第 99 页

who can tell what may be the surprises of to-morrow? Are we forbidden to

hope, to put faith in the blood which courses in our veins, the blood of

the old conquerors of the world? I, who no longer stir from this room,

impotent as I am, even I at times feel my madness come back, believe in

the invincibility and immortality of Rome, and wait for the two millions

of people who must come to populate those dolorous new districts which

you have seen so empty and already falling into ruins! And certainly they

will come! Why not? You will see, you will see, everything will be

populated, and even more houses will have to be built. Moreover, can you

call a nation poor, when it possesses Lombardy? Is there not also

inexhaustible wealth in our southern provinces? Let peace settle down,

let the South and the North mingle together, and a new generation of

workers grow up. Since we have the soil, such a fertile soil, the great

harvest which is awaited will surely some day sprout and ripen under the

burning sun!"

Enthusiasm was upbuoying him, all the _furia_ of youth inflamed his eyes.

Pierre smiled, won over; and as soon as he was able to speak, he said:

"The problem must be tackled down below, among the people. You must make

men!"

"Exactly!" cried Orlando. "I don't cease repeating it, one must make

Italy. It is as if a wind from the East had blown the seed of humanity,

the seed which makes vigorous and powerful nations, elsewhere. Our people

is not like yours in France, a reservoir of men and money from which one

can draw as plentifully as one pleases. It is such another inexhaustible

reservoir that I wish to see created among us. And one must begin at the

bottom. There must be schools everywhere, ignorance must be stamped out,

brutishness and idleness must be fought with books, intellectual and

moral instruction must give us the industrious people which we need if we

are not to disappear from among the great nations. And once again for

whom, if not for the democracy of to-morrow, have we worked in taking

possession of Rome? And how easily one can understand that all should

collapse here, and nothing grow up vigorously since such a democracy is

absolutely absent. Yes, yes, the solution of the problem does not lie

elsewhere; we must make a people, make an Italian democracy."

Pierre had grown calm again, feeling somewhat anxious yet not daring to

say that it is by no means easy to modify a nation, that Italy is such as

soil, history, and race have made her, and that to seek to transform her

so radically and all at once might be a dangerous enterprise. Do not

nations like beings have an active youth, a resplendent prime, and a more

or less prolonged old age ending in death? A modern democratic Rome, good

heavens! The modern Romes are named Paris, London, Chicago. So he

contented himself with saying: "But pending this great renovation of the

people, don't you think that you ought to be prudent? Your finances are

in such a bad condition, you are passing through such great social and

economic difficulties, that you run the risk of the worst catastrophes

before you secure either men or money. Ah! how prudent would that

minister be who should say in your Chamber: 'Our pride has made a

mistake, it was wrong of us to try to make ourselves a great nation in

one day; more time, labour, and patience are needed; and we consent to

remain for the present a young nation, which will quietly reflect and

labour at self-formation, without, for a long time yet, seeking to play a

dominant part. So we intend to disarm, to strike out the war and naval

estimates, all the estimates intended for display abroad, in order to

devote ourselves to our internal prosperity, and to build up by

education, physically and morally, the great nation which we swear we

will be fifty years hence!' Yes, yes, strike out all needless

expenditure, your salvation lies in that!"

But Orlando, while listening, had become gloomy again, and with a vague,

weary gesture he replied in an undertone: "No, no, the minister who

should use such language would be hooted. It would be too hard a

confession, such as one cannot ask a nation to make. Every heart would

bound, leap forth at the idea. And, besides, would not the danger perhaps

be even greater if all that has been done were allowed to crumble? How

many wrecked hopes, how much discarded, useless material there would be!

No, we can now only save ourselves by patience and courage--and forward,

ever forward! We are a very young nation, and in fifty years we desired

to effect the unity which others have required two hundred years to

arrive at. Well, we must pay for our haste, we must wait for the harvest

to ripen, and fill our barns." Then, with another and more sweeping wave

of the arm, he stubbornly strengthened himself in his hopes. "You know,"

said he, "that I was always against the alliance with Germany. As I

predicted, it has ruined us. We were not big enough to march side by side

with such a wealthy and powerful person, and it is in view of a war,

always near at hand and inevitable, that we now suffer so cruelly from

having to support the budgets of a great nation. Ah! that war which has

never come, it is that which has exhausted the best part of our blood and

sap and money without the slightest profit. To-day we have nothing before

us but the necessity of breaking with our ally, who speculated on our

pride, who has never helped us in any way, who has never given us

anything but bad advice, and treated us otherwise than with suspicion.

But it was all inevitable, and that's what people won't admit in France.

I can speak freely of it all, for I am a declared friend of France, and

people even feel some spite against me on that account. However, explain

to your compatriots, that on the morrow of our conquest of Rome, in our

frantic desire to resume our ancient rank, it was absolutely necessary

that we should play our part in Europe and show that we were a power with

whom the others must henceforth count. And hesitation was not allowable,

all our interests impelled us toward Germany, the evidence was so binding

as to impose itself. The stern law of the struggle for life weighs as

heavily on nations as on individuals, and this it is which explains and

justifies the rupture between the two sisters, France and Italy, the

forgetting of so many ties, race, commercial intercourse, and, if you

like, services also. The two sisters, ah! they now pursue each other with

so much hatred that all common sense even seems at an end. My poor old

heart bleeds when I read the articles which your newspapers and ours

exchange like poisoned darts. When will this fratricidal massacre cease,

which of the two will first realise the necessity of peace, the necessity

of the alliance of the Latin races, if they are to remain alive amidst

those torrents of other races which more and more invade the world?" Then

gaily, with the _bonhomie_ of a hero disarmed by old age, and seeking a

refuge in his dreams, Orlando added: "Come, you must promise to help me

as soon as you are in Paris. However small your field of action may be,

promise me you will do all you can to promote peace between France and

Italy; there can be no more holy task. Relate all you have seen here, all

you have heard, oh! as frankly as possible. If we have faults, you

certainly have faults as well. And, come, family quarrels can't last for

ever!"

