Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
A Table of Contents has been added.

GIANNELLA

GIANNELLA

BY

Mrs. HUGH FRASER

ST. LOUIS, MO., 1909
Published by B. Herder
17 South Broadway

Copyright, 1909
by
Mrs. Hugh Fraser

—BECKTOLD—
PRINTING AND BOOK MFG. CO.
ST. LOUIS, MO.

CONTENTS

GIANNELLA

CHAPTER I

"And now, what are we to do about the child? Cannot you think of something, Carl?"

Carl stooped down to disentangle some very small fingers which had been busy with his bootlaces, and as the baby crawled away to find fresh mischief he straightened himself and watched her with a ruefully puzzled expression.

"Upon my word, Hans," he said at last, "I can think of nothing but the Pietá. It seems hard, but all the boys are as poor as ourselves. The only married one is Sigersen, and his wife is away—and not much good when she is at home. The Vice-consul said we had better put the child in the Rota—and I am afraid that is what we shall have to do. The nuns will keep any name and address they find pinned on her clothes, and if things go better with us, or if it should turn out that poor Brockmann had any relations, and they ever inquire for her, we shall know where to look for her."

The speakers were two Scandinavian painters, young and kind and poor, members of the little brotherhood which, year in, year out, finds its way from the shores of the bleak North Sea to the blue and gold of the Mediterranean, to the marbles and the ilexes, to the campagna and the hills; and have taken root in the classic, teeming soil which is Rome. A friend and comrade, Niels Brockmann, had died a day or two before this little colloquy took place, and he had left behind him a dismantled studio, some good but unfinished studies, and a baby girl whose pretty young mother had not survived her birth. Brockmann had idolized the flaxen-haired mite for one year, and then had ended his existence by catching a deadly chill while sketching in some beautiful but malarious spot. The brotherhood had nursed him loyally and buried him decently, but they were hopelessly perplexed as to how to dispose of his daughter. Most of them lived on two or three pauls a day, everything else being saved for studio rent and artists' materials; and when one was lucky enough to sell a picture, there was a jolly supper for everybody at the Lepre, with mighty songs and much beer; and then what remained of the money was unhesitatingly divided among the poor devils who were most deeply in debt to landlord or colorman.

There was no room for a baby in that straitly-lodged, big-hearted community, and Hans Stravenkilde had been driven to lay the case before the Vice-consul of his nationality, hoping that he would undertake the charge. But the official, a banker and a Roman, refused to be responsible for the child in any way. Indeed, he was indignant at the mere suggestion. He told Hans that if he were to take on all the destitute orphans that pauper foreigners left behind them, he would soon turn his house into a foundling hospital. And what was the Pietá for, but just such waifs, he would like to know? Pin the child's name on her clothes and drop her into the Rota. Good-morning.

And Hans had departed and walked home, much depressed. He had stopped a moment on his way, to look at the cushioned dumb-waiter open to the street in the wall of the Pietá; he knew that one or other of the nuns was stationed behind it through every minute of the night and day, to turn it inwards the instant a child had been laid on the pillow, to gather the poor abandoned little thing into safety and fellowship with many hundreds of others who were sheltered behind those huge charitable walls, and were better fed, better loved, better educated than most of them would ever have been in their own homes. Hans knew all about it, yet his heart ached at the thought of leaving this particular baby there, and Carl fully shared his unwillingness. He had just picked up Giannella and was making funny faces at her, so that the little creature first seemed inclined to cry; then she caught the smile in her tormentor's blue eyes and laughed aloud.

At this a thin, dark woman in peasant's dress raised herself from where she had been gathering up some littered papers in a corner, and came towards the young men, holding out her arms to the child, who at once sprang into them with the confidence of long familiarity. The woman smoothed down the rumpled skirt, wiped off the dust which the small pink palms had gathered on the floor, and then stood looking at the two friends of her late master. They had been speaking in their own language, but she knew they were talking about the baby, and she had caught the words "Pietá" and "Rota."

"Well," she said, in a deep masculine voice, "and what becomes of this one?"

"That is a hard question, Mariuccia," Hans replied. "There is nobody who wants her, except we poor devils of artists who have nowhere to put her—and the Signor Console told us we had better take her to the Pietá."

He had turned and looked out of the window as he spoke, and Carl followed his example. Neither cared to meet the woman's glance; they both knew how she loved the child.

Mariuccia's brows met in a dark line and her eyes flashed angrily. "A fine piece of advice," she cried. "That consul is an animal, without heart. The Pietá indeed, for my poor padrone's child! Is there no good lady who will take her and bring her up properly? Signor Brockmann of good memory was a gentleman—though he had no money, poverino, and this bit of sugar should be taken care of like a signorina."

"What can we do, Mariuccia?" Hans exclaimed. "All that you say is true, but there are no relations—and we and the other boys are not married—it will have to be the Pietá, I am afraid."

Mariuccia pondered, looking down at the small fluffy head on her shoulder. At last she spoke. "Give her to me. I will take her to my brother at Castel Gandolfo. His wife is a good woman. They have six children—one more will make no difference. And there is at least bread for all, and wine, and salad in the garden. She will do well there."

"That is splendid," cried Hans. "Bravo, Mariuccia. We will send some money for her whenever we can, and she will be happy with you."

"I shall not stay in the country," Mariuccia replied. "I have to earn my living. I must find another place, here in Rome. If the Signori can help me to do that I shall be glad. But I shall get to see Giannella sometimes, and when she grows big you signorini must manage to have her go to school. You are good boys—the Madonna will help you to sell your beautiful pictures—and then I will come and remind you of Giannella. For she is a lady. She cannot grow up to gather chestnuts and work in the fields. She must be instructed, like her poor papa."

This was a long speech for Mariuccia, who was a rather saturnine person generally. Evidently she had taken the matter deeply to heart, and her solution seemed such a satisfactory one that the young men were only too thankful to accept it.

So the studio was cleared out and the landlord took the key and some of the properties in lieu of rent due; a few feminine belongings left behind by poor Mrs. Brockmann were packed away by Mariuccia to be kept for Giannella; a coat and a pair of boots, almost all that had not been sold during the artist's illness to provide necessaries, she begged for as a propitiatory offering to her brother. Then the two young men went back to their work, their hard, cheery lives, and trusty comrades; and in a few hours they had managed to throw off the effects of the tragedy which had absorbed them for the last ten days, for, thank Heaven, the "Donna" had taken charge of the baby.

* * * * * * * * * *

The sun was striking low through the boles of the ancient elms which line the road from Albano to Castel Gandolfo. It was a hot September evening, and the dust rose in a yellow haze under the feet of a woman who was walking quickly towards the latter place. She was dressed in the costume of the hills; the short, full skirt swung wide at every step, the scarlet bodice gave easy play to her tall, spare figure. On her shoulders was the beautifully draped little shawl crossing over the bosom and showing the spotless camisole of heavy linen, ornamented with handmade lace of ancient pattern; round her neck were the dark red corals, and in her ears the long gold earrings—flashing now and again in the last sunbeams—which testified that she came of good stock and had inherited proper plenishings from the women of her race. She walked as if the road, the woods on either hand, the campagna below and the mountains beyond, belonged to her by right. The heavy basket on her head might have been an archaic crown, so lightly did it poise as she swung along, and she seemed equally untroubled by the weight of a sleeping child on one arm and a nondescript collection of bundles in the other.

Mariuccia was going home. It mattered little that the home was not her own, but her brother's, that its four stone rooms were crowded with children, and that she was bringing another to leave there, quite uncertain of its reception. She was in her own country, striding through the good dust instead of over the city pavements, smelling the hot, dry fragrance of the grapes hanging in masses from the stripped vines where the vineyards terraced down to the campagna on her left; hearing the chestnut burrs rustle to the ground in the woods on her right; heading for the place where she was born, for the grand sour bread and honest wine, the snowy beds piled mountains high under embroidered sheets and quilted coverlets, the blest palms and roses round the picture of the Immacolata on the wall—for the fountain in the piazza, the whispered greetings across the women's benches in the church, for the well-known faces and the broad speech of home.

It was three years since she had been there. Long ago she had made up her mind not to marry, telling her relations that since a woman must work for somebody, she chose to work for a master who would pay her, and whom she could leave if she chose, rather than for a husband who would give her no wages, would beat her if the fancy took him, and with whom she must remain all her life. So she had taken service in Rome, and, though her last venture had ended sadly, was on the whole contented with her lot. She had saved the greater part of her wages for the last ten years, had found kind, decent padroni of the genial middle-class sort, and was looked upon by the relations in the hills as a superior person of solid fortune whom it was well to treat politely. She was bringing presents for the family now—cakes and sweetmeats for the children, a bottle of rosolio and the boots and coat for her brother, and a roll of linen and a green rosary for the sister-in-law—and the rosary had been blessed by the Pope. Her old friend, the sacristan of San Severino, had asked the Curato, and the Curato had asked the Cardinal's secretary, and then the Cardinal himself had procured the Holy Father's blessing; and Mariuccia had put the sacred thing away till she should feel more worthy to use it. Now the moment had come to do something really great, so that sister Candida should be dazzled into receiving "la Pupa" with open arms, and the rosary must be sacrificed.

It is but a short distance from Albano, whither Mariuccia had traveled in the disjointed vettura which daily lumbered out from Rome over the Appian Way, to Castel Gandolfo, the summer sojourn of the Popes. As she entered the little town, the girls were gathered round the fountain, filling their urns and chattering as gaily as roosting sparrows; the young men lounged on the steps of the church, hands in pockets, a rose or carnation stuck behind the ear to show that they were in good spirits; and a gathering of thirsty, dust-parched carrettieri, their huge, brightly-colored carts obstructing the street, were drinking bumpers of red wine in the low, dark doorway of the Osteria, under the swinging bunch of broom which was its only sign. Smells of cooking, of freshly-baked bread, of wet linen hanging to dry from upper windows, and many less savory scents filled Mariuccia's nostrils with familiar pleasure. The Ave Maria was pealing from the tower, and she turned aside to kneel for a moment in the well-known church. Then she came out, turned up a side street and made for a little square house that stood in its own vineyard just beyond the farther gate of the town.

Ah, there was no doubt about her welcome. A tribe of black-eyed, red-cheeked children broke upon her like a tornado, with yells of joy; sister Candida came hurrying to the door and led her in rejoicing, taking baby and burdens from her without a question; while brother Stefano, who had just got his pigs safely home from the chestnut wood behind the house, came clamping in with earth-stained clothes and a week's beard on his beaming face, and kissed Mariuccia on both cheeks, inquired for her health, told his wife to get her some supper, all without more than one glance at the flaxen-haired infant who had been deposited safely out of reach of the children, in the very middle of the huge white bed which was the chief ornament of the room. Guests must not be questioned, whatever they choose to bring; Mariuccia would speak when she was ready.

That moment did not come till all the presents had been produced and rejoiced over, and the young ones had fallen asleep with open mouths and sticky fingers, and the three elders were sitting round the table by the light of the tall brass lamp in which all four burners had been kindled in honor of the visitor. The pure olive oil glowed brightly and cast a friendly radiance over the consultation. Mariuccia, desperately in earnest now, was stating her case as she considered it should be stated; not precisely as it really stood, of course; that would never have done. Giannella, Stefano and his wife learnt, was certainly an orphan, but there were rich relations in some barbaric country over there—Mariuccia's gesture indicated enormous vagueness—who would wish her to be well cared for, and who would pay splendidly for such care when they came to fetch her, as they would do before very long. She was a good-tempered little thing, and had never been ailing for a day since she was born—and so pretty. There was not such another blonde head in Rome. The people turned to look at her in the street when Mariuccia took her out on a Sunday. Candida hesitated a little, then went and looked at the sleeping child, all rosy and golden, on the white pillow. Stefano glanced at her questioningly as she returned. This was going to be her affair, not his, and she must decide.

