II
Half-an-hour later the little musician was lying on a couch in the doctor's surgery, a cheerful room with a fire and a soft lamp under a shade. He was still unconscious, but his damp clothes had been taken off and he was wrapped in blankets. The doctor sat at the boy's head and moistened his lips with brandy, while a good woman, with the face of a saint, knelt at the end of the couch and rubbed his little feet and legs. After a little while there was a perceptible quivering of the eyelids and twitching of the mouth.
"He is coming to, mother," said the doctor.
"At last," said his wife.
The boy moaned and opened his eyes, the big helpless eyes of childhood, black as a sloe, and with long black lashes. He looked at the fire, the lamp, the carpet, the blankets, the figures at either end of the couch, and with a smothered cry he raised himself as though thinking to escape.
"Carino!" said the doctor, smoothing the boy's curly hair. "Lie still a little longer."
The voice was like a caress, and the boy sank back. But presently he raised himself again, and gazed around the room as if looking for something. The good mother understood him perfectly, and from a chair on which his clothes were lying she picked up his little grey squirrel. It was frozen stiff with the cold and now quite dead, but he grasped it tightly and kissed it passionately, while big teardrops rolled on to his cheeks.
"Carino!" said the doctor again, taking the dead squirrel away, and after a while the boy lay quiet and was comforted.
"Italiano—si?"
"Si, Signore."
"From which province?"
"Campagna Romana, Signore."
"Where does he say he comes from, doctor?"
"From the country district outside Rome. And now you are living at Maccari's in Greek Street—isn't that so?"
"Yes, sir."
"How long have you been in England—one year, two years?"
"Two years and a half, sir."
"And what is your name, my son?"
"David Leone."
"A beautiful name, carino! David Le-o-ne," repeated the doctor, smoothing the curly hair.
"A beautiful boy, too! What will you do with him, doctor?"
"Keep him here to-night at all events, and to-morrow we'll see if some institution will not receive him. David Leone! Where have I heard that name before, I wonder? Your father is a farmer?"
But the boy's face had clouded like a mirror that has been breathed upon, and he made no answer.
"Isn't your father a farmer in the Campagna Romana, David?"
"I have no father," said the boy.
"Carino! But your mother is alive—yes?"
"I have no mother."
"Caro mio! Caro mio! You shall not go to the institution to-morrow, my son," said the doctor, and then the mirror cleared in a moment as if the sun had shone on it.
"Listen, father!"
Two little feet were drumming on the floor above.
"Baby hasn't gone to bed yet. She wouldn't sleep until she had seen the boy, and I had to promise she might come down presently."
"Let her come down now," said the doctor.
The boy was supping a basin of broth when the door burst open with a bang, and like a tiny cascade which leaps and bubbles in the sunlight, a little maid of three, with violet eyes, golden complexion, and glossy black hair, came bounding into the room. She was trailing behind her a train of white nightdress, hobbling on the portion in front, and carrying under her arm a cat, which, being held out by the neck, was coiling its body and kicking its legs like a rabbit.
But having entered with so fearless a front, the little woman drew up suddenly at sight of the boy, and, entrenching herself behind the doctor, began to swing by his coat-tails, and to take furtive glances at the stranger in silence and aloofness.
"Bless their hearts! what funny things they are, to be sure," said the mother. "Somebody seems to have been telling her she might have a brother some day, and when nurse said to Susanna, 'The doctor has brought a boy home with him to-night,' nothing was so sure as that this was the brother they had promised her, and yet now ... Roma, you silly child, why don't you come and speak to the poor boy who was nearly frozen to death in the snow?"
But Roma's privateering fingers were now deep in her father's pocket, in search of a specimen of the sugar-stick which seemed to live and grow there. She found two sugar-sticks this time, and sight of a second suggested a bold adventure. Sidling up toward the couch, but still holding on to the doctor's coat-tails, like a craft that swings to anchor, she tossed one of the sugar-sticks on to the floor at the boy's side. The boy smiled and picked it up, and this being taken for sufficient masculine response, the little daughter of Eve proceeded to proper overtures.
"Oo a boy?"
The boy smiled again and assented.
"Oo me brodder?"
The boy's smile paled perceptibly.
"Oo lub me?"
The tide in the boy's eyes was rising rapidly.
"Oo lub me eber and eber?"
The tears were gathering fast, when the doctor, smoothing the boy's dark curls again, said:
"You have a little sister of your own far away in the Campagna Romana—yes?"
