The American and English Ambassadors were riding side by side behind a magnificent carriage with coachman and tiger in livery of scarlet and gold.
"Who would think, to look on a scene like this, that the city is seething with dissatisfaction?" said the Englishman.
"Rome?" said the American. "Its aristocratic indifference will not allow it to believe that here, as everywhere else in the world, great and fatal changes are going on all the time. These lands, for example—to whom do they belong? Nominally to the old Roman nobility, but really to the merchants of the Campagna—a company of middlemen who grew rich by leasing them from the princes and subletting them to the poor."
"And the nobles themselves—how are they faring?"
"Badly! Already they are of no political significance, and the State knows them not."
"They don't appear to go into the army or navy—what do they go into?"
"Love!"
"And meantime the Italian people?"
"Meantime the great Italian people, like the great English people, the great German people, and the people of every country where the privileged classes still exist, are rising like a mighty wave to sweep all this sea-wrack high and dry on to the rocks."
"And this wave of the people," said the Englishman, inclining his head toward the carriage in front, "is represented by men like friend Rossi?"