"It is well, Mariuccia," she said, without even looking towards her husband. "You can leave her here. Is she baptised?"

"I saw to that," Mariuccia replied. "Here is the certificate from San Severino." And she drew out of her pocket a stiff paper which none of the three could read, but on which they recognized the big, round seal of the Keys and Tiara.

"I will keep it," Mariuccia said, "and if it is wanted you can send for it. Her name is Giannella, don't forget. She eats soup and bread, just what you gave your own babies at that age. Mamma mia, I am sorry to part with her, pretty heart! But I must go back to Rome and find a new, rich padrone, or how else can I leave a fortune to those fine nephews and nieces of mine by-and-by?"

"You are too good to the little rascals already," said Candida. She was not a mercenary person; but Stefano, who had the family cares on his mind, brightened up, and uncorked the rosolio. Three thimblefuls were drunk to the general health; then the tapers were lighted on the family altar, where a splendid Bambino Gesú, dressed in pink silk, held out his waxen hands under the glass globe and smiled on his disciples. The night prayers were said; one low light was left burning in each room—since only the animals sleep in the dark—and Mariuccia fell asleep beside Giannella in the best bed, with a great weight lifted off her heart.

CHAPTER II

Mariuccia only stayed two days in her native town; then she bade farewell to Giannella (who had already made friends with the eldest niece and the youngest pig) and returned, very light-handed, to seek for a new master in Rome. She had made up her mind to find a quiet, well-regulated bachelor to care for this time. No more heartaches over young mothers and forsaken orphans for her. She realized fully the responsibility she had assumed for the Brockmann baby, and courageously faced the likelihood of having to meet most of its expenses herself. Those young gentlemen were kind, yes, but they were just boys, and would probably forget until she reminded them; and then it was always doubtful whether they would have any money to give for their dead friend's child. She had made light of this part of the question in speaking to them, but she was resolved that Stefano and Candida, with their own large family to provide for, should not be out of pocket on Giannella's account; neither must they ever imagine that the payments for the little girl come from anyone but the supposed rich relations who were to hear such good news of her progress under their care. With all their goodness, it would have wounded them deeply to think that Mariuccia's spare cash, which would have helped to start the nephews and nieces in the world, was being spent on the child of strangers. She had two hundred and fifty scudi in the Savings Bank of the Pietá, an institution which, with its merciful pawnbroking department, its safe investments for the poor people's earnings, and its all-embracing Foundling Hospital and affiliated Training Schools, met the wants of the lower classes in those opulent days in a fairly complete manner. In her steady Roman way, Mariuccia had thought out her own case, and was resolved to find a quiet and solvent padrone with whom she could live in peace and security for many years to come. So she went to consult Fra Tommaso, the lay brother who acted as sacristan at San Severino, a popular church served by some Marist Fathers, down in the oldest quarter of the city, near the Tiber. Fra Tommaso was an old friend, like herself a native of Castel Gandolfo, and the deep-seated clan feeling imposed obligations of mutual helpfulness on the compatriots. Ever careful of the courtesies, she had brought him a present of fruit and wine, and a couple of plump pigeons, from the place of his birth, and counted on his being able to interest the Fathers in finding a good place for her. They knew everybody in the district and were the general referees for a thousand matters civic and domestic.

San Severino had an imposing entrance from the Via Ripetta, where it stood, a little back from the street, in a semi-circular piazzale of its own. A series of low, broad steps led up to the rounded platform, wide enough to accommodate the blind man, the woman with the footless baby, and the parish epileptic, who all had their authorized stations in a row near the door in order to receive the never-failing alms of weekday worshipers and Sunday congregations. They brought their chairs with them in the morning, and, after hearing the first Mass, settled themselves for the day; their little stores of food were slipped under the chairs; the woman had her stocking to knit (for the baby always held out its hand for the coppers); the blind man had his tin box to rattle at each approaching footstep; the epileptic had to put his wooden alms bowl at his feet, since his hands trembled too much to hold it. Among these three there was much good fellowship, but they looked askance at the privileged cripple whose crutches reposed all day against a battered arm-chair close to the church door, and who in his turn held aloof from them. For he was an ancient man of decent standing, having been in his day a mason who lost the use of his limbs through a fall from the cupola of San Severino; he now considered that he was as much a part of the church and its organization as the Father Rector himself. He never solicited alms when, by an ingenious arrangement of cords round his hand and the back of his chair, he raised the heavy, padded leather curtain for people to pass into the church; but many a silver paoletto or double baiocco was dropped into the hat on his knees in the course of the day, and the calm, contented expression of his face bespoke a mind at rest from earthly cares.

Mariuccia nodded to the little parade of incurables as she came up the steps on the morning after her return from Castel Gandolfo. She was of the people, and they would have scorned to beg from her, but she found a sugar-plum in her pocket for the baby's grimy little palm, a packet of snuff for the blind man (who was accused of seeing fairly well after dark) and a copper for the epileptic; they would all pray for her and further her success. To Sor Checco, the cripple, she spoke a cheery good-morning, and begged his acceptance of a small flask of "vino santo," which, she assured him, would be good for his health. Then she inquired whether Fra Tommaso were about? She was anxious to speak to him.

At that moment Fra Tommaso emerged from under the opposite side of the leather curtain, broom in hand, and began to sweep down the steps. When he had finished his task, accompanying it with his invariable grumblings at the dirt that people would track up with them, he declared himself at his countrywoman's disposal, and led her through the church to a dark disused side-chapel where he kept his brooms and pails, his oil and candles, and where there was one old chair which he could offer to a visitor.

After many preambles Mariuccia preferred her request. Did Fra Tommaso know of a place for a respectable woman, over thirty, who could cook and wash and iron with anybody? Yes, it was not to boast, but she could say that she knew her business, and as for the marketing—well, she could make a paolo go as far as any housekeeper in Rome.

Fra Tommaso pondered, his chin in his hand, his eyes on the ground, and Mariuccia watched him anxiously. He was a thin, wiry man of forty or thereabouts, with a rather hollow face and very bright eyes. Hardy old age was stamped on every seam and fold of his black cassock, with its wide shoulder cape and leathern girdle, from which dangled various keys and a heavy rosary. The Church, which finds a use for all faithful enthusiasms, had taken him into her service many years before; seeing that no amount of patient teaching could induct the knowledge of Latin into his head, she had made him one of the doorkeepers of the House of the Lord, and he was perfectly happy and contented in that capacity. He had elevated sacristanship to a fine art. The three or four dozen oil lamps which lighted the various altars and shrines were always replenished, always bright, and the oil was measured out as carefully as if it had been molten gold. The candlesticks were burnished, every candle end utilized, and the droppings of virgin wax collected and sold again to the Chandlers for the benefit of the Church. The chairs were piled high at the far end of the nave and the floor swept within half-an-hour after the last Mass of the day had been said: and Fra Tommaso was a walking terror to the unruly urchins who would try to slip in to chatter and play near the door when the sun was too hot or the rain too chill in the streets. He was a little severe on idlers and beggars, but for all the respectable poor he had a friendly interest, taking a good deal of pride in the position of trust which enabled him to lay their requests and perplexities before one or other of the Fathers. The saint of the community, wise, detached old Padre Ambrosio, still looked upon Fra Tommaso as a boy, and sometimes warned him not to let himself be drawn too closely into the thousand distracted interests of the world. "Even charity, my son," he would say, "has its limitations. Beware of letting these good people (especially the women, who would almost drive an archangel out of heaven with their chatter) distract your mind from higher things. You must become a saint, you know. No Latin is needed for that. Only recollection, and prayer and faithfulness to the duties of your state."

"You are right, Padre," Fra Tommaso would say, feeling duly contrite under the gentle rebuke, "I will certainly be more careful." But do what he would, his lively interest in the affairs of his fellow-creatures sprang into life again the moment he came in contact with them. He knew all the habitués of the church by sight; the stories and circumstances of most of them were familiar to him; he would lie awake at night sometimes, wondering if that poor Rosina were getting on better with her mother-in-law, whether Rachel's boy had got the place at the baker's, how much that brigand of a doctor was going to charge the shoemaker for pulling his wife through the fever. If a new face appeared, Fra Tommaso had to know all about its owner within a given time, or he must invent a history for it before he could say his prayers in peace. Padre Ambrosio was so old—and so holy! How could he understand that a poor, uninstructed lay brother, who was running about the church day in, day out, must feel more concerned with the people than he, who now only descended from the steps of the altar to give himself up to contemplation and prayer in his quiet, distant room? And, when one came to think of it, the "Santissimo" and the blessed Addolorata, and the kind, smiling Saints, were all in the church. They would surely forgive their poor servant for taking pleasure in thinking about his brothers and sisters and managing to be useful to them at the same time.

When Mariuccia explained her needs, Fra Tommaso's mind began to work rapidly over his little map of humanity, and stopped, like a divining rod, over the precise place for her. But certain hesitations and discussions must be gone into, otherwise he and she would miss much pleasant talk. He looked up and met her anxious eyes.

"It is a good idea of yours, commara," he said; "a padrone without family, and of regular habits. Yes, you would do well to find such an one. Let me see—we must think a little. We shall find him in time. Who goes softly goes safely, and also far. Now the other day, a gentleman spoke to me—"

"Yes?" said Mariuccia eagerly. "Who was he? Did he want a servant?"

"He wanted to get rid of one—an extravagant woman, who, he said, was ruining him. But of course he could not send her away till he had found somebody to replace her?"

"Tell me his name. I will present myself at once," exclaimed Mariuccia, rising and reaching for her umbrella.

Fra Tommaso made a dignified gesture of the hand, which commanded her to sit down again and listen patiently. She obeyed with a sigh. Then the sacristan continued, "he is a professor at the university, Signor Carlo Bianchi, a most learned man, who knows more about antiquities than anybody in the world. Capperi! He can tell you who built the palace of the Cæsars, and San Pietro, and the Colosseo. Whenever a statue is found they send for Professor Bianchi, and he does not even need to look at it—he wets his finger in his mouth and feels the marble, and he says, 'Signorimiei, this is the work of Praxiteles, or Scanderbeg, or—or Saint Thomas Aquinas.' Just like that! And they put a ticket with the name on the pedestal and never ask another question. Oh, a man of immense instruction! But they say ..." and Fra Tommaso shook his head mysteriously, "that he has one ugly vice."

Mariuccia's hand went up to her mouth, imitating the action of drinking, and her eyebrows asked a question.

"Macché!" exclaimed her adviser, looking much shocked, "not he? A man of that instruction? No, to tell the truth—he is terribly stingy."

"So am I," Mariuccia replied, laughing with relief. "We shall get on well together."

"You are economical, Sora Mariuccia," Fra Tommaso looked at her approvingly, "but this poor Professor is truly avaricious. He is afraid even to eat enough, and is as thin as the miller's donkey that carries the grain and never gets any. One day some buffoon of a student stole his purse as he was entering the lecture-room—oh, he gave it back to him afterwards—but meanwhile the lecture had gone to little pieces—clean out of his head. When the young rascal handed him his purse back he nearly fainted, and they had to give him cognac before he could walk home."

"Poverino," Mariuccia cried indignantly, "it was a cruel joke! I am not afraid of this vice, as you call it. He will have to pay me my wages, and that is all that matters to me. I am indifferentissima as to victuals. By the way, what does he pay?"

"Ask for four scudi a month," Fra Tommaso commanded briskly. He had caught sight of a sunbeam that suddenly shot through the round window in the dome and lit, like a golden arrow, on the crown of the Addolorata. That meant noon in a moment—and his bells to ring. "You ask four, and he will give you three. Go to him to-day—Professor Carlo Bianchi, Palazzo Santafede—it is close by here, you know. You can go out at the back door of the church. Say I sent you. But no, no thanks—for me it is a pleasure to serve you, commara, at any time. Arrivederci!"

