The conquest of Rome

by Matilde Serao

CHAPTER I

A soft breath of lamentation; a dim light, which the blue flamelets cast against the massive granite walls in tedious pagan obsequies had never dispelled; a veiled light, which the yellow taper of Christian burial rites could not strengthen; a chill, sepulchral atmosphere; a frequent sob of music; a great, black mass of people, lost, as it were, in the funeral shadows; in the air, in the light, in the flames, in the music, tears shed and the desire to shed more, betokening irremediable woe.

As for him, sitting in his place, and yielding to the state of melancholy contemplation which by infinite, perpetual gradations merged into grief, a secret tremor shook his fibres, and made his pulse throb fast; and by a natural impulse, conscious that he was trembling and pale, he turned round, searching for something in the faint light falling from the velarium.

Beside him he saw that sweetest of women, Donna Angelica, of truly angelic mien. She was habited in black, in deep mourning, as was seemly in the Pantheon, sacred through the glory and the death of the Hero, and her sad eyes were fixed upon a candle that was consuming away. She saw nothing, and appeared to hear nothing, plunged in thoughts assuredly sorrowful, lost in her mournful dreams. Sitting next to a pillar, she had tried to read in her prayer-book the prayers beseeching peace, invoking rest for the departed; but soon the book had fallen into her lap half open, and her listless hands had not taken it up again.

And to him that dearest of mourners, pale as a pearl under her black veil, her sweet lips still apart for the passage of her prayer, her gaze dissolved in sad religious meditation—to him she appeared as a divine shape. And everything, the fitful, blue glare of the lamps, the thin, streaming flames of the candles, the atmosphere of woe, the sorrowful music, the dire gloom that had overcast even the ancient, stolid walls of the Pantheon, the incurable malady of the spirit—to him it was all embodied in that female form sitting near him: she personified the whole of that tepid, damp winter's day, on which the sun was dead; she was the moral seat of the tears that welled from all things; she was the magnetic abyss of sorrow, which the sorrow of all things could never fill, and in the profound shock of his system, in the thrill of his entire being, of flesh, blood, nerves, muscle, in all the strong composition of a strong man, there was aroused, there started into life, grew, abounded, a sentiment of amorous compassion.

She, all unwitting, gave herself up to her woman's fancies, which wandered among the tapers, the dark sacerdotal vestments glittering with gold, the tall, almost colossal, human cuirassier caryatides, among all the pale, dejected, sad, sorrowful, or indifferent faces. In spite of the immense throng of people surrounding the catafalque, in spite of the vague murmur detaching itself from them, in that hour of spiritual freedom she lost herself completely—in that brief restful hour, that hour of freedom in which private grief was renascent, and melted and flowed into the universal grief. Now and then, at a more lugubrious strain of music, at the voice of a singer bathed, as it were, in tears, at a sentence monotonously chanted in minor by the officiating priest, she would start, and her desolate dream would begin again, moving through other phases and other degrees, in other circles of melancholy; and in a new, intenser mood did she set out upon the path of pain that gentle souls all must travel. She did not weep, for the occasion was too big, too solemn; but he perceived how her delicate eyelids, as finely made as the petals of a flower, were shaded about with violet; there had tears been, there more would flow.

And while he thus ardently gazed upon that sweetest of faces, to which the shadows of pain imparted a nobly ideal expression, and was thinking of naught but that white face, half impregnate, half saturate with tears, and had forgotten all else in his amorous contemplation of the lady, he felt a wonderful change within himself. The infinite grief by which she seemed oppressed he naturally and gradually absorbed into his own spirit; it was like penetration into her heart, slow, but infallibly sure. He asked not the meaning of it, but felt his whole self disappear, drown, perish in that woman; he was mastered, not by her, perhaps, but by what she felt. The whole vagueness, mysteriousness, and unfathomableness of a feminine grief, without lament and without tears, without foundation and without limit, which had appealed to his heart now seized upon his brain, invaded it and took possession, driving out all other ideas whatever. No, it was no longer compassion, the great, natural compassion of a man towards a suffering woman; compassion is, after all, a personal feeling; compassion is something egoistic; compassion is a cry from one's self. It was he, he who was suffering now, as if the torture of that female heart were his own torture and anguish; it was he who felt the sharp pricking of the unshed tears scorching his lids; it was he who was in the throes of altruistic sympathy, and seemed to be lost in anguish, in a great waste of anguish, as that woman seemed to be struggling in a void of suffering.

