"Commendatore, I have given you my opinion, and now it is my wish that the Honourable David Rossi should be set at liberty."
"Excellency!"
"Be so good as to liberate him instantly, and let your officers see him safely through the streets to his home in the Piazza Navona."
The little head like a hen's went down like a hatchet, and Commendatore Angelelli backed out of the room.
PART TWO—THE REPUBLIC OF MAN
I
The Piazza Navona is the heart and soul of old Rome. In other quarters of the living city you feel tempted to ask: "Is this London?" or, "Is this Paris?" or, "Is this New York or Berlin?" but in the Piazza Navona you can only tell yourself, "This is Rome!"
In an apartment-house of the Piazza Navona, David Rossi had lived during the seven years since he became Member of Parliament for Rome. The ground floor is a Trattoria, half eating-house and half wine-shop, with rude frescoes on its distempered walls, representing the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius in eruption. A passage running by the side of the Trattoria leads to the apartments overhead, and at the foot of the staircase there is a porter's lodge, a closet always lighted by a lamp, which burns down the dark passage day and night, like a bloodshot eye.