The report of a cannon rent the hot, still air, the midday gun from Castel Sant' Angelo. Instantly every church bell in Rome broke into peals of sound, echoing the announcement of high noon to the city. Fra Tommaso had leaped to his ropes and was working like a demon, trying to outring all the neighboring bells, and especially the one of Santa Eulalia, the convent on the other side of the river; between it and San Severino there was on this point an ancient rivalry which deafened all who lived near either.

Mariuccia departed well content, and at once made her way to the indicated address. The Palazzo Santafede was a huge pile belonging to the prince of that name, and running the whole length of the street which separated the Ripetta from a large quiet piazza, where five well-known palaces had faced each other in dignified seclusion for some centuries past, while many a tragedy and comedy had been played in the great rooms behind their tall, impenetrable walls. The Santafede residence stretched four-square round a vast sunny courtyard where a fountain bubbled in the center, and battered statues of more or less doubtful merit stood on pedestals under the deep colonnade which ran round three sides and afforded shelter for the prince's stables. The present prince was a very young man, with pronounced sporting tendencies, and beautiful English carriage horses and Irish hunters were groomed under the colonnade in the morning. The Princess Mother lived with her son on the "piano nobile," the first floor of the palace, in solemn and unchanging state. All the other apartments, there being no married sons to be housed, were let to tenants whose worldly importance diminished with each flight of stairs they climbed—monsignori, diplomatists, nobles who had no dwelling of their own in Rome paid high rents for spacious suites of rooms on second and third floors. Above these came modest apartments occupied by humbler individuals; and the vast attics, which a couple of centuries ago had accommodated four or five hundred retainers, were now let out, even in single rooms, to all who could satisfy the maestro di casa of their respectability.

The reigning family was away at this time of year and the porter was taking his ease in his shirt sleeves in the shade of the great doorway when Mariuccia marched in and inquired for Professor Bianchi.

"Third staircase to the right, fourth floor," was the reply. And as the inquirer went on under the colonnade, the porter remarked to his wife, who was sitting on the lodge steps nursing her baby, "I wager there goes another cook for Professor Scortica sassi (Skin-the-stones). I wonder how long she will stay?"

Mrs. Porter glanced after the receding figure. There was something impressive in that dragonlike stride; the brown hand gripped the thick umbrella as if it had been a saber. "She looks pretty resolute, that female," Mrs. Porter remarked. "I shouldn't wonder if he had found his match this time. I'd rather not be in her place, though."

Mariuccia stood before the green door on the fourth landing of the third staircase. Her first ring at the bell elicited no response, but at the second, footsteps approached and a thin, rasping voice asked the regulation question: "Who is it?"

Mariuccia gave the equally invariable reply, "Friends." Then the shutter behind a tiny grating was pushed back and a pair of spectacled eyes were applied to the bars. The next moment the door was open and Mariuccia stood face to face with a slight, dark man, hooked of nose and hollow of cheek, but much younger than she had expected to behold.

He understood her errand at once. Her costume and attitude were those of the respectable servant at that time. Quite a gleam of joy came into his eyes. His cook had departed in a rage the evening before, and the unfortunate man of science had burnt a hole in his coat and nearly asphyxiated himself in trying to light the charcoal fire to make his coffee that morning. He led the new applicant for that honor through a long, dark passage, where, as he passed, he hastily closed an open door; but Mariuccia had caught sight of an unmade bed and personal belongings in sad disorder. Instantly a maternal pity for the helpless man took possession of her. That cook must have had a heart of stone to leave the poor fellow like this! He conducted her into a study filled with books, papers, plaster casts and fragments of marble, all arranged carefully enough; but the confusion of his mind and his destitute condition were illustrated by a breakfast tray which had been deposited on the floor, flooded with coffee from an overturned pot which still lay on its side.

This was more than Mariuccia's soul could bear. Before entering on any negotiation she picked up the depressing object and carried it out to where her instinct told her she would find the kitchen. Here she paused for a moment, tray in hand, to survey the possibilities of the place. She nodded approvingly. "Here I remain," she informed herself. "A kitchen of this noble size—full of light—with two windows on the street. Capperi, one does not find that every day." She glanced out of the window and saw that the opposite wall was that of the long building, running back from San Severino, the building which had housed the Fathers and their schools. Nothing could be better—she felt at home already.

The last occupant of the noble kitchen had left things in a horrible condition, certainly; rubbish everywhere, coppers that could not have been cleaned since Easter—a hecatomb of damaged crockery on the dust-laden shelves. Never mind, all that would be changed in a day. And now for the padrone. He would be wondering what had become of her.

She made her way back to the study and stood at the open door for a moment. The Professor seemed to have forgotten all about her. He was examining some fragments of dirty earthenware on which a pattern was dimly visible; fitting one to another with delicate care, he was murmuring to himself, "Spurious, spurious. That poor Cardinal! Any villain can take him in with rubbish that was baked last year and buried in the right sort of earth! Etruscan indeed. I wonder what he gave for this robaccia? What is it?" He had thrown the fragments down on the table and caught sight of Mariuccia. "Ah yes, I remember—you have come about the donna's place, I think. Who sent you to me?"

"Fra Tommaso of San Severino," she replied; and the Professor looked pleased. "I see the signore is busy, so I will, with his permission, say that I can do everything he will require, and I respectfully ask what wages he gives. I had five scudi a month with my last padrone."

The Professor's hands flew up in the air and an expression of deepest pain came across his countenance. Mariuccia's spirits rose; the delightful excitement of bargaining was about to begin.

The duel lasted three-quarters of an hour, with varying fortune, first to one and then to the other, of the disputants. Twice Mariuccia seized the cotton umbrella and made as if to depart, outraged at having her just claims disregarded. The second time she almost meant to go; but a deep sigh from her adversary softened her heart. Poor young man, he was really quite "simpatico"—and so forlorn. She paused at the door—and then she knew that she had won the day, for he came after her and laid a hand on her arm.

"It is ruinous, that four scudi a month," he said woefully, "and fifteen baiocchi a day for your food is an insanity—you will die of apoplexy, I know it. But—there—it is said. I must sacrifice myself. Now do go and get me something to eat. That demon would not cook any supper for me last night and I faint, my good woman, I faint."

"Leave it all to me!" she replied. "Poverino! you shall suffer no more." And at once she marched off to take possession of her kingdom.

Within a week the Professor knew that he was in good strong hands; in a month he suspected that he had found a ruler; but he was well satisfied. Excepting the daily wrangle over the money for his marketing (the sums he proffered, Mariuccia told him, were quite inadequate to the maintenance of his respected health), all went smoothly and silently, as he liked it to go, in the quite shabby rooms filled with books and flooded with sunshine, where he passed his studious life. Three times a week he lectured at the university, and on other days spent much time among the excavations which constantly brought new treasures to light from Rome's inexhaustible soil. Few visitors ever mounted those steep stairs; occasionally he spent an evening with his illustrious and learned friend, Cardinal Cestaldini, but otherwise he sat in his study after supper, perfectly happy with his lamp, his books, and his cigar; and in all his habits he was regular as clockwork. Mariuccia lay down night after night in her dark bedroom off the passage, thanking Heaven for having bestowed on her the padrone she had dreamed of. She laughed to herself as she thought of his prophecy that she would die of apoplexy. She had brought her own living expenses down to one-half of the sum which she had quite justly claimed. The rest was put by for the baby she had left with Candida at Castel Gandolfo. If no rich relations turned up—and if those nice young friends of poor Signor Brockmann (of good memory) never sent any money for la Giannella—there would be anxious times ahead for her only protector. The Madonna and San Giuseppe would help—that could be counted upon; but one must make what provision one could—with six nephews and nieces on one's conscience!

CHAPTER III

It was three years before Mariuccia saw Giannella again. Then Candida brought her to Rome, fat and well-looking, to show her to the sister-in-law, who was to be moved, at sight of the pretty, well-fed little girl, to grant a modest request. Once in three months during the passing years a trusty carrettiere from Castel Gandolfo had brought Mariuccia a letter, written for Candida by the official scribe of the "Castello," reporting Giannella's good progress; and Fra Tommaso had read it to the recipient in the empty chapel under the bell tower. The same proven counselor had always written the answer for her, free of charge (it would have been folly to pay the public letter-writer in Piazza San Carlo for what she could get done for nothing!) and had made up and sealed the little packet of money, growing heavier with Giannella's growth, which the carrier took back with him when he dawdled across the campagna to the hills, in his high cart, painted in gorgeous reds and blues, piled with empty barrels in exchange for the full ones he had brought in. A proud man was he. His sheepskin awning was hung with twenty or thirty jingling brass bells; his horses moved leisurely under their great burnished collars; his white lupetto, the fierce little fox-dog without which the outfit would have been incomplete, barked madly at everything on the road and frenziedly at all the other lupettos on the other carriers' vehicles, and took sole charge of all property during the long pauses at the thatched "Cappanne" where the jolly driver would have a glass of wine and a game of bowls with his compeers to break the monotony of the journey.

The letters he brought four times a year provided the great excitement of Mariuccia's existence, and the Professor knew that for a day or two in every quarter his housekeeper would be slightly less silent and methodical than usual. He understood that there was a child at nurse in the country, an occurrence so common that he never gave it a second thought. He imagined it was Mariuccia's own, and as she never spoke of having a husband, supposed that she was a widow. Once or twice he wondered what kind of a man could have had the courage to espouse such a carabineer in petticoats. He himself had a nervous terror of women, whom he considered as brainless, extravagant creatures, and in spite of his comparative youth, he seemed destined for an old bachelor, so resolutely did he avoid feminine society.

It was therefore a shock to him to return one bright winter day from the university to find his apartment resounding with women's voices and childish laughter. The front-door bell was broken and he was fighting the maestro di casa as to who should pay for repairing it, so he had let himself in with the latchkey and was coming on tiptoe down the passage to have a peep at the intruders, when the kitchen door flew open, and, out of the haze of sunshine within, a small, golden-headed whirlwind shot forward with a scream of laughter, bumped against his knees, and went down on the bricks with a thud. He sprang back, nearly as alarmed as the child; but before he could find his breath for questioning—or she for crying—two excited women swooped down on the little sufferer, picked her up, felt her all over, tried to drown her sobs with caresses and promises, and finally bore her back to the kitchen without having taken the slightest notice of the indignant master of the house. He judged it best to withdraw to his sanctum, where he sat down in dismal depression. He felt certain that this cataclysm foreboded the destruction of his peace.

It was poor Mariuccia's peace, however, which was disturbed by Candida's visit. Giannella had been splendidly cared for; her clothes were in excellent order. Sister Mariuccia could see for herself that every penny sent for the child had been honestly expended on her. Could she have those red cheeks and bright eyes, could she be such a little wisp of activity and high spirits, if she were not well fed and happy? Candida proudly asked. Surely the rich relations would be more than satisfied. And, since this would redound to Mariuccia's credit and magnify her reward from them, was it too much to ask that she would come forward generously, like the dear, good soul she always was, to help Candida, junior, the eldest niece, to a fine settlement in life? The prosperous parents of a particularly nice young man had made a proposal for Candiduccia. They were willing to take her without a dowry if she could bring the proper plenishings, the bed and the linen, the chest of drawers and the pearl earrings—and of course the Sunday clothes—without which no self-respecting girl could enter a family. Here was a chance for Candiduccia! But, to tell the truth, things had not gone so very well with Stefano of late. The good donkey had died suddenly; last year the filloxera had got at the grapes—and, in fine, they looked to sister Mariuccia to remember her kind promises and give the money for the outfit. How much? Why, well laid out, perhaps a hundred scudi would do, since of course the linen was there already—Candiduccia had been spinning it ever since she was ten, and Sor Mariano had woven it for her for nothing. Yes, a hundred scudi should do nicely. And dear Mariuccia was so rich and had no children to provide for! A little thing like that would not make much difference to her.

