“But a letter will reach him?”
“It may, or it may not; besides, it may come to hand, and yet never be acknowledged.”
“What is to be done, then?”
“I 'll think over it, before we separate. I 'll try and suggest something. But here comes Morlache; and now be cautious. Not a word to show that you are ill at ease.” The warning was scarcely spoken, when the Jew entered.
Morlache knew D'Esmonde too well to be surprised at seeing him anywhere or at any moment He saluted him, therefore, as though they had met the very day before, and the party sat down to supper, in all the seeming ease of unburdened minds.
They chatted over the politics of Italy, and the change that had come over Florence since the last time they had sat together in that chamber.
“It was a noisy scene, that night,” said Morlache; “but the streets are quiet enough now.”
“Quiet as a corpse,” said Norwood, sternly. “You had no other nostrum for tranquillity but to extinguish life.”
“What you regard as death, my Lord,” said the Abbé, “is only a trance. Italy will rise grander and more powerful than ever. One element alone has survived through all the convulsive throes, and all the changing fortunes of this land,—the Papacy. The terrible wars of rival cities and states, the more bloody conquests of ambitious houses, leave not a trace behind them; but Rome holds on her proud way, and, like the great river of the poet, 'Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis oevum. '”
“To which I beg, in a less classical quotation, to rejoin, 'Confound your politics,'” cried Norwood, laughing. “Come, Morlache, let us turn to a humbler theme. Who have you got here; who are coming for the winter?”