And as the obsequial hour advanced, in the pagan temple where the Hero lay in state, a subtle odour of Christian incense went up; from altar to roof the smoke curled upward in graceful spiral shapes, which became more and more attenuated and ethereal until they vanished above, even like prayers ascending to the Most High. The incense, too, partook of the aromatic savour of tears, and the perfume of it, going through the nostrils to the brain, profoundly affected the nerves, caressing them into a state of voluptuous woe. In the half-light everything seemed to sway under that tragic, aromatic kiss; the women had all bent their brows to conceal the trembling of their lips, and the head of the woman he was watching was bowed down, as though her strength was gone. He sustained a shock, and made a motion as if to support her; but a sort of paralysis fell upon his limbs. The incense burned and burned in the silver censers, without flame, overcoming his last efforts of resistance.

A bell rang faintly, but in the midst of such silence it sounded sonorous; Donna Angelica slid from her seat down upon the cold marble floor, covered her face with her hands, and was no more than a heap of black clothes on the ground, unseen, unseeing, forlorn. And he, without kneeling, without inclining his head, without praying, felt annihilated in the woman's annihilation; everything seemed at an end for him, as everything was for her. And at each sound of the bell, as she gave a start as though called by a distant voice, the same action was reflected in him; nothing that spiritually took rise in her but was expressed in him by reflection.

A line of priests, with lighted tapers, drew up round the catafalque; a silver cross, on which hung the dying Saviour, stood fronting the bier. And through the music a strident, rending voice was heard—a voice that did not sing, but cried; a voice that did not ask, but implored: 'Libera, libera, libera me, Domine.' The Christian prayer, the painful cry begging salvation, made the sweet lady raise her eyes. And in her features, consuming away in their pallor like a fading flower, in her transfigured features, a true, intense aspiration was declared.

Now, while the piercing, distressful voice of the singer sued to heaven for deliverance with religious fervour, Donna Angelica, after passing through all the stages of undefined grief, felt a distinct need form in her heart. She now spoke to God, her lips moving as she prayed for deliverance. What had been indefinite till then now was defined: it was deliverance—deliverance from all that had been, good or evil, happiness or wretchedness—'From all, even this, O Lord! From all, even what has been, merciful Lord! From all, even the dreadful past, O God of pity!'

As for him who lay in the sepulchre, and whose funeral obsequies were being celebrated, deliverance had come to him at the glorious height to which he had risen; he had found deliverance, and perhaps special grace. The weight of a royal crown, the burden of a reign, the heavy responsibility of the law and of the majestic will, a load of thought and care—deliverance had come to lift all from his soul, now at rest in the ineffable peace. 'As the King sleeps, so let me sleep, O Lord!' she prayed. 'As Thou hast delivered the strong soul of the King, O Lord, so do Thou deliver my weak soul! Even if Death be the deliverer, let me die and be delivered, O Lord!'

In this supreme moment the lovely, despairing creature stretched out her arms to heaven, and as she prayed the hot, rebellious tears, so long restrained, coursed down her cheeks.

He had heard, in a mysterious way, what she besought of God. And that mourning petition, that last appeal of sorrow, gathered into a word, that agonized, Christian supplication, had also flowed from his own heart, amid the music, in the sensuous sadness of the incense, in the sepulchral glimmer of the candles, in the uncertain rocking of the light, under that blue-tinted circle of the velarium, which seemed to be alive. There sprang up in his virile heart, and flowed from it, the prayer of desolation she offered up; what she desired, he desired. An exalted satisfaction of the soul resulted from this feeling of a common desire; so sharp was the strain, so intensely was his will concentrated upon a single object, that his being seemed multiplied. And as he turned, and saw her feebly weeping, he yielded to the successive, softening emotions of great satisfaction and great sorrow, and bowed his proud head. In truth, he also was weeping—for very love.

* * * * *

Her face almost buried in a bunch of white roses, with which she was toying, and whose fresh, strong perfume coloured her cheeks, Donna Angelica Vargas was listening to a conversation between her husband and Francesco Sangiorgio.

