The conquest of Rome

by Matilde Serao

'You must keep your heart up.'

'My heart? The heart does not enter into the question at all! It is the moral being that suffers, and the nerves. So I prefer to come here; it is the lesser of two evils.'

'Do you hate politics so much?' he ventured.

'I do not hate them, and I cannot like them.'

'Nevertheless, it is a great and noble idea,' he hazarded again.

'So they say—but I do not believe it. I understand other ideas as being noble, good, great, generous, fruitful—not this one. I am too ignorant,' she added humbly.

'No, no,' he hastened to assure her. 'You are perhaps right!'

'I am unable to like this idea. To us women certain ideas, abstract ideas especially, convey nothing. We require something real, represented by something concrete—religion by the Church, the figure of the Holy Virgin, Christ; our country by lovely scenery, the sea, the mountains, the friends we love. But politics—a mere idea—what is there to stand for politics?'

'The politicians,' he murmured, after holding back a little.