"No, sir."
"Perhaps it's a brother?"
"I ... I have nobody," said the boy, and his voice broke on the last word with a thud.
"You shall not go to the institution at all, David," said the doctor softly.
"Doctor Roselli!" exclaimed his wife. But something in the doctor's face smote her instantly and she said no more.
"Time for bed, baby."
But baby had many excuses. There were the sugar-sticks, and the pussy, and the boy-brother, and finally her prayers to say.
"Say them here, then, sweetheart," said her mother, and with her cat pinned up again under one arm and the sugar-stick held under the other, kneeling face to the fire, but screwing her half-closed eyes at intervals in the direction of the couch, the little maid put her little waif-and-stray hands together and said:
"Our Fader oo art in Heben, alud be dy name. Dy kingum tum. Dy will be done on eard as it is in Heben. Gib us dis day our dayey bread, and forgib us our trelspasses as we forgib dem dat trelspass ayenst us. And lee us not into temstashuns, but deliber us from ebil ... for eber and eber. Amen."
The house in Soho Square was perfectly silent an hour afterward. In the surgery the lamp was turned down, the cat was winking and yawning at the fire, and the doctor sat in a chair in front of the fading glow and listened to the measured breathing of the boy behind him. It dropped at length, like a pendulum that is about to stop, into the noiseless beat of innocent sleep, and then the good man got up and looked down at the little head on the pillow.
Even with the eyes closed it was a beautiful face; one of the type which great painters have loved to paint for their saints and angels—sweet, soft, wise, and wistful. And where did it come from? From the Campagna Romana, a scene of poverty, of squalor, of fever, and of death!
The doctor thought of his own little daughter, whose life had been a long holiday, and then of the boy whose days had been an unbroken bondage.
"Yet who knows but in the rough chance of life our little Roma may not some day ... God forbid!"
The boy moved in his sleep and laughed the laugh of a dream that is like the sound of a breeze in soft summer grass, and it broke the thread of painful reverie.
"Poor little man! he has forgotten all his troubles."
Perhaps he was back in his sunny Italy by this time, among the vines and the oranges and the flowers, running barefoot with other children on the dazzling whiteness of the roads!... Perhaps his mother in heaven was praying her heart out to the Blessed Virgin to watch over her fatherless darling cast adrift upon the world!
The train of thought was interrupted by voices in the street, and the doctor drew the curtain of the window aside and looked out. The snow had ceased to fall, and the moon was shining; the leafless trees were casting their delicate black shadows on the whitened ground, and the yellow light of a lantern on the opposite angle of the square showed where a group of lads were singing a Christmas carol.
"While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around."
Doctor Roselli closed the curtain, put out the lamp, touched with his lips the forehead of the sleeping boy, and went to bed.
PART ONE—THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
TWENTY YEARS LATER
I
It was the last day of the century. In a Bull proclaiming a Jubilee the Pope had called his faithful children to Rome, and they had come from all quarters of the globe. To salute the coming century, and to dedicate it, in pomp and solemn ceremony, to the return of the world to the Holy Church, one and universal, the people had gathered in the great Piazza of St. Peter.
Boys and women were climbing up every possible elevation, and a bright-faced girl who had conquered a high place on the base of the obelisk was chattering down at a group of her friends who were listening to their cicerone.
"Yes, that is the Vatican," said the guide, pointing to a square building at the back of the colonnade, "and the apartments of the Pope are those on the third floor, just on the level of the Loggia of Raphael. The Cardinal Secretary of State used to live in the rooms below, opening on the grand staircase that leads from the Court of Damasus. There's a private way up to the Pope's apartment, and a secret passage to the Castle of St. Angelo."
"Say, has the Pope got that secret passage still?"
"No, sir. When the Castle went over to the King the connection with the Vatican was cut off. Ah, everything is changed since those days! The Pope used to go to St. Peter's surrounded by his Cardinals and Bishops, to the roll of drums and the roar of cannon. All that is over now. The present Pope is trying to revive the old condition seemingly, but what can he do? Even the Bull proclaiming the Jubilee laments the loss of the temporal power which would have permitted him to renew the enchantments of the Holy City."
"Tell him it's just lovely as it is," said the girl on the obelisk, "and when the illuminations begin...."
"Say, friend," said her parent again, "Rome belonged to the Pope—yes? Then the Italians came in and took it and made it the capital of Italy—so?"
