At one end of the drawing-room stood a tea table, and, according to a charming Roman custom, tea, chocolate, and ices were offered to the visitors. Italians can drink hot chocolate and eat ices almost at the same time, without dying!
Irene sat down in a corner, and watched the scene before her with delighted interest. She thought of how, in Petrograd, anything connected with Catherine the Great or Alexander I. was considered ancient. Such antiquity might, here, in this Roman Palace, be looked upon as positively modern! For the first time, Irene realized the youth of her own country. The proud girl, considering herself on an equality with the greatest Russian families, felt a little humiliated at the thought that the ancestors of her princely hosts once walked about the Forum in togas, took part in the government of ancient Rome and in the creation of a great art and a great literature, and gave their laws to the whole civilized world. She tried to picture to herself the Russia of that time: a wilderness peopled by savage hordes in skins of wild beasts, nomad tribes, wandering through forests and swamps and deserts.…
Her dreams were interrupted by the old Prince, who, noticing that she was alone, and prompted by his antique and aristocratic sense of hospitality, approached to entertain her. Irene broached the subject of the legend, and naïvely added that she supposed the chapel and adjoining rooms were only opened for this one day every year.
“No, indeed,” answered the Prince with a smile—“the rooms are in constant use, and our Chaplain holds daily services in the chapel.”
Irene felt confused, and at the same time a curious feeling of envy came over her.
“How happy these people are,” she thought, to have lived for so many centuries in the same town, in the same house, surrounded by legends and traditions and the shadows of their ancestors! All this is real—they are not masquerading in strange costumes and beliefs and customs, like emigrants of all nationalities, who spend their lives in travelling North, South, East and West, in search of new sensations and impressions. There came to Irene’s mind the thought of one of her friends, a girl with a mania for having herself photographed in the national costume of every country she visited. An entire little shelf in Irene’s Petrograd drawing-room was covered with frames from which smiled the young girl’s round, laughing, purely Slavonic little face, here under the fez of a Crimean Tartar maid, there under a Spanish mantilla, elsewhere in the guise of a Neapolitan fisher-girl. Had not Irene’s own wish to enter a convent also been nothing much more than a desire to dress up in a picturesque costume?
These thoughts reminded her of Père Etienne, and on returning to her pension, Irene wrote and asked him to come and see her. She had seen very little of him lately. Père Etienne felt that something had happened to change Irene’s ideas during her stay at Assisi—but, however much he questioned her, he couldn’t discover what that something had been. Seeing that she had drifted into social life, he regretfully left off paying her his daily visits. Like all true pastors, he always attached himself to his spiritual children, and was sincerely grieved when the circumstances of life separated him from them. The warm-hearted old man now consoled himself with the thought that he had been mistaken in taking convent life to be Irene’s vocation, and that she would be happier if she married her compatriot. In his heart, however, there still lingered an intuition that would not let him believe in matrimonial happiness for her. No one understands human nature better than a clever priest, who hears countless confessions and looks into the deepest recesses of the countless souls that are laid bare before him.
On receiving Irene’s invitation, he went to her immediately, and they spent a charming evening together. The convent in the Via Gallia was not even mentioned. They spoke of Saint Philip of Neri, of his life and his pupils, of miracles and prayer.
The following day Irene awoke in a pious mood, and put off Gzhatski, who had arranged to take her to some local function. Gzhatski, clever strategist that he was, guessed what had happened, and hastened to create a diversion. He disappeared for a time, made mysterious arrangements, and kept mysterious appointments, and after three days, arrived suddenly to inform Irene that Cardinal R⸺ would receive her in audience at seven o’clock that evening.
“Receive me!” exclaimed Irene in surprise. “But why should I go to him?”