“There’s the rub! She should not be.”
“That may be true; she will be all the same!”
There was a sudden sound of bugles, the clatter of horses’ feet. The King’s guard, picked men, every one of them over six feet tall, came dashing up the street to the crisp music of the royal march. In their midst we caught a glimpse of King Victor, in a closed carriage, on his way to take possession of the Quirinal Palace.
The King is dead. Long live the King!
August 14.
It is written that our last days in Rome shall not hang heavy on our hands; emotion follows emotion! Last evening J. went to the station to see Patsy off on the special train provided for Queen Elena’s sister (married to the Russian Grand Duke) and the other royal and distinguished personages who came to the funeral. They had all stayed on to hear King Victor’s maiden speech to his Parliament—which, by the way, was capital; he spoke of his mother in a manner that went to the hearts of all good sons and daughters. Patsy told us, with the young newspaper man’s air of supreme knowledge, that he had it on the best authority that the King wrote his own speech. I believe this, more from internal than external evidence; it rings true, not like an address prepared by a minister for a monarch to deliver.
Patsy being gone, we thought to set about closing up our affairs in earnest, when this morning arrives a note written on the back of an old envelope in his hand.
“Send me some soup! I can’t stand this hospital diet. I am a bit shaken up by the collision at Castel Giubileo last night. Nothing serious in my condition, except the appetite.”
The scrawl was dated from the hospital of San Giacomo, where Filomena’s brother has been a patient for a month past. I packed a basket with provisions and drove directly to the hospital, taking Filomena with me. We stopped on our way to see Dr. Massimo, who gave us a letter of introduction to the house surgeon. The porter of the hospital took in my card and note of introduction while we waited in the lodge. As we got out of the cab Filomena behaved rather strangely; she asked the gobbo, our cabman, to bring in the basket, and when he set it down on the not too clean pavement, she let it remain where he put it.
“Please to take the basket off the pavement,” I said.