The conquest of Rome

by Matilde Serao

'To invent a machine which will benefit mankind, morally or physically, is that not better than overthrowing a Ministry? Is it not better to carve a statue, paint a picture, or write a book?'

'It is true,' he averred.

'As for bravery, do you think its true impetuosity can be preserved, and its true dashing valour, here, where everything is summed up in a speech, where all worthy initiative is frittered away in twenty-five public sittings and fourteen discussions in committee? All words, all words!'

'But we fought when we were wanted.'

'Ah!' she said, suddenly become thoughtful, 'those were times! We women, you see, understand the heroism of the battlefield and of conspiracies, but Parliamentary heroism escapes us!'

For a moment they maintained silence. Donna Angelica's cheeks were aflame, and her hot words, surging into Sangiorgio's soul, made their imprint there as if on soft wax.

'And then there is conscience,' she resumed, purposing to speak out her mind fully. 'Heavens! how can it remain clean among so many personal schemes, so many unavoidable bargains, so much equivocation? How can it be changeless and inflexible when the surest virtue leading to success is actually elasticity?'

'True, true,' he repeated.

'Some are mad over politics, I know very well,' she continued, looking down into the hall, her fingers playing on the velvet edge of the gallery. 'We all know that, we politicians wives. In the hearts of these men it is a passion which dries up all the others. If we live in the provinces, our husband leaves us for nine months in the year, without a thought of his wife's youth, beauty, or solitude. If we come to Rome, it is worse. The house becomes a small Parliament, where conspiracies are hatched if we are not in power, where methods of defence are planned if we belong to the Cabinet. No more friends. Confederates, clients, parasites, rivals, self-seekers—none but such. Their affection is not asked for, but their vote is. Who says "Yes" is a friend; who says "No" is a traitor. The privacy of the home disappears. It is invaded by a stream of strange people who sully it, who turn it into a vestibule, a courtyard, a street, a public square. Confidence vanishes. Our husband is worried and disturbed; we seek to know the reason, and he believes we cannot understand, for politicians despise the advice of women. At table the husband reads newspapers or answers telegrams. At balls he finds it difficult to escort us, yet he is obliged to go, so as to represent the Government, in order to meet influential deputies, to make his bow to the wives of the party leaders, to shake hands with the insignificant creatures who would not live if the great political passion did not. It is either a case of melancholy solitude in the country, like a poor abandoned thing, or else of being mobbed in town, without a breath of poetry, without a smile of the ideal. A great passion, to be sure, but so mad and absorbing and confining that it creates fears and disgust!'