“I agree with you about the mother,” Mr. Vane replied cordially. “I don’t believe any man ever accomplished much of real worth in life without his mother having set him on the track of it. Sometimes a noble mother has a son who does not do justice to her example and teaching. But even then, if her duty has been fully done, she may be sure that he is the better for it, though not so good as he should be. I am sure I owe it to my mother that, though my life has not
benefited the world much, my sins have been rather of omission than of commission. Come to think of it, I have never done her any particular credit; but I am happy to be able to say that I have never done her any great discredit.”
While he spoke, his face half-turned toward the window, his manner more energetic than was usual with him, the large blue eyes of the Signora rested on him with an expression of grave kindness and interest. When he ended, she leaned slightly toward him, smiling, and tossed him a rose she had drawn from her belt, repeating Bianca’s exclamation: “Stia felice!”
His fingers closed on the stem of the rose which had touched his hand, and he held it, but did not turn his face, seeming to wait for her to go on.
“You should read Padre Ventura,” she said, “though, indeed, you have less need than most men. I would like to put his La Donna Cattolica into the hands of every Catholic—yes, and of every Protestant. I would like the Woman’s Rights women, and those who think that Christianity and the church have degraded us, and some Catholics too, to learn from St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and Gregory the Great what estimate Christian women should be held in. It would do them good to read the works of this eloquent priest, who speaks with authority, and ennobles himself in honoring the sisters of the Queen of angels. Padre Ventura must have had a beautiful soul. I fancy that his ashes even must be whiter than the ashes of most men. I always judge men’s characters by their estimate of women, and what they seek in women by what they say is to be found in them.”
“This author is dead, then?” Mr. Vane remarked, looking attentively at the Signora in his turn.
“Yes. He died years before I had ever heard his name. When you have read something of his, you may like to visit his tomb in St. Andrea delle Valle. The stone over his sepulchre is in the pavement, about half way up the nave, and there’s a fine monument in the transept on the epistle side. I wish every Christian woman who visits Rome would drop a flower on the stone that covers all that was earthly of that man, and remember for a moment the place he assigns her in her home and in the world. ‘The man,’ he says, ‘is the king of the family; the woman is the priest.’”
She was silent, pursuing the subject mentally, then added: “He says so many beautiful things. Describing the different kinds of courage with which the Christian martyrs and certain celebrated pagans met death, he speaks of one as ‘the modesty and humility that throws itself into the arms of hope, to rest there,’ and the other as ‘the pride that immolates itself to desperation, in order to lose itself there.’ One he calls ‘the sublime of virtue,’ and the other ‘the sublime of vice.’ He had mentioned Socrates and Cato in the connection.”
They had reached the station while this talk was going on, and, coming out into the piazza, separated there, the Signora and Bianca coming down by one of the fine new streets to pay a visit to their basilica on the way home. They found the door just closed, it being half an hour before Ave Maria; but it was a pleasure to walk a while on the long platform at the head of the steps, bathed in the red gold of the setting sun, that gilded, but did not scorch; to look up at the fringe of
pink flowers growing in spikes at the top of the façade, and at the flocks of little gray birds that flew about among them; and to glance up or down the streets that stretched off like rays from the sun, and then to stroll slowly homeward through the lounging, motley crowd.