yes! I found all my youth again in your pages, all the wild hope of

my twenty-fifth year, the new religion of a humanitarian Christ, the

pacification of the world effected by the Gospel! Are you aware that,

long before your time, Mazzini desired the renovation of Christianity? He

set dogma and discipline on one side and only retained morals. And it was

new Rome, the Rome of the people, which he would have given as see to the

universal Church, in which all the churches of the past were to be

fused--Rome, the eternal and predestined city, the mother and queen,

whose domination was to arise anew to ensure the definitive happiness of

mankind! Is it not curious that all the present-day Neo-Catholicism, the

vague, spiritualistic awakening, the evolution towards communion and