Dear Mariuccia looked down at Giannella (who by this time had taken her old new friend into grace, and had fallen asleep in her arms) and wondered how much further her little stock of money would go. The three years' payments had made sad inroads on the vaunted savings; but that Candida must never know; the money was supposed to come from the rich relations "fuori," myths in whom Mariuccia herself had come to believe in a way at times, even tormenting herself with the possibility of their coming to claim the little waif. For the woman who had refused to marry had plenty of affection to bestow, and Giannella seemed to be the only thing in the world which was her very own, had been her own ever since she was born and her real mother had slipped away from the costly joys of maternity. Mariuccia had woven pleasant little dreams about the future, and seen herself bringing Giannella to live with her when the child grew bigger and could be taught to move quietly about the house and not disturb the Professor at his books; she had seen her, in imagination, prettily dressed, as became her station in life, and finally ensnaring the affections of some ideally good and handsome young man—who would marry her and bring old Mariuccia to take care of them both and of the beautiful children Heaven would send them. But Giannella must eat many loaves of bread before these pleasant visions could be realized, and who was to provide them but Mariuccia? Four scudi a month was good pay, but how far would it go alone when the precious savings had fitted out Candiduccia and her two younger sisters—for what had been done for one must be done for the others—for entrance into well-to-do families? Mamma mia, it was a perplexing outlook! Well, the Madonna and San Giuseppe must provide. These things were matters of destiny. There was no going back now.

"You will do it, will you not?" came Candida's anxious question. The suspense was almost unbearable to her.

"Yes, I will do it, Candida mia!" the other woman replied slowly. Then she added more cheerfully, "The 'tratto' is the most expensive part. You had better leave the buying of that and the earrings to me. I can combat with these brigands of merchants better than you can, and here in the city there are fine shops for silk and cloth. You shall have the things the next time the carrettiere goes out. I will give you the money for the bed and the bureau to-day."

Having once made up her mind, no more regrets were admitted and for the next twenty-four hours Mariuccia's feelings were divided between delight at the pretty ways of the child and anxiety lest the Professor should find her trottings to and fro, her laughter and occasional tears, too intolerably disturbing. But when it was explained to him that the visitation was but a passing one, he was more patient than could have been expected. The next day Candida bore little Giannella away in good time to catch the vettura for Albano; her farewells took the form of an all-embracing benediction for the generosity of the rich sister; and that afternoon Mariuccia asked her master for permission to go out for a couple of hours. She came home absolutely hoarse with bargaining, bringing a roll of silk that would have stood alone—a gorgeous brocade of red carnations on a cinnamon-colored ground—and two feet of scarlet cloth which looked like geranium petals and felt like a baby's cheek. It had cost five scudi a foot, and with some broad gold trimmings would make the half sleeves from wrist to elbow which were relatively the most expensive part of the superb Albanese costume. It would also provide the stiff little stomacher into which the voluminous shawl of fine lace would be tucked. For this last, as well as for the lace apron, Mariuccia had gone to the selling department of the Pietá, where unredeemed pledges were disposed of, and had found there just the right earrings, wide hoops of pale gold with three fair-sized pearls dangling from each. If the bride lived to be ninety and a great-grandmother, she would wear this dress every Sunday and Feast Day at Mass and would leave it as a treasured heirloom to her descendants. In the goatskin trunk under her bed Mariuccia kept the one which her own mother and grandmother had worn at their weddings and ever after. No holidays came into her dull life, but the "tratto" must not be parted with while there was even a faint possibility of her having to appear at church in her native town.

The precious sendings were confided, a day or two later, with many anxious recommendations, to Sebastiano the carrettiere, who promised not to get off the cart for a moment, no matter what temptations might assail him till they were safely deposited at their destination.

"Leave it all to me," he exclaimed, slapping his chest proudly. "Am I not a galantuómo? Do you think I would let such stuff as that out of my sight for a moment? Diamini! We have our principles, we carrettieri! Not a single glass will I drink before I reach Castel Gandolfo."

Mariuccia fancied that the white lupetto on the driving seat winked one eye, quite like a Christian, at this assurance, the like of which he had probably heard before, and she felt a little uncomfortable about the goods until, two weeks later, the receipt for them came in the shape of a box of confetti tied with white ribbon, the usual "faire part" of an accomplished wedding. She offered it, as in duty bound, to the Professor, who accepted it blandly and made the sugar-plums suffice for two meals, thereby effecting a saving of at least ten baiocchi.

* * * * * * * * *

Another three years went by, and when Candida, as Mariuccia had foreseen, came to solicit for Teresina the favors which had been accorded to her elder sister, Mariuccia saw that some decisive step must be taken; she could no longer pay for Giannella's board in her brother's family. Twice already she had been to see Mr. Brockmann's artist friends, and though they had received her with great kindness and cordiality, they had been able to help her but little. One was married, and had all he could do to maintain a wife and child; the other seemed to be as poor as ever, and only necessity would have made his visitor accept the few dollars which he insisted on giving her. There was no one else to appeal to. Mariuccia gave almost her last scudo to fit out Teresina for her wedding, and then, leaving Candida in the kitchen with Giannella (a much quieter little person than of yore) standing in awed silence beside her chair, marched boldly into the Professor's study and asked his permission to keep the child with her henceforth.

Bianchi looked up from his papers in blank dismay. Keep a child in the house? The thing was out of the question. What was Mariuccia thinking of to propose such an absurdity?

"If the Signor Professor really wants to know what I am thinking of," she replied, "I will tell him, in all sincerity. I am thinking of a new place, where I can have Giannella with me. I heard of one this morning. And they give five scudi a month."

Her master's opposition collapsed before this statesmanlike invention. He could not part with his silent, economical jewel of domesticity, to fall into strange and ruthless hands. No, better accept the child, even if it should prove a demon, as he had heard that young children mostly were, and keep his cook. But he made conditions. Under no circumstances was the baby (the flight of time was forgotten by him and he was thinking of something small and noisy that would trip him up at every step) to enter his rooms. And also it must be understood, once and for all, that he must never be asked to contribute to its maintenance. Not a lump of sugar or a crust of bread was it to have from his stores. If people were so silly as to take strange orphans to bring up—Giannella's history had now been explained to him—they must bear the punishment of their spendthrift insanity alone. Perhaps it would teach them wisdom.

Mariuccia's eyes blazed as he said this, and he began to fear that he might have gone too far. But she was generous enough to overlook the insults of a conquered adversary. She thanked him in set terms for the permission to keep Giannella, assured him that he should neither hear nor see the child; and then she calmed her ruffled feelings by the first impertinent speech that had ever fallen from her lips. "Let the padrone congratulate himself on one point. The chastisements due to what he called spendthrift insanity, and which most persons would consider common charity, would never fall on his respected head."

Then she went back to Candida and told her that Giannella must now remain in the city. Her invisible relations wished her to have a superior education, such as was unattainable in her country home. Candida was frankly sorry. She had come to love the paying nursling almost as if it were her own; and the charge of Giannella, who was looked upon by the neighbors as quite a highborn young heiress, conferred much distinction on her foster parents. As for the child herself, she was appalled at the prospect of being parted from "Mamma Candida" and her lifelong playmates, to remain alone with "Zia Mariuccia," who looked so old and stern. She flung herself into Candida's arms and wept bitterly, the two women watching her in silence. Candida rocked her in her arms while some tears of her own trickled down over the golden hair in which she had taken such pride for years past.

Mariuccia let them weep together. These things were matters of destiny. There was nothing for her to say. Their double grief showed that the little one had been happy at least. Her own turn would come when the parting was over; and though she was racking her brain as to ways and means, she was confident that she could make Giannella happy too. She rose quietly and prepared as tempting a dinner as her resources would provide, and her sorrowing guests did full justice to it at last. Then all three went out to make the purchases for Teresina; and the streets, the shops, the band playing stridently as a detachment of French soldiers in gay uniforms marched down the Corso, all sent the country-reared child wild with delight. She was finally put to bed with a honey cake under her pillow, and never woke till Candida, who had slipped away in the dawn, was far out on the Via Appia, so occupied with anticipating Teresina's joy over the grand new clothes that there was little place in her mind for anything else.

A few days later Sebastiano brought a big bundle in which Mariuccia found every garment that Giannella had outgrown carefully folded up and saved by her scrupulous keepers, together with odds and ends of playthings, and little pictures of the Saints given for good conduct by the parish priest who had taught her her catechism. There was also a present of cakes and fruit from the teeming Alban garden in the hills. The padrone was offered his due of all, and actually smiled when he found a little person, with round cheeks and funnily puckered brow, reaching up with two hands to put a plate of fresh figs on his dinner-table. The child nearly dropped it when she saw him enter, but summoned up all her courage to shove it on safely. Then she turned and ran at full speed all the way to the kitchen, where she rushed to Mariuccia's side and hid her face in her protector's voluminous skirts. "Oh, please, please, ask him not to eat me this time!" she wailed. "I didn't know he was there—I will never do it again."

For Mariuccia, determined that the padrone should have no just cause of complaint, had confided to Giannella a terrible secret: the Signor Professor never hurt little girls who obeyed orders, but it was well known that he had once gobbled up a certain naughty child who did not keep out of his way!

CHAPTER IV

The Principessa di Santafede was a lady of gravely gracious manners, iron prejudices and active piety, and she entertained a profound belief in the necessity of her own class to the well-being of the world. So far as she was concerned secular history contained but one record worthy of study and imitation, the record of the noble houses of Rome. Each tradition and regulation connected with these was not only a rubric but a dogma. To believe and act thereupon was to find social salvation; all who rejected these articles of faith perish from her consciousness; their names were erased from her "libro d'oro," and they ceased to be. No taint of novelty had cast its shadow over her education. Except that the history books were thicker and the spelling modernized, the teaching she received in the convent along with all the other noble damsels in Rome was the same as that which had been bestowed on her ancestresses for generations past. It had proved entirely sufficient for those eminent ladies, and neither parents nor instructors could see any reason for changing a detail of it. There would be Roman nobles so long as the world lasted; their vast establishments would move ponderously and surely as they had always moved; and a girl brought from her convent to be placed at the head of such an establishment had but to leave its conduct to the responsible persons, the major-domos, and stewards, and housekeepers, descended from many generations of officials who had served the same "Eccellentissima Casa" in the same capacities. She had but to watch and copy her seniors in order to fulfill her obligations in society, in matrimony, in maternity, to the complete satisfaction of all concerned. Life was quite simple if only people did their duty.

Political crises would occur, of course; the riots and revolutions of 1848, for instance, had been most disturbing. But they had only strengthened the beliefs of right-thinking persons, for, behold, they had passed by like a wave of the sea breaking against the rocks, leaving everything as it was before and as it would be "in sæcula sæculorum" so far as Rome was concerned—and Rome was the world.

