‘I am very grateful to you,’ she said earnestly. ‘Only tell me what I am to do about getting Leone home. How did he get to the barracks? Are you in great pain?’
‘Oh, no,’ answered the tutor courageously, and he told his story in few words.
On finding the school shut because riots were feared, he had thought it dangerous to bring Leone home through the city on foot, as they had come. The boy was now nine years old, and a good walker for his age, and the tutor had thought that by following the walls of the city from the station, round to the further side of the Palatine, they would be sure to keep out of any disturbances that might be going on. Leone had been delighted at the prospect, and they had started at once and encountered no rioters till they came to Porta Maggiore, when they suddenly found themselves caught between an angry crowd of labouring men, many of whom live in that quarter, and a band of citizens who came in sight just then, armed with their sticks. The rioters charged upon the latter as soon as they appeared. The tutor told Leone to run behind the citizens for safety, while he himself stood his ground to cover the boy’s retreat. Fortunately Leone obeyed, but the tutor soon found himself in the thick of the most serious fight that took place while the strike lasted. It was interrupted by the unexpected arrival on the scene of half a troop of the Piedmont Lancers, whose quarters were then in that region. The troopers charged upon the rioters, and belaboured them with the flat of their sabres till they took to flight. To the tutor’s surprise, the officer in command recognised Leone, and seemed much concerned that he should have been so near danger. He said he would take charge of him, and keep him at the barracks all day, as the city was not safe anywhere; he added that he knew the lad’s father and mother, and he gave his own name. The tutor did not remember to have heard it before except in history and hoped that he had done right.
‘Quite right,’ Maria answered. ‘I have known the Conte del Castiglione a long time.’
She turned back and went up the stairs with the tutor and told him of what had happened. Then she went to her husband’s bedside again, calm and collected.
CHAPTER XXV
Nature was merciful to Montalto. Strong men have lived paralysed for years after a stroke of apoplexy, in full consciousness, yet unable to communicate their thoughts to others; but Montalto was not very strong, and he never awoke from the sleep in which his wife found him. On the fifth day the heart stopped beating, and that was the end.
There was no pain, no lucid moment, no harrowing farewell. It was the woman who endured all that a woman can bear, during those five days, not knowing but that he might come back to drag out a long and miserable existence, not daring to pray that he might die, lest she should be praying for her own freedom, yet for his sake not daring to ask that he might live and suffer. It was not until all was over that the last chance of that went out with life itself.