"No doubt," Pierre answered in some embarrassment. "Unfortunately they

are the most tenacious. In families, when blood becomes exasperated with

blood, hate goes as far as poison and the knife. And pardon becomes

impossible."

He dared not fully express his thoughts. Since he had been in Rome,

listening, and considering things, the quarrel between Italy and France

had resumed itself in his mind in a fine tragic story. Once upon a time

there were two princesses, daughters of a powerful queen, the mistress of

the world. The elder one, who had inherited her mother's kingdom, was

secretly grieved to see her sister, who had established herself in a

neighbouring land, gradually increase in wealth, strength, and

brilliancy, whilst she herself declined as if weakened by age,

dismembered, so exhausted, and so sore, that she already felt defeated on

the day when she attempted a supreme effort to regain universal power.

And so how bitter were her feelings, how hurt she always felt on seeing

her sister recover from the most frightful shocks, resume her dazzling

_gala_, and continue to reign over the world by dint of strength and

grace and wit. Never would she forgive it, however well that envied and

detested sister might act towards her. Therein lay an incurable wound,

the life of one poisoned by that of the other, the hatred of old blood

for young blood, which could only be quieted by death. And even if peace,

as was possible, should soon be restored between them in presence of the

younger sister's evident triumph, the other would always harbour deep

within her heart an endless grief at being the elder yet the vassal.

"However, you may rely on me," Pierre affectionately resumed. "This

quarrel between the two countries is certainly a great source of grief

and a great peril. And assuredly I will only say what I think to be the

truth about you. At the same time I fear that you hardly like the truth,

for temperament and custom have hardly prepared you for it. The poets of

every nation who at various times have written on Rome have intoxicated

you with so much praise that you are scarcely fitted to hear the real

truth about your Rome of to-day. No matter how superb a share of praise

one may accord you, one must all the same look at the reality of things,

and this reality is just what you won't admit, lovers of the beautiful as

you ever are, susceptible too like women, whom the slightest hint of a

wrinkle sends into despair."

Orlando began to laugh. "Well, certainly, one must always beautify things

a little," said he. "Why speak of ugly faces at all? We in our theatres

only care for pretty music, pretty dancing, pretty pieces which please

one. As for the rest, whatever is disagreeable let us hide it, for

mercy's sake!"

"On the other hand," the priest continued, "I will cheerfully confess the

great error of my book. The Italian Rome which I neglected and sacrificed

to papal Rome not only exists but is already so powerful and triumphant

that it is surely the other one which is bound to disappear in course of

time. However much the Pope may strive to remain immutable within his

Vatican, a steady evolution goes on around him, and the black world, by

mingling with the white, has already become a grey world. I never

realised that more acutely than at the _fete_ given by Prince

Buongiovanni for the betrothal of his daughter to your grand-nephew. I

came away quite enchanted, won over to the cause of your resurrection."

The old man's eyes sparkled. "Ah! you were present?" said he, "and you

witnessed a never-to-be-forgotten scene, did you not, and you no longer

doubt our vitality, our growth into a great people when the difficulties

of to-day are overcome? What does a quarter of a century, what does even

a century matter! Italy will again rise to her old glory, as soon as the

great people of to-morrow shall have sprung from the soil. And if I

detest that man Sacco it is because to my mind he is the incarnation of

all the enjoyers and intriguers whose appetite for the spoils of our

conquest has retarded everything. But I live again in my dear

grand-nephew Attilio, who represents the future, the generation of brave

and worthy men who will purify and educate the country. Ah! may some of

the great ones of to-morrow spring from him and that adorable little

Princess Celia, whom my niece Stefana, a sensible woman at bottom,

brought to see me the other day. If you had seen that child fling her

arms about me, call me endearing names, and tell me that I should be

godfather to her first son, so that he might bear my name and once again

save Italy! Yes, yes, may peace be concluded around that coming cradle;

may the union of those dear children be the indissoluble marriage of Rome

and the whole nation, and may all be repaired, and all blossom anew in

their love!"

Tears came to his eyes, and Pierre, touched by his inextinguishable

patriotism, sought to please him. "I myself," said he, "expressed to your

son much the same wish on the evening of the betrothal _fete_, when I

told him I trusted that their nuptials might be definitive and fruitful,

and that from them and all the others there might arise the great nation

which, now that I begin to know you, I hope you will soon become!"

"You said that!" exclaimed Orlando. "Well, I forgive your book, for you

have understood at last; and new Rome, there she is, the Rome which is

ours, which we wish to make worthy of her glorious past, and for the

third time the queen of the world."

With one of those broad gestures into which he put all his remaining

life, he pointed to the curtainless window where Rome spread out in

solemn majesty from one horizon to the other. But, suddenly he turned his

head and in a fit of paternal indignation began to apostrophise young

Angiolo Mascara. "You young rascal!" said he, "it's our Rome which you

dream of destroying with your bombs, which you talk of razing like a

rotten, tottering house, so as to rid the world of it for ever!"

Angiolo had hitherto remained silent, passionately listening to the

others. His pretty, girlish, beardless face reflected the slightest

emotion in sudden flashes; and his big blue eyes also had glowed on

hearing what had been said of the people, the new people which it was

necessary to create. "Yes!" he slowly replied in his pure and musical

voice, "we mean to raze it and not leave a stone of it, but raze it in

order to build it up again."

Orlando interrupted him with a soft, bantering laugh: "Oh! you would