Prince Santafede had died when their only son was quite a child, and the responsibilities thus devolving on her sufficiently accounted for his widow's grave outlook on life. It was, however, a peaceful and happy life, clouded by few real anxieties, since Onorato had now reached the age of eighteen without giving any serious trouble. He was a cheerful, warm-hearted boy, with no more fixed aversion to study than the remainder of his contemporaries. Accompanied by his tutor, a learned ecclesiastic, he had attended the proper lectures at the university, and, though his education included only the classics and humanities, it had given him all that was then required of a gentleman, fluent and elegant Latin, a working acquaintance with his own and foreign literatures, charming manners, and a fitting sense of what was due to himself and others. If there was one cloud in his mother's large sky, it was caused by the fact that he did not take her views on the sacredness of family traditions in one or two minor directions, notably that of the expenditure on the stables. Onorato had no other extravagances, but he insisted on riding and driving magnificent imported horses, declaring that it was a public duty to set a higher standard than the prevailing one in such matters. The Princess and Onorato's lamented father had been perfectly contented with their six pairs of coal-black horses, bred on their own lands with hundreds of others destined to be sold all over Italy and Austria. The animals had been driven and cared for by coachmen and grooms also born on the estates; and the Princess could not imagine anything more splendid and appropriate than the high calèche on C. springs in which she took her daily airing; the deep, hearse-like berline swung on leather bands, which carried her to parties, seemed the perfection of comfort and safety; and she felt something like reverence for the yellow stage coach, with blazoned panels and glass sides, with gold-fringed hammercloth and tasseled straps to which the three dazzlingly arrayed footmen hung behind. It was only brought out on grand occasions, for audiences with the Pope or Ambassadors' receptions, and the Princess felt as if her skies were falling when her son, a "Principe del Solio" (supporter of the throne), climbing into it in all his magnificence of doublet and ruff, gold chain and sword, to go and attend the Holy Father on Easter morning, called it a "lumbering old pumpkin," and declared that if he had his way he would make a bonfire of it in the courtyard. His revolutionary ideas had not only demonstrated themselves by importing foreign horses, but by filling the coachhouses with French carriages and the stables with English grooms, barbarians who, while fulfilling their other duties faithfully enough, grumbled at having to go to church, and thus deeply scandalized the rest of the well-drilled household.

The Princess's brother, Cardinal Cestaldini, Professor Bianchi's learned patron and friend, tried to console his sister for her son's equine irregularities by pointing out that they were not so extravagant as they appeared, since Onorato was bent on improving the Roman breed and thus adding considerable value to the Santafede horse farms; also that a young man might spend his money on worse things than horses. This was at all events an innocent taste, and, seeing that Onorato had no inclination for deeply serious pursuits, and was too young to get married—well, his mother must be patient and not estrange him by any undue severity. Paolo Cestaldini's own happy lot inspired him with much indulgence for those less blessed. He felt that few were as fortunate as himself, delivered from worldly distractions at the start by what he considered the undeserved grace of a religious vocation, and then provided with the most elevating and beneficent occupation for his leisure. In the delights of Art and Archæology, subjects which he could discuss with the most learned, he found an inexhaustible source of interest and recreation. Incapable of an ungenerous or insincere thought, he was merciful and gentle in his judgment of others. Religion, which had built up round his sister a wall of defense against the temptations which assault those in the world, had turned the other side of its golden shield to him, and mellowed and enriched the man's ascetic nature and broadened his mind while it refined his appreciations. To the married woman it was a fortress, to the lonely prelate, a garden.

The Princess listened rather despondently to her brother's encouraging exhortations. They did not alter her conviction that Onorato was on the wrong road, and she resolved to pray more earnestly (good soul, that would hardly have been possible) and to apply herself with more fervor to her many works of charity in order to obtain his reformation. Full of these thoughts, she stopped at the church of San Severino on her way home, dismissed her carriage, since the Palazzo Santafede was only a few hundred yards away, and found a good deal of comfort in saying her prayers in the silent, dusky church.

Emerging half-an-hour later, she saw just before her in the street, a servant woman leading a little girl by the hand. The airy poise of the little figure, the light step and quick turn of the small head, took the Princess's fancy. Above all, the shining golden braids hanging down to the child's waist aroused her admiration, for to be fair is to be loved, in dark Romagna. Mariuccia and Giannella, unconscious that their unapproachably illustrious landlady was following them, passed up the street, turned into the piazza, and disappeared under the arched entrance of the palace. By the time the Princess reached it, they were lost to view round the turn of the colonnade. She paused to ask the porter, who was grounding his tasseled staff and sweeping the pavement with his hat, if he could tell her who the child was. Did she belong to anyone in the palazzo?

The Excellency was informed that the woman conducting her was Professor Bianchi's servant, and that the little girl had been brought by a contadina from the country a few days before. Nothing more was known. The "donna" rarely spoke to anyone. Did the Excellency wish inquiries to be made?

Certainly not, the Princess replied, Professor Bianchi's family was his private affair. She discouraged all gossip about her tenants. Ferretti, the mæstro di casa, was responsible for them and she never interfered with his wise and careful management. Still, he had told her, when letting the rooms, that the Professor was a bachelor; and Bianchi was sufficiently distinguished in his own learned circle for his rather crabbed characteristics to have become more or less known to the public. The Princess, as she mounted the broad marble stairs to her own apartment, wondered whether the child were some relation of his, and felt a certain pity for the bright little thing if she were really condemned to live with the parsimonious man of science and his grim-looking servant.

She was soon to know more about Giannella. Mariuccia was just now terribly puzzled by a new responsibility which immediately faced her. At seven years of age children must begin to go to school, and how was this to be managed for Giannella? There were free schools all over the city, kept by the nuns for the children of the poor. The little ones were collected from their homes in the morning by trusty persons who called for them and brought them back in the evening, receiving a tiny monthly sum from the parents for the service. That was all very well, and the nuns took fine care of the small people during the day; but Mariuccia was obstinately set on one point, and she meant to fight for her convictions; la Giannella was a lady. Providence above seemed to have overlooked the fact and had steadily refused to furnish the wherewithal to keep it before the eyes of the world; but the self-constituted representative of Providence on earth would take no denial on the subject, and nothing would have induced her to let Giannella be herded with the children of the city plebeians, to learn their rough ways, their common speech, to remember when she grew up that she had been as one of them. It was one thing to be a paying nursling in the clean, rich country, cared for and cherished by pious, respectable people like Stefano and Candida, who kept their boys and girls in the fear of God and would have punished a bad word, an act of disobedience or even a disrespectful glance, with a sound beating; it was quite another to mix with low-born children of the city, whose parents, coming from no one knew where, owned no feudal master, no foot of land, and had not been obliged to live up to the stern standard of morals and manners required in the proud "castelli." Giannella had learned her catechism and many pretty hymns from the parish priest, and the first elements of reading from some Franciscan nuns at Castel Gandolfo. Who was to take up the good work and endow her with all the mysterious instruction which it seemed a lady should possess by the time her hair went up and her skirts came down?

Mariuccia put the question to her spiritual director, a Capuchin monk of great age and sanctity, to whom she had been commended by the Curato at home when she first came to Rome as a young woman some eighteen years before, and to whom she had been loyally constant, tramping to his distant monastery on the Palatine once a month from whatever part of the town she happened to be living in. He could not help her much, although he said he would keep the matter in mind and see if some charitable person could get the little girl received as a boarder in one of the many convent schools. But Mariuccia felt that this was a vague outlook, and she confided her trouble to the ever-sympathetic Fra Tommaso, who listened with his usual interest and curiosity to her story.

"But," he objected, when she had ceased speaking, "what has become of the relations who used to send you the money for her? Will they not pay any longer?"

"Fra Tommaso mio," she replied, "I must tell you something. It is now a long time since they sent any money for Giannella. Perhaps they are ill—or affairs may not be going so very well over there—what do I know? Meanwhile I could not let the child want, so you see—"

The sacristan pursed his lips and shook his head. "That is bad—very bad. And has Signor Bianchi been paying for her? That would be a miracle indeed."

"No," said poor Mariuccia, driven to tell the humiliating truth at last, "I have had to find the money myself. Of course the relations will repay me when they have time, but meanwhile two of my nieces have got married, and that cost me a great deal; and now, until I hear from over there," her thumb went over her shoulder indicating the unknown regions where the Brockmann family was supposed to have its being, "I do not know what to do. Giannella ought to go to a good school. She is seven years old, and of an intelligence—God bless her! But I cannot manage it."

During this speech Fra Tommaso had been thinking with all his might. Suddenly he banged his forehead with his clenched fist. "Head of a pumpkin that thou art!" he exclaimed to the delinquent member. "We have got it—and I never even thought of it. That Principessa of yours—the Santafede—she was a Cestaldini."

This piece of genealogical information appeared to electrify Mariuccia. "But what are you telling me?" she cried. "Is it true?"

"Of course it is true," he asseverated; "a Cestaldini, the daughter of the old prince who died in his palace at Castel Gandolfo just after Stefano got his leg broken riding the bad mule. Don't you remember, the church was hung with black for a month? And you snipped off a piece of the stuff to dress a doll like a 'seminarista' to tease me with, because I wanted to be a priest? Why, you belong to her father's people—she must help you. Go to the Princess at once."

"Of course she would help me," Mariuccia replied rather sadly, "if I could ever get to speak to her. But that is impossible, quite impossible! I should have to ask the porter to ask the lady's maid to ask Signora Dati, the Princess's companion, to ask the Excellency—and the message would never reach Signora Dati. Those familiars have no hearts. We must think of something else."

"Leave it to me to be done," Fra Tommaso said; "I will see about it."

It was Mariuccia's turn to be curious. "But how?" she asked. "Would it not be as hard for you as for me to speak with the Excellency?"

"No," he replied; "she comes every morning to the seven o'clock Mass, and I could speak to her quite easily. But I have a better way. Behold, is not our Cardinal her brother? And has he not always been for me of a goodness, of a condescension? Always a kind word or a little joke when he sees me. 'How does it go, Tommaso? Have you worn out any more bell ropes with that Herculean ringing?' (Hercules was the first sacristan of St. Peters, you know, Sora Mariuccia, and was so strong that he could ring the big bell with his hands.) Or else he says, 'You are looking thin, my son. You should eat some of your fat pigeons.' Ah, what an egregious ecclesiastic, what a man of learning, and yet so simple! To him I will relate these facts, and he will say to his sister, 'What is this? I learn that you have Botti's Mariuccia in your house and you have never sent for her to let her kiss your hand? But this is great neglect! What would our papa of good memory have said at your thus overlooking one of his people? Let it be remedied at once!'"

Mariuccia clasped her hands, "Fra Tommaso mio," she wailed, "I should die of fright if I had to pass all those famigliari in the sala and go into those fine rooms—and in these old clothes! If I were at home I could wear the costume—but here! No, since you are so condescending, so kind, do this. Tell that good Eminenza all about Giannella and how I am astrologizing my head already to feed and clothe her—for the padrone will not give her so much as a crumb from his table—and get him to ask the Princess to send her to school. That indeed would be an action of the greatest merit and the Madonna will accompany you wherever you go!"

CHAPTER V

A few days later Fra Tommaso found an opportunity of laying Mariuccia's case before the Cardinal. The latter usually paid a short visit to the church in the late afternoon, on his return from the drive which was as much a part of his daily life as the reading of his breviary. His Mass was always said in his private chapel, but he found in the large, quiet church greater space of detachment, an atmosphere rich with the devotion of centuries, and an impersonal companionship very sympathetic to him in the chapels and monuments which had been the silent witnesses of his silent spirit's growth. It was but a few steps from the church to his own door, and the constant presence of his chaplain and servants on all other occasions made the short solitary walk a pleasure in itself.

Fra Tommaso ventured to ask him to come into the dark home of bell ropes and candlesticks and there with many apologies for obtruding such common affairs on his noble attention, explained poor Mariuccia's perplexities and besought the Eminenza's intervention with his illustrious and charitable sister.

The Cardinal listened to him with much attention, disentangled the real facts from the picturesque accompaniments of explanation and gesture in which the sacristan involved them at every turn. When Fra Tommaso mentioned Professor Bianchi, the prelate nodded his head, saying, "Ah, the Signor Professore is known to me. He is a man much respected, also very much occupied. Doubtless he has not had time to think about the little girl. He is not rich, and it is not to be expected that he should bear the charges of her education. I will speak to the Princess and see what can be done."

