She had looked through tear-dimmed eyes at the marble effigies of the monarchs, at the stern cameo of her father, and the cold beauty of her mother. In the latter figure the sculptor had with a cunning hand suggested the form of a little child beneath the drapery at the breasts. Galva had listened as in a dream to the little black-robed sacristan, whose duty it was to show the burial-place to visitors, as he had gabbled through the history of the tragedy. He described minutely the attack upon the palace and told of how the king and queen met their deaths. The baby princess Miranda had her share, too, in the history, and it was evident that no suspicion had ever come into the mind of the little sacristan that the body of the princess had not indeed been buried with the mother.
Galva noticed that the narrator carefully avoided mentioning the names of any who had taken part in the attack, and she found it hard to believe that such scenes could have ever taken place in this kingdom of gaiety and pleasure. There would have been a grim humour almost in this listening to the details of her own death when an infant, were the circumstances less pitiful. She had dropped a gold piece into the box for the masses for the dead, which the sacristan noticed, and he looked curiously at this pretty little tourist who gave so generously.
Then, there had been nothing to tell them from the ordinary sight-seers, and it was the only visit that Edward had thought expedient. And now, finding herself alone, she felt an uncontrollable desire to enter the cathedral and pray for a little while. She would not go against her guardian's wish, but would be content to kneel in the great nave and look through the oak screen that divided the mausoleum of the Estratos from the main body of the church.
The cathedral stood on the edge of the old part of the town, and Galva was struck by the difference in her surroundings. Apart from a group of green-veiled American tourists, who, guide-book in hand, were gazing up at the famous rose window over the central porch, she seemed alone with the natives of San Pietro. She looked in astonishment at the poor houses, with their broken roofs, and their windows stuffed with rags and brown paper, at the mean little shops and at the dirtiness and poverty-stricken look of the people. Little dark-eyed urchins, filthy in the extreme, rolled and played in the gutters unchecked by the untidy women who idled and gossiped in the doorways. The men loafing at the street corners were a lazy-looking set of ruffians, and the whole aspect was most depressing.
As Galva ascended the steps of the building between the rows of ragged and crippled beggars who daily congregated there to expose their miseries to the charitably inclined, a conviction came to her that all this hopeless poverty was the real result of the rule of the dissipated old monarch who lay dying up at the Palace. The new town of Corbo with its palatial hotels and wide boulevards was a whited sepulchre, behind which the sores of the true San Pietro festered in hiding.
As she walked slowly up the high-roofed nave she told herself that she was doing wrong to shirk her destiny, and that in the joys of Paris and Corbo she was apt to forget that she was God's anointed, and that these people were hers. The royal blood of the Estratos leaped in her veins as her duty was so plainly shown to her, and she took from her little handbag a rosary—for Galva had been brought up by Anna Paluda in the true Catholic faith—and registered a vow that with the Blessed Virgin's help she would be the salvation of her people, and would act to the utmost in her power in the high position to which she had been called.
She was in an ecstasy as she stood before the oak screen and let the ivory and rosewood beads slip through her little fingers. The sunlight pierced the emblazonry of the window set high above the tombs, and threw a pure orange stream of radiance upon the sculptured image of the babe at the breast, and the girl watching with parted lips took it for an omen.
Then as her sight grew more accustomed to the vague dimness of the cathedral she started and gazed into the gloom at the foot of her mother's sarcophagus. Dimly outlined against the tesselated pavement knelt the black-robed figure of a woman, a woman who, as she watched, rose to her feet and looking round timidly placed a spray of white blossoms full in the orange light.
With compressed lips and a heart bursting with compassion Galva drew back into the shadow of a little chapel as Anna Paluda, walking with bowed head, passed her and left the cathedral.
*****