They had been talking politics for an hour, or, rather, Don Silvio Vargas had been talking, as he reclined in his easy-chair, smoking a pestilent Tuscan cigar, and gazing at the dainty flowers painted on the light gray ceiling of the room. He spoke in a dry, hissing voice, by fits and starts, and in abrupt phrases, between the puffs of smoke; every now and then he tugged at his spare moustache, which, despite his years, had remained as brown as his hair. Age did not show in that lean old man, excepting in the thin lines at the corners of the eyes, running fan-shaped to the temples; in the two deep furrows at the corners of the mouth, dug out by his smile; in the hardness of all his features, become almost rigid; in the fleshless neck, where the tendons stood out like the strings of a violin. But otherwise he was strong and robust in his leanness, and when he inserted the round, unframed eyeglass, suspended on a black cord, under his eyebrow, his features assumed a certain vivacity, became almost youthful.

With Don Silvio Vargas this eyeglass was an infallible barometer: in his hours of rest the eyebrow scarcely retained it; in the hours of indifference it seemed dull and tarnished, the eye behind it being fixed, and closed or half closed; in the hours of utter weariness, of disgust, the lens loosened from its ring, fell upon his chest, wandered into the folds of his coat and waistcoat; in the hours of conflict, in skirmish, and in battle, the glass stood rigid in its place, clear and bright, and his eye was wide open and scintillant. Both enemies and friends, too much in earnest to be observers, never took note of these changes until later, until afterwards; they overlooked the political barometer; they felt the man's strength, or his weakness, but they did not see the symbols of either.

When, after luncheon, Angelica heard Sangiorgio announced, she had risen to leave the room, but her husband, as he folded up a newspaper and opened another, curtly requested her to stay, as if he intended to be obeyed. She remained standing by a vase of cineraria, flourishing in spite of the severe winter weather. She bowed to the new arrival, and did not join in the conversation. Her slender, youthful figure—she had recently quitted her mourning—was clad in a soft gown of claustral colour, material, and style; a thick silk girdle encircled her waist, and her beautiful white hands were lost in the amplitude of the sleeves. From time to time she looked up; at a clever or spirited remark from her husband she would smile, to show that she was interested in the conversation—that she understood, that she approved. At a reply from Sangiorgio, at one of his objections or statements, she would cast a brief glance of appreciative intelligence at him. And meanwhile she tended her plants, lovingly, eyeing them with great solicitude, removing the dust with which their leaves were covered, breaking off the little dried branches and the decayed blossoms, which spoiled their beauty and freshness. She went to and fro among the quantity of green plants, which lent the little drawing-room the appearance of a vernal bower, her tiny white hands coming out of the wide, nunlike sleeves, her fingers pretty as a child's. As she bent over the plants, the white nape of her neck was visible, where her dark hair traced a thick wavy line. When she turned towards Don Silvio or Sangiorgio, it was seen that the violet shadows were absent from her sweet face, from the lids which had shed or suppressed so many tears; charming peace reigned there instead. At a certain moment she cast an inquiring glance at her husband's gloomy face; the bright eye behind the single glass told her to remain. Yet she had finished the daily visit to her plants. She took a bunch of roses from a vase, seated herself in an arm-chair near a bay-window, and inhaled the scent of the flowers, while a little colour strayed to her pale cheeks. On chairs, tables, and mantel lay piled a number of discarded and opened and uncut newspapers, smelling strongly of printer's ink; ragged packages of various colours were strewn on the floor, thrown down there hastily and carelessly. But Donna Angelica neither took up, nor touched, nor even looked at, any of the newspapers; her foot, as if instinct with neatness, pushed two or three of the packages aside. She was smelling the flowers.

Sangiorgio had come to that house in the Piazza dell' Apollinare upon the invitation of Silvio Vargas. The Minister of Home Affairs had stopped him on the threshold of the Pantheon, had passed his arm into his, and had spoken to him in an undertone for several minutes. Then he had insisted upon his coming to his house, not to his office—yes, to his house, where they could talk after luncheon—and why the deuce was he never seen there!

'To-morrow, then?' asked Sangiorgio hesitatingly. 'What is the use of to-morrow? No! to-day—this very day!' said Vargas. He repeated that he must talk with him, and, leaving Sangiorgio's arm for his wife's, went off with her.

Sangiorgio went to the Piazza Apollinare at one o'clock. Fearing he might be too early, he was seized with a fit of hesitation at the door. But once inside, he was quickly reassured by Don Silvio's cordial manner. Only, while the Minister talked, he listened to be sure, but followed Donna Angelica in each of her quiet, graceful movements.