"Just so, and ever since then the Holy Father has been a prisoner in the Vatican, going into it as a cardinal and coming out of it as a corpse, and to-day will be the first time a Pope has set foot in the streets of Rome!"
"My! And shall we see him in his prison clothes?"
"Lilian Martha! Don't you know enough for that? Perhaps you expect to see his chains and a straw of his bed in the cell? The Pope is a king and has a court—that's the way I am figuring it."
"True, the Pope is a sovereign still, and he is surrounded by his officers of state—Cardinal Secretary, Majordomo, Master of Ceremonies, Steward, Chief of Police, Swiss Guards, Noble Guard and Palatine Guard, as well as the Papal Guard who live in the garden and patrol the precincts night and day."
"Then where the nation ... prisoner, you say?"
"Prisoner indeed! Not even able to look out of his windows on to this piazza on the 20th of September without the risk of insult and outrage—and Heaven knows what will happen when he ventures out to-day!"
"Well! this goes clear ahead of me!"
Beyond the outer cordon of troops many carriages were drawn up in positions likely to be favourable for a view of the procession. In one of these sat a Frenchman in a coat covered with medals, a florid, fiery-eyed old soldier with bristling white hair. Standing by his carriage door was a typical young Roman, fashionable, faultlessly dressed, pallid, with strong lower jaw, dark watchful eyes, twirled-up moustache and cropped black mane.
"Ah, yes," said the old Frenchman. "Much water has run under the bridge since then, sir. Changed since I was here? Rome? You're right, sir. 'When Rome falls, falls the world;' but it can alter for all that, and even this square has seen its transformations. Holy Office stands where it did, the yellow building behind there, but this palace, for instance—this one with the people in the balcony...."
The Frenchman pointed to the travertine walls of a prison-like house on the farther side of the piazza.
"Do you know whose palace that is?"
"Baron Bonelli's, President of the Council and Minister of the Interior."
"Precisely! But do you know whose palace it used to be?"
"Belonged to the English Wolsey, didn't it, in the days when he wanted the Papacy?"
"Belonged in my time to the father of the Pope, sir—old Baron Leone!"
"Leone! That's the family name of the Pope, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir, and the old Baron was a banker and a cripple. One foot in the grave, and all his hopes centred in his son. 'My son,' he used to say, 'will be the richest man in Rome some day—richer than all their Roman princes, and it will be his own fault if he doesn't make himself Pope.'"
"He has, apparently."
"Not that way, though. When his father died, he sold up everything, and having no relations looking to him, he gave away every penny to the poor. That's how the old banker's palace fell into the hands of the Prime Minister of Italy—an infidel, an Antichrist."
"So the Pope is a good man, is he?"
"Good man, sir? He's not a man at all, he's an angel! Only two aims in life—the glory of the Church and the welfare of the rising generation. Gave away half his inheritance founding homes all over the world for poor boys. Boys—that's the Pope's tender point, sir! Tell him anything tender about a boy and he breaks up like an old swordcut."
The eyes of the young Roman were straying away from the Frenchman to a rather shabby single-horse hackney carriage which had just come into the square and taken up its position in the shadow of the grim old palace. It had one occupant only—a man in a soft black hat. He was quite without a sign of a decoration, but his arrival had created a general commotion, and all faces were turning toward him.
"Do you happen to know who that is?" said the gay Roman. "That man in the cab under the balcony full of ladies? Can it be David Rossi?"
"David Rossi, the anarchist?"
"Some people call him so. Do you know him?"
"I know nothing about the man except that he is an enemy of his Holiness."
"He intends to present a petition to the Pope this morning, nevertheless."
"Impossible!"
"Haven't you heard of it? These are his followers with the banners and badges."
He pointed to the line of working-men who had ranged themselves about the cab, with banners inscribed variously, "Garibaldi Club," "Mazzini Club," "Republican Federation," and "Republic of Man."
"Your friend Antichrist," tipping a finger over his shoulder in the direction of the palace, "has been taxing bread to build more battleships, and Rossi has risen against him. But failing in the press, in Parliament and at the Quirinal, he is coming to the Pope to pray of him to let the Church play its old part of intermediary between the poor and the oppressed."
"Preposterous!"
"So?"
"To whom is the Pope to protest? To the King of Italy who robbed him of his Holy City? Pretty thing to go down on your knees to the brigand who has stripped you! And at whose bidding is he to protest? At the bidding of his bitterest enemy? Pshaw!"
"You persist that David Rossi is an enemy of the Pope?"
"The deadliest enemy the Pope has in the world."