Fra Tommaso broke out into expressions of devout gratitude, and the Cardinal smiled on him and slipped away. He had a strong feeling of kindness for the cheerful, humble servant of the Fathers, a feeling which, years ago, had been one of acute pity for a brokenhearted boy who had nourished high hopes of entering the Church—open to peasant as to prince if God have bestowed on him the needful gifts—and who had found it impossible to assimilate the required learning. All other requisites of the true vocation were there, singleness of heart, deep humility, fervor and faith. But some congenital defect of brain, unperceived until the intellect attempted to grapple with the difficulties of Latin and theology, barred the way for Tommaso. When this was so apparent that his patient instructors were obliged to give their unfavorable verdict, the shock had almost overcome his reason and his faith. Paolo Cestaldini, then a young priest just ordained, had rescued both. He had kept the boy near him for some time, and had only let him go when he saw that resignation had done its work, when he had enabled Tommaso to realize that the glory of God required service of many grades, and that all the virtues of a religious vocation can be as well acquired, preserved, and practised, in the humblest as in the most illustrious of these.

The result of the conversation under the bell tower was a visit from good Signora Dati, the humble but devoted companion of the Princess and the chief intermediary of her many charities, to Mariuccia, who was quite overcome by such an honor. The Princess had two excellent qualities of the administrator; she spared no trouble and lost no time in learning all that could be learned about a case presented for her consideration; and then she took proper time to decide on her course of action. The immense ramifications of charities in Rome provided answers to almost all the problems connected with the relief of suffering and poverty. The first step was to catalogue the applicant's needs. So Signora Dati was commissioned to find out to what class of society the golden-haired waif on the other side of the courtyard belonged, and also to learn whatever she could of the morals of her defunct parents. The Princess was convinced that heredity played a great part in the drama of development and should be suppressed or fostered according to its character.

The Professor was absent when Mariuccia's visitor climbed the long stairs and rang at the green door. She was a thin, pale little lady, with the eyes of a saint and the mouth of a judge. Her costume gave almost the impression of a conventual habit, with its full black skirt and silk shoulder cape and black lace head covering. This last indicated with delicate precision the exact rank of the wearer, an educated and refined dependent, placed half way between the woman of rank, who could wear a bonnet, and the woman of the people, who must go bare-headed if she would preserve her reputation.

Signora Dati had become an expert in charity. It was impossible to deceive her as to character and veracity. After half-an-hour's conversation with Mariuccia—conversation during which the latter stood respectfully at a little distance from her interlocutor's chair and gave her story with admirable directness, uncomplicated with legends about Giannella's relations, and with a complete unconsciousness of any merit on her own part—Signora Dati was satisfied on all the points which she had come to investigate. Giannella's parents had been respectable if unfortunate people; they had been duly married; there was apparently no taint of crime or disease to descend to their child. Only one thing more remained to be ascertained—what kind of training in bearing and manners had this good but uneducated woman and her family been able to give the child?

"And now I would like to see the little girl," she said; "will you call her in?"

Mariuccia stamped away into the kitchen and returned, pushing Giannella into the room before her. The child stood still for an instant looking at the visitor. Then she came forward, raised Signora Dati's hand to her fresh young lips, kissed it, and stepped back, looking the lady full in the face with her innocent gray eyes, waiting to be spoken to. The commissioner of charities, whose visit had purposely been unannounced, returned the glance, taking in the smoothly braided hair, the round cheeks and clean dimpled hands, the nicely ironed frock and pinafore, the spotless stockings and strong strap shoes. An immense respect for Mariuccia rose in her heart. What it must have cost the woman to keep the child like this—on four scudi a month! It was heroism—nothing less. And the manners were perfect; that, however, was not so surprising, seeing that all Giannella's life had been spent among the rigidly self-respecting inhabitants of the castelli. It was only in large towns that the poorer classes had become insubordinate and vulgar.

After a few questions and answers, Signora Dati rose to go. Mariuccia accompanied her to the door, and there, Giannella having been sent back to the kitchen, she said that the Princess would consider the question of the child's education and would communicate with her as soon as it had been decided upon. Meanwhile it would be well to preserve silence on the matter, as her Excellency did not care to have her charities noised abroad.

When Mariuccia went back to her interrupted task of preparing the padrone's dinner, Giannella was standing at the window watching a flock of pigeons hovering over a small terrace on the roof of the opposite building. It was on a higher level than the Bianchi apartment, and the parapet shut out any view of what might lie behind it, but the parapet itself was gay with flowers; the deep red carnations that the Romans love hung far over the edge, swaying in the sun and breeze; a little lemon-tree in a green box held up its pale golden fruit among shining leaves; the pigeons whirred about as if in great excitement, while every now and then a dark masculine head bobbed up for a moment above the line of red bricks, and then disappeared again. Giannella had forgotten all about the visitor who had come to decide her fate, and was completely absorbed in the brightness and movement across the way.

Mariuccia came behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder, leaning out to see what so interested the child. Then she smiled, and said, half to herself, "That poor Fra Tommaso! He is at it again, feeding his birds and talking to them as if they were Christians. Shall I tell you something, Giannella? When I took you out to Castel Gandolfo—and you were no longer than that—(she measured half-a-yard on her arm) and as fat as a little calf—I brought back two pigeons in a cage for Fra Tommaso, thinking he would cook and eat them. Figure to yourself piccolina, that he made a little house for them up there on his loggia, and fed them with Indian corn, and now behold, a family! They are his children, those fowls, and he takes as much care of them as I do of you."

"I would like to go up and see them, and get some of the garofoli," Giannella replied wistfully. "Zia Mariuccia, do take me up to Fra Tommaso's loggia."

"What an idea!" Mariuccia exclaimed. "Why, no woman has ever entered that house. It is strict clausura. Only men can go in—the Fathers and their pupils live there. They do not want to see little girls!"

"Are they like the Signor Professore then?" Giannella asked, looking across at the tall conventual building with a shiver of fear. "Is the Signor Professore a padre too?"

"No," said Mariuccia, looking down at the child in amusement. Then she added impressively, "He is a most learned gentleman, and for that reason dislikes noise and disturbance. He was very angry when you knocked over the chair yesterday. You must be more careful, Giannella."

To Mariuccia's amazement the child flung herself against her and broke out into wild entreaty. "Zia Mariuccia, do please take me back to Mamma Candida! It makes me so sad to be so quiet all the time. Mamma Candida never scolded about the noise unless there was quarreling—and I want Annetta and Richetto and the dog and the pigs and the donkey—so much! Oh, do take me back!" Her little mouth was quivering with earnestness and her eyes were brimming with tears which she kept back bravely. The loneliness and confinement of the dull apartment, the terror of the padrone, and Mariuccia's silent, undemonstrative ways, were becoming more than the child could bear. Her heart was breaking for the cheery, populous house in the olive orchard, where something was always happening, where out-of-doors freedom and a tribe of children and animals provided playground and playmates day in, day out.

Her cry brought pain to the staunch heart of the woman. She had not realized that the child could be unhappy while she herself was straining every nerve to assure her welfare. Then, with a sigh, she accepted the fact. Of course it was dull and sad for the little thing here. Who was she, old Mariuccia, to take the place of busy, smiling Candida, of the laughing, chattering boys and girls who had been as brothers and sisters to Giannella? She remembered that even as a grown woman, a confirmed spinster of twenty, she had wept some bitter tears when she realized that she had left her "paese," with all its friendliness and freedom, to live shut up in narrow rooms in the city among strangers. So she sat down and took Giannella on her knee and spoke with unusual gentleness.

"Listen, cocca mia. It is not possible to take you back to Mamma Candida any more, to stay, though if you are good you shall go to see her some day. You know you are a signorina, and your poor papa of good memory would not have wished you to be brought up as a contadina. The good God has caused each one to be born in the position where he can best save his soul. Annetta and Richetto and the others must work among the olives and the grapes, and take care of the animals—that is their destiny, and they will be happy, but it is not yours. You must go to school and learn to read and write, and keep your hands clean for fine embroidery and other things that ladies may work at. And I think soon you will go to a beautiful school where there are most instructed nuns who will teach you all this, and also many other children of your own age with whom you can play and study. Thus you will be happy, and by-and-by—"

"Yes, by-and-by? Oh, please go on!" Giannella exclaimed, her eyes shining at the prospect suddenly unfolded to her.

Mariuccia looked up at the blue Roman sky, so near and kind in the clearness of noonday. Yes, by-and-by? What possible future lay before the forsaken child for whom she was so obstinately preserving the privileges of gentle birth? "By-and-by? Hé Giannella, I must not tell you everything at once. Arciprete!" as the midday gun boomed its signal from Sant' Angelo and every bell in the city began to ring. "Run and lay the cloth for the padrone while I get the soup and the bollito off the fire. Poveretta me, the soup is like water. But if that blessed man will only let me buy half-a-pound of meat for it, what am I to do? To think that a man of his instruction can stay hungry with his pockets full of money. What a vice is avarice! Libera nos Domine!"

Mariuccia need really not have prayed against that temptation, though she had often gone hungry of late when there were still a few coppers in the corner of her handkerchief. La Giannella had a fine appetite—and at that age who could have let the child remain unsatisfied?

Another week passed, and when Signora Dati came to say that on the following day Mariuccia was to bring Giannella to kiss the hand of the Princess, after which she herself would conduct her to a convent of Sisters of Charity on the other side of the river, where the little girl would be received as a boarder, and would have every benefit of education, as well as fine air. The convent, she explained, was really a villa, and the Sisters the kindest and best of instructors. Mariuccia was too overjoyed to speak, until she remembered that for such a school a certain outfit would be necessary; but Signora Dati informed her that the Excellency, out of her great kindness of heart, had provided for this, and that Mariuccia must repay her in prayers for her intentions, and Giannella, the chief beneficiary, by the same, coupled with model conduct and great application to her studies. They were to come to the Princess's apartment at ten o'clock punctually.

So the next morning Mariuccia, leading Giannella by the hand, was met by Signora Dati and conducted through a long series of somberly gorgeous rooms, such as she had never entered in her life, and finally ushered into the presence of her illustrious patroness. The Princess was still a comparatively young woman, tall and graceful, with a calm, thoughtful face, on which her responsibilities had impressed something like austerity. The weight of her guardianship to Onorato, heir to the great Santafede estates, had come upon her so early as to tinge her incompletely developed character with melancholy, loyally combated by religious principle, it is true, yet potent enough to make her a somewhat exigent and depressing parent for her light-hearted son. Naturally inclined to piety, she had come to feel that only by multiplying good works, by denying herself many little pleasures and luxuries in order to respond to every genuine appeal, could she obtain from Heaven the treasure she coveted, sanctification for her son's soul, happiness and prosperity for his material life. She was even now trying to light on the right wife for him, having already reached the point of overstrained conscientiousness which unconsciously treats Providence as the weaker party to an alliance, a party who will not move a step without powerful co-operation. All this was a little morbid, and might in the end endanger both her own happiness and that of Onorato, but meanwhile was an active agent for good in the affairs of obscure and oppressed people, notably, at this moment, those of Giannella Brockmann and her one friend, Mariuccia Botti.

Giannella was big-eyed with awe when she was led to where the Princess was sitting at a writing-table covered with account-books and works of devotion. On entering the dim and splendid rooms the child had felt inclined to make the sign of the cross and go down on her knees; the space and silence and crimson hangings seemed necessarily to belong to a church. The Princess looked at her without speaking for a moment. Giannella was so pretty, so wholesome and sweet in appearance, that Teresa Santafede experienced a passing regret that she had been denied a little daughter to brighten her lonely life. But this weakly human sentiment was at once suppressed, and when Giannella had kissed her hand the Princess made her a stereotyped speech on the moral advantages she was about to enjoy and the obligation to make the most of them by obedience and zeal. Giannella did not understand more than half of it, but she felt that something very important was happening, and when the Excellency gave her a rosary of white beads, with a very bright silver medal, her eyes danced with pleasure. This wonderful lady seemed as kind as the Madonna and as rich as the Befana, the beneficent witch who walks over the roofs at Epiphany and brings presents to good children.