'Smoke! Why don't you smoke?' Don Silvio urged him, offering him some cigars while he chewed the end of his Tuscan.

Sangiorgio looked inquiringly in the lady's direction.

'My wife is accustomed to it; she does not object,' briefly commented the Minister.

Sangiorgio did not smoke, however, Donna Angelica's engaging smile notwithstanding. Seated near a little round table, he listened rather than spoke, for Don Silvio liked to be listened to. The Minister, who adored politics with the fervour of a boy of twenty, was that day greatly wrought up on the subject. In the very abuse he levelled at politics, in the very deprecations he showered on them, in his now sarcastically, now angrily nervous speech, the flaming passion for politics was evident that burned in the breast of the old Parliamentarian. And from Don Silvio, Sangiorgio seemed to hear, as if in a dream, a portion of his own thought, an echo of his own aspiring ambition, whose fancies he had never confided to a living soul. He recognised the same fever which had internally consumed him for years, while in Don Silvio the spiritual fire found expression in ideas and words. The Minister was too old, and too passionate by nature, to hide his feelings; he no longer cared to dissemble them. That inner flame must have kept Don Silvio's enthusiasm aglow. Thus did Sangiorgio reason out the cause of such prolonged and lasting vigour.

Occasionally, Don Silvio, as he looked at Sangiorgio, suppressed the sneer which deepened the furrows at the corners of his mouth, and smiled almost tenderly. Oh, he did not forget, not he, how his predecessor had fallen after a speech and a motion by Sangiorgio; he remembered Sangiorgio's brief refusal to enter the reorganized Cabinet. He had never been able to testify his gratitude, but ever since the opening of the new session had shown him his affection, had sought his company, consulted him, in a spirit of mingled deference and cordiality.

'But, at bottom, you are indifferent to power,' said Sangiorgio, after a pause in the conversation.

'No,' answered Vargas frankly, 'I am not indifferent to it; I like it; I wanted it. But the Opposition disgusts me. Sometimes it is stupid, sometimes false, sometimes brutal, and it always acts in bad faith. Where is our loyal, bold, cruel, implacable Opposition? Instead of open attack, they indulge in low pantry gossip; instead of fighting, they sneak in corners; instead of an open onslaught, it is trickery!'

'Man is a paltry creature,' observed Sangiorgio.

'He ought not to be, or ought not to appear so, if he is. By the Lord! have I not been in Opposition, too? You remember, Angelica, when I was in Opposition?'

'I remember,' she answered in the sweetest voice, raising her head.

'I was a devil. I took no rest, and gave my enemies none. Never a moment's truce! Now I am petrifying. I cannot make war now, I must wait for it; and this eternal brigandage makes my blood boil! How you fell upon the Minister that day, Sangiorgio! And you were Ministerial! Were you there that day, Angelica?'

'Yes, I was there.'

'And it is to you we owe it that I am Minister of Home Affairs,' said Vargas with emotion.

'Oh no!' murmured Sangiorgio, smiling.

'Yes, yes! The Prime Minister would never have had the courage to disavow his colleague openly. It surprises me, nevertheless, that he spoke of it to you; no one was aware of it—not even myself.'

'The Premier had told me nothing,' replied Sangiorgio deliberately.

'What! you knew nothing about it?'

'Nothing.'

'There was no understanding?'

'No.'

'By God!' exclaimed Vargas, 'you are wonderful!' And he admiringly looked Sangiorgio all over. The latter laughed formally, but immediately perceived that Angelica's face was losing its serenity, and was invaded by an air of fatigue.

'Come to the Chamber with me, Sangiorgio; it is two o'clock,' said Vargas, rising to take his departure.

'Shall you be back soon?' asked his wife, fighting down her appearance of lassitude.

'No; there is the Chamber first, and then the Senate, and afterwards I must go to my office, to arrange about a transfer of some Prefects.'

'Shall you be here at seven?'

'About eight or nine—I don't know.'

'Shall I call for you at the Chamber?'

'No, go for a walk to the Villa Borghese, or outside the Porta Pia—anywhere you like. It is no use coming to the Parliament! I shall dine after I have finished. This affair about the Prefects is very serious. I will tell you about it on the way, Sangiorgio. If any letters, or messages, or despatches arrive, let them be sent at once to wherever I am, in the Chamber, or the Senate, or my office. I am expecting important news. I am coming, Sangiorgio.'

