Then the old woman rose to her feet and flung up her arms with a magnificent gesture of thanksgiving, like a prophetess beholding the victories of justice, the justifications of her God. "After twenty years you have heard me, Mother of Mercy!" she cried, "Protector of the fatherless, Consoler of the afflicted, blessed be your most sweet Name for ever and ever!"
De Sanctis turned away and walked to a farther window, where he stood looking out and seeing nothing. His little fabric of false values had tumbled to pieces. His shallow appreciations of human nature had scaled off like a rotten shroud from a re-risen body. His own astuteness, of which he had been so proud, Bianchi's dishonest avarice, the low aims and rabid egoism with which he credited mankind at large—these were not the spirit level by which to measure real men and women. That was set by honest hearts incapable of selfish grief or sordid joy, by Goffi, the obscure little artist, entreating his aid to obtain a penniless bride, by the girl over there, pure of worldly taint, by the ignorant old woman who had threatened him and his dead with hell. He had looked deep into the hearts of all three, and had seen into gold and crystal. Being only a prosaic Roman he did not put it so poetically. "Good folk, good kind folk," he told himself. "Beati loro! They are the happy ones. I wonder if there are many more of them in the world?"
When he looked round again he found that he was alone. No flooded streets, no hesitations of timidity, could weigh with those two rejoicing women. They were hastening to San Severino to give thanks where thanks were due.
CHAPTER XXIV
In the Cardinal's study Rinaldo, sitting on the very edge of a chair with his hat on his knees, was looking eagerly into the benevolent face of the prelate. The latter was expressing his thanks in the exquisite Italian of the Roman noble; his hand, with his big amethyst ring, fingered a malachite paper weight on the writing-table; his fine head, crowned with the red berretta, reposed against the crimson damask of his chair, for he was still languid from his recent indisposition. Rinaldo was really thinking less of what the Cardinal said than of the delightful picture he made—so different from the forlorn lay figure stuck into the property chair and draped in the red tablecloth that the artist felt as if he ought to do penance for all the calumnies on cardinals that he had persuaded the dealers to buy from him. Oh, if this beautiful old gentleman would let him paint his portrait, here in the sober grandeur of his proper surroundings, with the long sunbeam falling across his ring and sending its reflection up into his eyes. Was it altogether out of the question? Oh, of course. He was not distinguished enough to venture to suggest such a thing. What was this that the Cardinal was saying?
"So you see, Signor Goffi, that I have reason to be profoundly grateful to you. But for your charity and courage my poor friend might have had to remain yet longer in that terrible situation, and it is doubtful whether he should have survived further exposure. And I had encouraged him to go down there! Never can I forgive myself my thoughtlessness and selfishness. I grieve to say that he is rather seriously indisposed, but the doctor thinks that with care he will soon recover. I pray that it may be so. And now, tell me, is there any way in which I can serve you? To me it would be the greatest of pleasures—and old people can sometimes be useful to young ones, you know."
The charming urbanity of the tone, the courtesy which so delicately annihilated the distance between a great noble, a prince of the Church, and his unknown, middle-class self, touched Rinaldo deeply, and set his heart beating with hope as he considered how best to frame his request. The Cardinal saw that something was coming, and there was a gentle twinkle in his eyes as he looked at his visitor. The candid, handsome young face appealed to the inner spring of youth which life may seal but never dry up in certain pure warm hearts. Rinaldo felt the expressed goodwill as he might have become sensible of unexpected warmth in the light of a fixed star; it shed a pleasant radiance from very far away. Indeed they two could scarcely have been farther apart had they lived till now on separate planets. There was no merging of class and class in Rome, then. A prominent dignitary of the Church moved in his own sphere of half-mystic greatness, linked with all things sacred and regal. Except for a question of souls, he did not, in the ordinary affairs of life (unless he happened to have risen from the ranks himself), take any personal cognizance of those outside his circle, ecclesiastical, political, and social. Paolo Cestaldini had never heard of this young man till the night before, and apart from the fact that he had nice manners, and evidently belonged to the educated "mezzo ceto" had not the slightest clue by which to judge of his circumstances.