"And now, Giovannini, do you not think you can go back to school again?" he asked.
"I will, father, I will; for you I will do anything I am able. But you will not ask me to take either the Mule or the Horse?" I asked, my old trouble coming back on me again.
"Have no more fear, my dear child," he said, quietly; "they will never be put to your offer. You have been punished enough by attending on an old man like me for three days." And as he embraced me tenderly at parting in our hall, he bade me, pointedly, not to attach too much to anything we had seen.
So I went back to my tasks quite content, and continued to make good progress and give satisfaction, though I could not altogether obey our good Rector's bidding and forget that lonely figure of the Santi Apostoli. And Angus and I whispered our secret to each other as we lay in the quiet of our room at night.
Now, there was a privilege which our students had above those of all other colleges in Rome, which was that any two of us might, at certain hours, go wherever our business called us. And Angus and I found that the shortest way for all our business, as well as between the Collegio Romano and the via Quattro Fontane, was by the little street of the Santi Apostoli, whence we could feast our eyes on the Palace, and were more than once rewarded by a sight of His Majesty and one of the Princes, whom we afterwards discovered to be the Duke of York, going forth to take the air with a modest following.
Our scheming might have ended here had it not been for Mr. O'Rourke. One day, when we went to visit him at the College of the Propaganda, he said: "I hear you take a great many walks in the Santi Apostoli, young gentlemen"; at which we were much put out, and begged he would say nothing of it, for, although we had not been forbidden, we felt there were good reasons against its being mentioned. But he relieved us with his merry laugh. "Faith, not I! I would not dream of interfering with the leanings of two gentlemen such as you, the more so that they have a bias in what I conceive to be the right direction. Perhaps you do not know I am a descendant of kings myself," he went on, in his lively fashion, "and, having royal blood flowing freely in me, can enter into your feelings better than the best nobleman who ever ruled over your honourable College."
This was a hit at Father Urbani—and I suspect there may have been a certain jealousy between the Propaganda and the Jesuits, for the army is not the only fighting body in the world—so I broke in with, "None of your innuendoes, if you please, Mr. O'Rourke. We have never asked Father Urbani to enter into our feelings, but I hold him qualified to enter into the best thoughts of the best man in Rome!"
"Soft and easy, Signor Giovannini McDonellini," says he, always laughing; "your stomach is high, even for a Highlander! I was only about to propose, on my first free day, a visit to your lode-star, the Palace of the Santi Apostoli, where, thanks to my royal ancestry, I have some small right of entry." And with the words he took the anger out of me at once.
It seemed an eternity until his first congé, or day of liberty, came round, and we were in waiting long before the appointed hour. We lost no time in setting out, but, to our surprise, did not take our way to the Palace direct, but went instead round by a little lane leading off the Piazza Pilotta, and so to a small wicket, whereon Mr. O'Rourke knocked in a private manner, while we held our breath in expectation. The door was opened presently by an old man, to whom Mr. O'Rourke gave some pass-word, and we were admitted, not to the Palace itself, but into the bare and mean hallway of a very ordinary house. Before we had time to betray our disappointment, however, we passed through this hall, and by means of a hidden door—hidden, that is, by a seeming closet or wardrobe—we stepped out into the sunlight again, and, to our great delight, found ourselves in what we did not doubt were the gardens of the Palace.
As we walked up a path, I pulled Mr. O'Rourke by the sleeve.