The Eternal City. Sir Hall Caine
will discharge him this very day—I will! I will! I will!"
There was an intense bitterness in the thought that what David Rossi had said must have come of what her own servant told him—that Bruno had watched her in her own house day by day, and that time after time the two men had discussed her between them.
"I could kill him," she said.
"Bruno Rocco?"
"No, David Rossi."
"Have patience; he shall be punished," said the Baron.
"How?"
"He shall be put on his trial."
"What for?"
"Sedition. The law allows a man to say what he will about a Prime Minister, but he must not foretell the overthrow of the King. The fellow has gone too far at last. He shall go to Santo Stefano."
"What good will that do?"
"He will be silenced—and crushed."
She looked at the Baron with a sidelong smile, and something in her heart, which she did not understand, made her laugh at him.
"Do you imagine you can crush a man like that by trying and condemning him?" she said. "He has insulted and humiliated me, but I'm not silly enough to deceive myself. Try him, condemn him, and he will be greater in his prison than the King on his throne."
The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache again.
"Besides," she said, "what benefit will it be to me if you put him on trial for inciting the people to rebellion against the King? The public will say it was for insulting yourself, and everybody will think he was punished for telling the truth."
The Baron continued to twist the ends of his moustache.
"Benefit!" She laughed ironically. "It will be a double injury. The insult will be repeated in public again and again. First the advocate for the crown will read it aloud, then the advocate for the defence will quote it, and then it will be discussed and dissected and telegraphed until everybody in court knows it by heart and all Europe has heard of it."
The Baron made no answer, but watched the beautiful face, now very pale, behind which conflicting thoughts seemed to wriggle like a knot of vipers. Suddenly she leaped up with a spring.
"I know!" she cried. "I know! I know! I know!"
"Well?"
"Give the man to me, and I will show you how to escape from this humiliating situation."
"Roma?" said the Baron, but he had read her thought already.
"If you punish him for this speech you will injure both of us and do no good to the King."
"It's true."
"Take him in a serious conspiracy, and you will be doing us no harm and the King some service."
"No doubt."
"You say there is a mystery about David Rossi, and you want to know who he is, who his father was, and where he spent the years he was away from Rome."
"I would certainly give a good deal to know."
"You want to know what vile refugee in London filled him with his fancies, what conspiracies he is hatching, what secret societies he belongs to, and, above all, what his plans and schemes are, and whether he is in league with the Vatican."
She spoke so rapidly that the words sputtered out of her quivering lips.
"Well?"
"Well, I will find it all out for you."
"My dear Roma!"
"Leave him to me, and within a month you shall know"—she laughed, a little ashamed—"the inmost secrets of his soul."
She was walking to and fro again, to prevent the Baron from looking into her face, which was now red over its white, like a rose moon in a stormy sky.
The Baron thought. "She is going to humble the man by her charms—to draw him on and then fling him away, and thus pay him back for what he has done to-day. So much the better for me if I may stand by and do nothing. A strong Minister should be unmoved by personal attacks. He should appear to regard them with contempt."
He looked at her, and the brilliancy of her eyes set his heart on fire. The terrible attraction of her face at that moment stirred in him the only love he had for her. At the same time it awakened the first spasm of jealousy.
"I understand you, Roma," he said. "You are splendid! You are irresistible! But remember—the man is one of the incorruptible."
She laughed.
"No woman who has yet crossed his path seems to have touched him, and it is the pride of all such men that no woman ever can."
"I've seen him," she said.
"Take care! As you say, he is young and handsome."
She tossed her head and laughed again.
The Baron thought: "Certainly he has wounded her in a way no woman can forgive."
"And what about Bruno?" he said.
"He shall stay," she answered. "Such men are easy enough to manage."
"You wish me to liberate David Rossi and leave you to deal with him?"
"I do! Oh, for the day when I can turn the laugh against him as he has turned the laugh against me! At the top of his hopes, at the height of his ambitions, at the moment when he says to himself, 'It is done'—he shall fall."
The Baron touched the bell. "Very well!" he said. "One can sometimes catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hogshead of vinegar. We shall see."
A moment later the Chief of Police entered the room. "The Honourable Rossi is safely lodged in prison," he said.
"Commendatore," said the Baron, pointing to the book lying open on the table, "I have been looking again at the statute, and now I am satisfied that a Deputy can be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament alone."
"But, Excellency, if he is taken in the act, according to the forty-fifth article, the parliamentary immunity ceases."
"Commendatore, I have given you my opinion, and now it is my wish that the Honourable David Rossi should be set at liberty."
"Excellency!"
"Be so good as to liberate him instantly, and let your officers see him safely through the streets to his home in the Piazza Navona."
The little head like a hen's went down like a hatchet, and Commendatore Angelelli backed out of the room.
PART TWO—THE REPUBLIC OF MAN
I
The Piazza Navona is the heart and soul of old Rome. In other quarters of the living city you feel tempted to ask: "Is this London?" or, "Is this Paris?" or, "Is this New York or Berlin?" but in the Piazza Navona you can only tell yourself, "This is Rome!"
In an apartment-house of the Piazza Navona, David Rossi had lived during the seven years since he became Member of Parliament for Rome. The ground floor is a Trattoria, half eating-house and half wine-shop, with rude frescoes on its distempered walls, representing the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius in eruption. A passage running by the side of the Trattoria leads to the apartments overhead, and at the foot of the staircase there is a porter's lodge, a closet always lighted by a lamp, which burns down the dark passage day and night,