'Thank you—I think we were going to look at the rose-walk.'
Manisty gave an angry laugh, said something inaudible, and walked impetuously away; only to be captured however by the Danish Professor, Doctor Jensen, who took no account of bad manners in an Englishman, holding them as natural as daylight. The flaxen-haired savant therefore was soon happily engaged in pouring out upon his impatient companion the whole of the latest Boletino of the Accademia.
Meanwhile Lucy, seeing nothing, it is to be feared, of the beauty of the Embassy garden, followed her two companions and soon found herself sitting with them on a stone seat beneath a spreading ilex. In front was a tangled mass of roses; beyond, an old bit of wall with Roman foundations; and in the hot blue sky above the wall, between two black cypresses, a slender brown Campanile—furthest of all a glimpse of Sabine mountains. The air was heavy with the scent of the roses, with the heat that announced the coming June, with that indefinable meaning and magic, which is Rome.
Lucy drooped and was silent. The young Count Fioravanti however was not the person either to divine oppression in another or to feel it for himself. He sat with his hat on the back of his head, smoking and twisting his cane, displaying to the fullest advantage those china-blue eyes, under the blackest of curls, which made him so popular in Rome. His irregular and most animated face was full of talent and wilfulness. He liked Madame Variani, and thought the American girl handsome. But it mattered very little to him with whom he talked; he could have chattered to a tree-stump. He was over-flowing with the mere interest and jollity of life.
'Have you known Mr. Manisty long?' he asked of Lucy, while his gay look followed the Professor and his captive.
'I have been staying with them for six weeks at Marinata.'
'What—to finish the book?' he said, laughing.
'Mr. Manisty hoped to finish it.'
The Count laughed again, more loudly and good-humouredly, and shook his head.
'Oh! he won't finish it. It's a folly! And I know, for I made him read some of it to me and my sister. No; it is a strange case—is Manisty's. Most Englishmen have two sides to their brain—while we Latins have only one. But Manisty is like a Latin—he has only one. He takes a whim, and then he must cut and carve the world to it. But the world is tough—et ça ne marche pas! We can't go to ruin to please him. Italy is not falling to pieces—not at all. This war has been a horror—but we shall get through. And there will be no revolution. The people in the streets won't cheer the King and Queen for a little bit—but next year, you will see, the House of Savoy will be there all the same. And he thinks that our priests will destroy us. Nothing of the sort. We can manage our priests!'