And orders were dealt out, short and concise, to his wife and to the secretary who had entered the room; they were delivered in a tone of military command. Don Silvio stood there firm, erect, and strong, like a young man. His feverish ardour was his support; his enthusiasm was his salvation. He went into his study, taking his secretary with him, speaking in low tones and very sharply. Francesco and Angelica remained alone, he standing upright, she with head bent as if in prayer, her fingers playing with the silk girdle about her waist. They did not speak, and the moments went by in the prolonged vibration of a musical beat. Suddenly she looked at him with saddened eyes, clasped her hands, and said:

'Why did you want us to have this Home Minister's place?' And her voice trembled with restrained feeling.

Don Silvio returned with overcoat and hat, rolling the extinguished stump of his Tuscan cigar between his lips, his secretary following, with a portfolio full of papers.

'Would you like a rose?' said Angelica to her husband, on the spur of the moment, offering to put one in his buttonhole.

'What can you be thinking of!' he cried, repelling the white hand with a certain degree of roughness. 'Do you want the Opposition to quizz me? A Minister with a rose! I should become the subject of caricatures in the newspapers at once!'

Donna Angelica timidly drew back, casting a furtive glance at Sangiorgio. But she did not give him the rose.

* * * * *

A low sky, with gray, leaden, heavy clouds, becoming black on the horizon, over the Tusculan hills, on Soratte, which itself might have been a great cloud settled down upon the earth; the Campagna bare and wan, undulating in places as though heaving up its inwards; two black hedges, two prickly scant hedges, without a sign of green, without a blossom; a tavern, with a rude depiction on the damp wall of three black decanters standing on a triangle and a girl drinking wine, but with doors and windows barred by decayed wooden shutters; the large gray building where the widow Mangani gives Roman summer and autumn holiday-makers tripe in sauce to eat on a terrace, in an arbour, or in a small yard, where there is room for a table and a pint of white wine; the curious ruin, alone in a field, which bears the semblance of a gigantic armchair with a chipped back, and which in fact is known as the Devil's Chair; a carter lying dozing, face down, on a load of volcano ashes he was bringing into Rome; an occasional fat drop of rain that fell upon the ground; this side St. Agnes' a Cardinal's carriage returning leisurely from the Catacombs, and a few priests walking on both sides of the road; immediately beyond St. Agnes' two carabineers sitting rigid on horseback, wrapped up in their dark cloaks; a gentle, mild breeze that swept the earth; a pungent smell, the peculiar smell of the Roman Campagna, which goes to the brain, and from the brain goes into the system like an insidious miasma; a strange dog, all muddy, that went sniffing along the hedges and looked at every wayfarer with sad, unhappy eyes—these were the things, people, animals, surroundings, seen by Francesco Sangiorgio, towards the close of a winter's day, in the Via Nomentana. And over all things, animals, houses, churches, hung the deep gloom of the imminent rainstorm, the tremendous gloom of a Roman sunset in the Campagna.

'Here is the Ponte Nomentana,' said the coachman, pointing to it with his whip.

'Stop; I wish to get out. And wait for me here,' said Sangiorgio.

He walked up the little slope to the bridge, the strange walled bridge, whose broad, graceful arch curves over the gurgling waters of the Aniene, with two large casements facing up stream and down. Sangiorgio stood on the bridge, and, leaning on a ledge, looked into the distance whence the river came.

It flowed with a narrow, but deep, winding and singularly rapid current, increased by winter rains; it flowed a dull, silvery, but cold white, without a shimmer and utterly glacial. A number of little whirlpools took shape, tiny circles with an interior mouth round which the water coursed in circular ripplets.

On the bank was a little mould of lighter colour, but no vegetation, no gravel, no volcano ashes, and round about was the great desert of the Roman Campagna.

It was not raining as yet, but the vapours from the river and the moist sirocco had imparted a certain dampness to the old bridge, and as he touched the wall at a casement where he was standing, Sangiorgio felt the trickling wet; the elbows of his coat were soaking and dirtied. He scanned the Campagna intently, but neither the poorest specimen of a tree nor the meanest specimen of a human being was in sight; the river, which at Tivoli is so magnificent, so gay, so clamorous, over there ran to a very mournful strain.

