“You had better make sure he is quite dead.”
The beccamorti looked at me in surprise; one laughed grimly and swore. “By the body of God, if I thought he were not I would twist his accursed neck for him! But the cholera never fails, he is dead for certain—see!” And he knocked the head of the corpse to and fro against the sides of the coffin with no more compunction than if it had been a block of wood. Sickened at the sight, I turned away and said no more. On reaching one of the more important thoroughfares I perceived several knots of people collected, who glanced at one another with eager yet shamed faces, and spoke in low voices. A whisper reached my ears, “The king! the king!” All heads were turned in one direction; I paused and looked also. Walking at a leisurely pace, accompanied by a few gentlemen of earnest mien and grave deportment, I saw the fearless monarch, Humbert of Italy—he whom his subjects delight to honor. He was making a round of visits to all the vilest holes and corners of the city, where the plague raged most terribly—he had not so much as a cigarette in his mouth to ward off infection. He walked with the easy and assured step of a hero; his face was somewhat sad, as though the sufferings of his people had pressed heavily upon his sympathetic heart. I bared my head reverently as he passed, his keen kind eyes lighted on me with a smile.
“A subject for a painting, yon white-haired fisherman!” I heard him say to one of his attendants. Almost I betrayed myself. I was on the point of springing forward and throwing myself at his feet to tell him my story. It seemed to me both cruel and unnatural that he, my beloved sovereign, should pass me without recognition—me, to whom he had spoken so often and so cordially. For when I visited Rome, as I was accustomed to do annually, there were few more welcome guests at the balls of the Quirinal Palace than Count Fabio Romani. I began to wonder stupidly who Fabio Romani was; the gay gallant known as such seemed no longer to have any existence—a “white-haired fisherman” usurped his place. But though I thought these things I refrained from addressing the king. Some impulse, however, led me to follow him at a respectful distance, as did also many others. His majesty strolled through the most pestilential streets with as much unconcern as though he were taking his pleasure in a garden of roses; he stepped quietly into the dirtiest hovels where lay both dead and dying; he spoke words of kindly encouragement to the grief-stricken and terrified mourners, who stared through their tears at the monarch with astonishment and gratitude; silver and gold were gently dropped into the hands of the suffering poor, and the very pressing cases received the royal benefactor’s personal attention and immediate relief. Mothers with infants in their arms knelt to implore the king’s blessing—which to pacify them he gave with a modest hesitation, as though he thought himself unworthy, and yet with a parental tenderness that was infinitely touching. One wild-eyed, black-haired girl flung herself down on the ground right in the king’s path; she kissed his feet, and then sprung erect with a gesture of triumph.
“I am saved!” she cried; “the plague cannot walk in the same road with the king!”
Humbert smiled, and regarded her somewhat as an indulgent father might regard a spoiled daughter; but he said nothing, and passed on. A cluster of men and women standing at the open door of one of the poorest-looking houses in the street next attracted the monarch’s attention. There was some noisy argument going on; two or three beccamorti were loudly discussing together and swearing profusely—some women were crying bitterly, and in the center of the excited group a coffin stood on end as though waiting for an occupant. One of the gentlemen in attendance on the king preceded him and announced his approach, whereupon the loud clamor of tongues ceased, the men bared their heads, and the women checked their sobs.
“What is wrong here, my friends?” the monarch asked with exceeding gentleness.
There was silence for a moment; the beccamorti looked sullen and ashamed. Then one of the women, with a fat good-natured face and eyes rimmed redly round with weeping, elbowed her way through the little throng to the front and spoke.
“May the Holy Virgin and saints bless your majesty!” she cried, in shrill accents. “And as for what is wrong, it would soon be right if those shameless pigs,” pointing to the beccamorti, “would let us alone. They would kill a man rather than wait an hour—one little hour! The girl is dead, your majesty—and Giovanni, poor lad! will not leave her; he has his two arms round her tight—Holy Virgin!—think of it! and she a cholera corpse—and do what we can, he will not be parted from her, and they seek her body for the burial. And if we force him away, poverino, he will lose his head for certain. One little hour, your majesty, just one, and the reverend father will come and persuade Giovanni better than we can.”
The king raised his hand with a slight gesture of command—the little crowd parted before him—and he entered the miserable dwelling wherein lay the corpse that was the cause of all the argument. His attendants followed; I, too, availed myself of a corner in the doorway. The scene disclosed was so terribly pathetic that few could look upon it without emotion—Humbert of Italy himself uncovered his head and stood silent. On a poor pallet bed lay the fair body of a girl in her first youth, her tender loveliness as yet untouched even by the disfiguring marks of the death that had overtaken her. One would have thought she slept, had it not been for the rigidity of her stiffened limbs, and the wax-like pallor of her face and hands. Right across her form, almost covering it from view, a man lay prone, as though he had fallen there lifeless—indeed he might have been dead also for any sign he showed to the contrary. His arms were closed firmly round the girl’s corpse—his face was hidden from view on the cold breast that would no more respond to the warmth of his caresses. A straight beam of sunlight shot like a golden spear into the dark little room and lighted up the whole scene—the prostrate figures on the bed—the erect form of the compassionate king, and the grave and anxious faces of the little crowd of people who stood around him.
“See! that is the way he has been ever since last night when she died,” whispered the woman who had before spoken; “and his hands are clinched round her like iron—one cannot move a finger!”