Then Mariuccia was allowed to express her thanks, which she did very eloquently, and without any shyness at all, feeling more at home in the presence of a Cestaldini, one of the rulers of her clan, than she had ever felt since she left the fortress of all her traditions in the hills. The Princess asked one or two questions which showed that she remembered the family; the hand-kissing was repeated; Signora Dati received some murmured instructions, and the audience was over. Five minutes later Mariuccia stood under the porte cochère and watched Giannella being put into the closed carriage by Signora Dati. There was a glimpse of the round little face and the golden hair behind the glass, the carriage rumbled out, and Mariuccia turned to climb the four flights of stairs to the Professor's apartment. There she applied herself rather vindictively to her work, wondering why the granting of her dearest wish should result in making her feel so cross and lonely.

It was not until three weeks later that Signor Bianchi discovered Giannella's absence. He could not find a certain copy of The Archæological Review and called Mariuccia to look for it, remarking with asperity, "That is what comes of having a child running about the house. You will have to send the little nuisance away if this happens again. Of course she has taken it."

"Signor Professore," said Mariuccia, facing him with square shoulders and a terrific frown, "it is you who are a child. But no, an infant in arms has eyes and ears—you, man of a thousand learnings, are becoming blind and deaf. Giannella left the house three weeks ago. The 'lustrissima Principessa has sent her to a fine school—and may every benediction be hers for her charity. You say the coffee is like water. Mamma mia, I had to put the last of my own into it to give it a color at all. Yours was finished yesterday, and you would not give me the money to buy any more. Now then, here is your purse—in the pocket of your paletot—I must have two pauls at once, or you will get no supper to-night. Come, padroncino, be good. You frighten me—you consume before my eyes. There, I bring you cheese and dried figs. They have cost you nothing—my brother sent them—eat, and I will find your blessed paper for you."

Giannella was gone; the brief enchanting reign of her sunny little presence in the dingy apartment was over; and Mariuccia's other child, the owlish old young man who did not know how to take care of himself, was once more received into grace. She had to mother something.

CHAPTER VI

In the sun-flooded gardens and airy rooms of the convent across the river nine radiant years of Giannella's childhood and girlhood slipped happily away. The round of lessons and play, the cycle of workdays and feastdays brought constant interest and variety, and the companionship of children of her own age, passing from class to class with her in the emulation which involved no rivalry or contention, satisfied all the wants of her heart. The nuns were as kind as Mamma Candida, though they inspired a profound respect and an unquestioning awe for their ever-just rulings. There were pets to care for, flowers to tend, beautiful little shrines to decorate them with if one had been very good. All this was consciously enjoyed; less understood, but of lasting importance was the religious training which gathered the little comrades into companies first under the white badge of the Guardian Angels—this for the youngest of all; then, at the time of First Communion, under the green one of St. Joseph; and finally, when the hour was approaching for grown girls to return to their homes in the world and take up the whole duty of women, hung round their necks the coveted blue ribbon and silver medal which marked their worthiness to be enrolled among the "Enfants de Marie." These influences gave a deep stability to Giannella's healthy normal character, and laid in her heart the foundations of peace and right-thinking for which she was to be deeply thankful later on.

Once or twice in the year Mariuccia was allowed to come early in the morning and take Giannella home for a day, bringing her back before Ave Marie; and whenever it was possible she made time to go to the convent, bearing some humble offering of fruits and cakes from the castello for the "Suore," and satisfy herself that the child was well and happy. The Princess came at stated periods, notably at the great Feasts, when prizes were distributed and wonderful little plays representing religious allegories were got up and acted—with what throbbing excitement—by the best and whitest lambs in the flock, those who had had no bad marks since the last great event of the kind. Since virtue, and not dramatic talent, was the test of proficiency, the good nuns had to work hard over these entertainments, but the result was always satisfactory to them and their troupe, and was believed to afford the highest artistic pleasure to the noble patronesses, of whom Princess Santafede was the most distinguished.

The Sisters kept open school for all the poorer children of the quarter, but this part of their establishment was divided from that devoted to the boarders by a twenty-foot wall, and no taint of the streets was ever wafted across that impassable barrier. Within the charmed circle, the girls, all of the better middle class, were as jealously guarded, as well taught, and fed, and housed, as Teresa Santafede herself had been in the aristocratic seclusion of her own convent school, where only the daughters of nobles were received. The one difference was that at Santa Eulalia less time was given to books and more to fine needlework and embroidery, the only accomplishments by which in those prehistoric days a refined woman in moderate circumstances could earn a living. There were no lay schools for girls, so there were no openings for teachers except as unpaid assistants to the nuns, who employed some half dozen of their old pupils, homeless orphans like Giannella, to help with the younger children. The Superior confided to the Princess that she would gladly keep Giannella in that capacity, her exquisite needlework and talent for design making her a valuable help in the embroidery department. But the Princess replied that the girl had received special training in these subjects because there was a person—the woman who occasionally came to see her—who had made great sacrifices on her behalf and for whom she could now, at sixteen, do something in return. She could earn money at home; there seemed to be no difficulty about her residing with Mariuccia Botti under Signor Bianchi's roof—and work could always be obtained for her there.

It was with great regret that Giannella left this, her second home, to return to the Professor's apartment in the Palazzo Santafede. Yet she was glad that the moment had come when she could begin to repay the untiring goodness which had saved her from the hard and lonely fate of the forsaken child and procured for her the education which in time would enable her to earn her living in retirement and peace. No anxieties for the future whispered trouble to her heart. Mariuccia would be ever at her side; and in the background was the beneficent Princess, always accessible through kind Signora Dati, promising that materials and sales should not fail for the beautiful work which the girl really loved. So, after tearful partings with teachers and companions, Giannella was fetched home, her little box full of naïf farewell presents of pictures of Saints, tiny pincushions, muslin bags stuffed with "gagia" blossoms and verbena leaves which would keep their sweet scent for twenty years to come—artificial flowers and embroidered handkerchiefs—all her inestimably precious, and quite valueless, earthly possessions.

Mariuccia told her to bestow these in a small empty room beyond the kitchen, where she could set up her embroidery frame close to the big window which looked more to the sky than to the street, and where she could keep her delicate work free from all danger of dust or accident. As for sleeping alone, that was out of the question. Giannella had never tried it in her life and was sure she should never close an eye, accustomed as she was to the big dormitory with its rows of white beds and the curtained sanctuary in the corner, where the guardian nun was supposed to lie awake saying her prayers all night, listening for the first sound of whispering or larking, to issue forth with dire retribution for the offenders. Mariuccia had made full preparation for her Giannella in her own room, a windowless apartment on the dark side of the passage. In it had stood for years a spindle-legged green bed of impaired constitution, replaced, with much grumbling from the padrone, by a stronger one when Mariuccia's wooden weight had three separate times broken through it with a thump on the bricks in the dead of night, causing the Professor to start from his slumbers in such a fright that his nurse and guardian had to administer a sedative and keep him on soup for two days to restore his nerves. The green wreck was to have been sold at once, but just then a thrilling discovery of new antiquities in the Foro Romano came to carry Signor Bianchi's mind beyond the confines of personal subjects, and he had been guilty of the frantic extravagance of forgetting to sell the bed. Mariuccia pushed it into a corner behind the door, and had coaxed the carpenter retainer, who had his workshop in a far recess of the colonnade, and who was forever engaged in repairing some of the hundreds of doors and windows in the vast building, to set the wreck safely on its legs again. One of her own two mattresses was stuffed with fresh cornhusks smelling of the country and brought by the carrettiere ally, and behold a nice white couch, quite fit for a "signorina" like Mariuccia's Giannella.

This time no permission was asked of Carlo Bianchi for her reception; the chains of servitude had changed places in the many years of Mariuccia's abode under his roof and were now firmly riveted on the unconscious man, who grumbled freely when things annoyed him, but was too much afraid of losing his economical housekeeper ever to really quarrel with that grim but faithful domestic tyrant.

So he only nodded in acquiescence when she told him that Giannella had come home—to stay. Giannella herself appeared a moment later, intent upon making her courtesy, inquiring after his respectable health, and thanking him for the permission to remain in his house. The fine gradations of social conditions had been carefully taught her by the nuns. Since she had neither father nor uncles, there was no occasion for her ever to kiss the hand of any gentleman, unless he were an ecclesiastic. Otherwise this honor was to be paid only to women, her superiors either in rank, like the Princess and the other patronesses of the convent, or in age and virtue, like her teachers, Signora Dati, and above all the good Sora Mariuccia, who had done so much for her. How much, the Sisters did not quite know, but Giannella did. Signora Dati had considered it right to make her understand the obligations under which she lay to the unlettered, silent peasant woman who would never refer to them herself; and Giannella, though still remembering "Mamma Candida" with warmer affection, meant to love and cherish "Zia Mariuccia" (as she had learned to call her when among the latter's real nephews and nieces) all her life. But Mariuccia recoiled in horror when Giannella attempted to kiss her hand. A young lady—the daughter of her poor master of good memory? Dove mia? No indeed. Nor was she to call her "Aunt" any longer, now that she was grown up. People must never be led to believe that any relationship existed between the "signorina" and her humble self. She was already busy with Giannella's future and had decided that some splendidly disinterested young man, of much "educazione" and large fortune—fifty thousand scudi at least—was to ask her in marriage at the proper time, which apparently came later for persons of her class than for the country folk, who reckoned sixteen the correct age for taking a husband and twenty the end of all chances in that direction.

It was with real pride that she watched Giannella's dignified little greeting to the Professor and marked the expression of bewilderment which came over his features as he turned and saw the new inmate of his family standing in the doorway of the study. He failed for the moment to connect the apparition with the child who had so incensed him by knocking down chairs nine years before. That criminal had been effaced from his memory for a long time, but was slowly recalled as he gazed at the graceful girl whose deep gray eyes were full of intelligent recollection of him. She had grown tall and straight, her features were delicately aquiline, giving an impression of maturity in spite of the dimple at the corner of her grave, fresh mouth; her faintly rosy skin was translucent with health and vitality, and her hair was still of the pure baby gold which had so delighted the hearts of Mariuccia and Candida in the old days. Now it framed in her pretty face in broad, shining braids hanging low before the ears, after the fashion of the day, and gathered into coils at the back. The convent uniform had been laid aside and Giannella was feeling strangely grand in the dark blue dress (touching the ground at last) which she had made for herself, under the direction of the nuns, for her first entrance into the great world. Many earnest warnings against that world's distractions and dissipations had accompanied the making of the dangerously secular garment, in reality so rigid in its simplicity that but for the finely embroidered collar and undersleeves it might have passed for a modification of a religious habit. The kind nuns had sighed in secret over Giannella's hair, the crown of glory which must attract attention in church and street. "Poverina, she is too pretty. That hair is only fit for a Saint in a picture," they would tell each other, "and the world is not the place for it. But there, Our Lady will protect her, and she has good, pious friends, thank Heaven."