He then posted himself at the casement on the left, and watched the water flow swiftly down to join the Tiber. From here the Via Nomentana was seen to continue over the plain, to make an angle and vanish. In the middle of a field stood a cottage, a tumbledown hovel, with two rooms and no ceiling, and walls like broken teeth; at the corner of the road was a tidy, white little cottage, the Huntsman's Inn, from which a fine meadow stretched down to the river. In the water stood willow bushes, with blackish, scrawny branches; on the banks were small willows, equally scrawny. A boat was held in the stream by means of a rope attached to a wooden post driven into the shore; the water broke gurgling against boat, willows, and rope.

With the descending darkness, the sky, too, seemed to descend. Gazing with the strenuousness of an earnest searcher, Sangiorgio perceived a closed carriage to stop near the Huntsman's Inn, but it had halted in such a way that he could see neither horse nor coachman. And then, from afar, on the river's right bank, he saw a dark spot that grew and grew, and he recognised the sweet lady who had wept in church.

Dressed in black, she wended her solitary way along the river, walking up-stream, pausing every now and then to look at the speeding current; she moved gently, very close to the water, sinking into the spongy soil, advancing with measured footsteps.

When she had drawn nearer, he observed against the dark dress the bunch of white roses from the room at home full of green plants; she held them clasped to her waist with her hands. Two or three times she turned to the horizon, in admiration of the sad sky, which seemed about to smother the earth, and looked for the Tusculan hills already hidden by the approaching storm. Then she resumed her lonely walk with such lightness of action that she seemed barely to graze the earth.

Not once did she raise her eyes to the walls of the bridge, to the wide casement where stood he who was watching her. Assuredly she believed herself in absolute solitude, in that vast bare Campagna, that threatening tempest, that last hour of daylight, that melancholy landscape, from which the vulgar would shrink; she believed herself alone, as if in church, praying to God, speaking to God.

At fifty paces from the bridge, near the rotten post to which the boat's rope was tied, Donna Angelica stopped short. She looked as if she had been suddenly overtaken by fatigue, despite the slowness of her gait, or perhaps she had succumbed to the great fascination of running water that seizes upon the spirit of the beholder and keeps it under a spell. Indeed, leaning against the post, as if rooted to the river-bank, at one step from the coursing stream, which bent the dark boughs of the willows, Donna Angelica was entirely lost in contemplation of the river.

An immense dark roof of clouds—a shroud forestalling night—now shut in the whole horizon round about, and the light seemed slowly perishing, as if being crushed between sky and earth. Sangiorgio was unconscious of everything save that female form, standing stark as a statue on the bank of the river. But a rumbling noise came from the Via Nomentana, a sound of wheels, of trotting horses; and in the gray light something red and bright flashed by. Under the lowered hood of a Daumont carriage something white passed by—a fugitive face, a royal face. The royal carriage crossed the bridge at a trot, the royal lady having responded to Sangiorgio's bow; and the whole brief, vivid, transient vision disappeared in the direction of Rome. Sangiorgio again turned to the river.

The lady was unaware of all this. Lost in thought, the noise and the purple passage of the royal equipage—a sort of brilliant, gleaming comet, which for an instant had lit up the darkness of the cloud-ensombred twilight—had escaped her. She seemed to be unable to tear herself away from the sight of the austere Aniene, with its gelid waters. He saw her bend over several times, as if she were trying to mirror herself in the river, or to discern the bottom of it. Her fingers hereupon plucked a rose to pieces, and threw the white leaves into the hurrying flood, which carried them away; one after another she picked off all the leaves, throwing them adrift upon the current by handfuls. She did not angrily ravish the white leaves from their stem, but detached them lingeringly, as if everything in her soul were actually departing or dying with the departing, dying leaves. The hands relinquishing those floral lives had also known the desolation and death of other lives. The last leaf, indeed, faded between her fingers. He could not see all this from the distance, but he guessed it; and as the last leaf went, withered and crumpled, he felt a languor as of death overtake him. After a last look at the Aniene, the lady went back to the road without a backward glance, and got into her carriage. It passed over the bridge at high speed. Donna Angelica did not see Sangiorgio, but he saw very plainly how the pale creature was still pressing the stripped stems of the dead roses to her side.

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