The Professor, who was a gentleman, for all his abstracted ways, rose from his chair and bowed to the charming vision, saying something which was meant to be extremely polite. The vision courtesied again and disappeared; Mariuccia followed, closing the door behind her with a joyful snap; and Carlo Bianchi went back to his book, but for at least five minutes did not understand a word of the treatise on African marbles which had so enthralled him earlier. Who was this girl? Where had she come from? What on earth was she doing in his house, in his kitchen, as the companion of that tough old war-horse, Mariuccia from the Castel? He tried to piece together the few facts which Mariuccia had told him about her in the dim past. None of them quite accounted for her as he had beheld her just now, and at last he gave the question up, deciding that "Giannella" (that seemed to be her only name) was a problem which he would waste valuable time in trying to solve.

And the Professor, who knew less about her than anyone else, had catalogued Giannella rightly. She was a problem. What future lay before her when she should have read through the odd dozen of gaudily bound prize books that she had brought back from the convent, when she should have exhausted the delights of embroidering Church vestments and bridal trousseaux, the persons most interested in her welfare, with the one exception of Mariuccia, who, loving much, believed all things, would have found it hard to say. After all, that was scarcely their affair. If her fresh youth was destined to burn itself out over the embroidery frame in the bare little room beyond the kitchen, and her bright eyes to grow dim over invisible stitches in gossamer cambric—well, that was destiny's business. They had done what they could.

Giannella herself was not concerned with her future, but she soon came to realize that the present was anything but cheering. The silent house, the confined life, the absence of young companionship, all struck as coldly at her heart now as it had nine years before when she had flung herself into Mariuccia's arms and entreated to be taken back to Mamma Candida and the pigs and the donkey. After the breezy, healthy existence at the convent, lighted by a thousand interests and shared by numberless bosom friends with whom she had grown up, it was torturing to sit for hours over the work which had been made so pleasant by talk and variety over there at Santa Eulalia, to have only Mariuccia, ever kind but so unresponsive, as a companion; to see the sunshine through her window and watch the cloudlets chasing across the blue in the breeze, and know that she was a prisoner except for a short walk with Mariuccia in the morning, first to Mass at San Severino and then to the near shops where they did their marketing. Even when work was to be returned to Signora Dati and materials for more brought back, Mariuccia must accompany her, for no girl of her age could cross the threshold of her home alone, much less run the gauntlet of the grooms hanging round the stables and the posse of footmen in the Princess's antechamber. How different from the liberty she had enjoyed in the sunswept gardens of the school beyond the river. But the teachings received there, and a certain strain of courage and hardihood derived from her northern ancestry, helped her to shake off her growing depression and show a cheerful face to life, whatever privations it might choose to bring.

The periodical visits to Signora Dati in the great apartment on the other side of the courtyard became a distinct interest and pleasure. They gave her a glimpse into a large, majestic mode of life which had its own romance; and though "romance" was a word Giannella had scarcely heard, its glamor warmed and lighted her imagination and brought her much wordless consolation; for romance is the very sap of the tree of youth and finds its own sustenance without external help or guidance. Since Don Onorato had really grown up a certain element of color and change had crept into the over-ascetic atmosphere of his mother's surroundings. Her brother, the Cardinal, had done much to effect this, both openly, by representing that the lad should find brightness and sympathy with his young tastes in his home, and also more subtly, by bringing fresh books, travels, essays, even good novels, always with the plea that they might amuse Onorato and keep him from wasting his time on inferior literature. As the Princess still felt it her duty to read anything she recommended to her son, the Cardinal's contributions helped her to pass many pleasant hours and also to enlarge her views in many directions. When, according to her custom, she visited Onorato's rooms to see that all was right there, she would carry off any suspicious-looking volume and leave something better in its place, and though Onorato was a grown man by this time, his awe of her prevented his ever protesting against these exchanges. As time went on he learned to put away the attractively scandalous French novels which were occasionally smuggled into the city in spite of the tyrannical censorship which examined every atom of print that was put into the post or set in circulation, ruthlessly burned all immoral works or indecent pictures, and aroused the anger of freeborn foreigners by cutting out of the newspapers all scandalous or revolutionary items. Sad days of bigotry and darkness, when evil was stamped out as thoroughly as organization and power would permit—when any woman, from a foreign peeress to a dancer at the opera, was sent across the frontier the moment her behavior overstepped the bounds of propriety. If well-brought-up young men went wrong, they had at least to take some trouble to accomplish it.

CHAPTER VII

It was ten o'clock in the morning and Giannella was waiting alone in the second anteroom for the advent of Signora Dati. Mariuccia, after also waiting a little, had left her, saying she would return in half-an-hour to fetch her; meanwhile there was work to do at home, and she was loth to waste any more time. At the end of a few months of her new life, waiting had become a familiar trial to Giannella. She often had to sit for a couple of hours in Signora Dati's room while the Princess's lieutenant interviewed the numberless clients and employees of the family, attended to the commands of the Excellency, inspected the mountains of linen in the "guarda roba," and kept an eye on the maids, all of whom were under her supervision and kept entirely apart, in employment, housing, and feeding, from the men-servants, for whom Ferretti, the maestro di casa, was alone responsible. When Signora Dati knew that some time must elapse before she could speak to Giannella, the latter was brought at once to her room, there to occupy herself as best she might until her turn came. When the moment at last arrived the pale little lady would glide in, sink into a chair with a half-suppressed sigh of intense fatigue, and then throw herself gallantly into the matter in hand with as much energy as if it had been the first task of her day. Each question that came up was gone into thoroughly—whether the passion-flowers on the violet chasuble should be picked out with crystal or amethyst beads; whether the web of beauty which was to be the wedding handkerchief of Donna Laura Bracciano, the Princess's niece, should have square or rounded corners; whether the coarse but ample layettes piled up in the left-hand cupboard, for the Foundling Hospital had better be counted over once again to make sure that each was complete? In all these handiworks Giannella was employed as best suited the needs of the moment, and nothing connected with them seemed too infinitesimal for Signora Dati's profound consideration. Giannella, who took her instructions day after day, conceived a deep admiration for the character of the dignified but self-effacing subordinate, who was often white to the lips with weariness but who never neglected one of the thousand minutiæ of her overlapping responsibilities.

On this particular morning a treat was in store for Giannella. After Mariuccia's departure word had come that Signora Dati was obliged to go out and would take the "ricamatrice" (embroideress) with her. She would join her in the sala in a few minutes. After receiving the message Giannella sat tingling with pleasant excitement at the prospect before her and ready to jump up the moment Signora Dati should appear. The door opened suddenly and she ran forward with a smile of greeting, ran almost into the arms of a young man who seemed to be choking with laughter—Onorato, fresh from a long maternal lecture on the sin and folly of owning too many expensive horses. He stopped half way and just saved Giannella, crimson and rooted to the spot with embarrassment, from impact with his singularly radiant waistcoat. She knew at once who he was; only the son of the house would venture to race through it in that fashion. But he, surprised for once out of his manners, stared at her, took in the charming face with its arrested smile, appraised the Etruscan gold of the hair under its light lace covering, found time to wonder who the girl was and why she had seemed so pleased and then so distressed at seeing him; then, with a word of apology, he passed out of the room, much more sedately than he had entered it. Giannella, conscious of having made an unpardonable mistake in thus thrusting herself into his path, sank back into her seat, pale and trembling. What would Signora Dati say?

Signora Dati, coming upon the scene a moment later, and receiving Giannella's almost tearful apology for her stupidity, smiled away her anxieties at once. The Prince would not be offended—oh dear no. He was most amiable and simple; it might have happened to anybody; it was his fault, not Giannella's. He always rushed about the house in a hurry, knocking things down sometimes as he dashed through the rooms. He was still such a boy! Signora Dati smiled with the incorrigible indulgence of middle-aged spinsterhood for impetuous young masculinity. Yes, Giannella might set her mind at rest, the Prince would certainly have forgotten all about her before he was half way down the stairs. Had she brought the patterns with her? Here they were at Massoni's, and now for the white velvet for Donna Laura's wedding dress. Oh, Giannella would have to treat the material like melting sugar when she embroidered it. A breath, a speck of dust—and irretrievable ruin would follow. Yes, please Sora Luisa, her Excellency had selected the pattern, and now it must be seen in the piece, in a good light.

The magnificent material was reverently unrolled and spread out in snowy, sumptuous billows in the sunshine. Signora Dati examined it with the gravity of the expert, and Giannella stood by, trying to find the answer to the first disquieting question that had ever presented itself to her mind. What mysterious ruling caused one girl to be born Donna Laura Bracciano, clothed her in robes beautiful enough for an angel, bestowed upon her at seventeen the dignity of espousing a young man as fortunate as herself, amid the rejoicings and congratulations of hundreds of friends—and decided that Giannella Brockmann, without a relation of her own in the world, was to be a dependent on charity, working in a lonely room for ten hours a day to pay charity's account? There was no rebellion in her thoughts as she meditated on the problem, only wonder, and a strange new sense of bereavement—the unconscious hunger for something young and sweet to love and laugh with, the reaching out of the plant in the shade to its comrades tossing their heads in the sun.

The encounter with Don Onorato, the light-hearted heir to accumulated honors and wealth, the catching mirth that seemed bubbling over in his laugh, in his bright face, had shaken her peace in some way, had, as it were, blown aside the gray veil which closed in her own existence, and shown her in a flash all that lay outside of it—for others. And now the pictured vision of the radiant bride on whose finery she must work till her back ached and her eyes smarted, had driven home the sense of privation like a sword. The keenest pain of it all lay in the fact that the few denizens of her tiny world took her fate as a settled question, a matter of course, and considered that she ought to be enthusiastically grateful for it. Ah, she was grateful, yes indeed, she appreciated all that had been done for her by kind human beings; but if they, on whom she had no claim, were so good and generous, could not the Giver of all good things have been a little open-handed too? It all seemed strange and sad, and Divine love just a little less loving than she had been taught to believe.

During the next two or three weeks Giannella had several glimpses of Onorato Santafede. Once she and Mariuccia met him on the great staircase; twice he burst into Signora Dati's room when she was sitting there receiving instructions about the design of orange blossoms and roses to be embroidered in silver on the grand white velvet dress. Signora Dati smiled at the young gentleman, attended to his imperious commands about some silk handkerchiefs which he declared had been vilely mishandled by the laundrymaids, and seemed totally unconscious that the true object of his visit was to have another look at the young embroideress, who stood silently aside and never opened her lips during his laughing colloquy with the domestic oracle of the household. No nascent romance had caught him in its web; Onorato was as free from romance as most young Romans of his class, which, whatever its failings, has rarely loved out of its sphere and in which a mésalliance is practically a thing unknown. But he frankly admired beauty, and enjoyed looking at Giannella as he would have enjoyed contemplating a charming and rather strange picture. He had discovered that she was the official embroideress for the family, that she was often in the house, and he saw no reason for not taking advantage of the facts to pass a pleasant moment or two in her presence. The instant he entered the room, Giannella seemed relegated to Limbo by its mistress. She simply did not exist until Onorato had departed. And he was in the habit of lingering there sometimes, for it was the room to which he had been accustomed to come all his life, first with childish joys and sorrows, afterwards with his little fastidiousnesses about wardrobe and service; and often, since he was a kind-hearted young autocrat, to cheer up "that victim of piety and recluse of duty," as he called Signora Dati, with some bit of fun and mischief.

But the perspicacious little lady, while smiling at his extravagances, noted that his eyes rested long on the golden head and half-averted face near the window, and she decided that under no circumstances must he find Giannella there again. Who could tell what evil snare the devil (whose frantic machinations Signora Dati saw in every departure from the established order of things) might not weave around two young people who saw each other continually, even if no word passed between them? She would say nothing to the Princess, but in future Giannella should only come when she was sent for, and that would be when Onorato was safely out of the house. He probably did not know that she lived just across the courtyard, for he was never up in time to see her go out with Mariuccia. All would be well, and the Excellency, who had so much on her noble mind, need never even hear of her faithful acolyte's passing anxiety.

And all would have been well had not Onorato, who took a profane delight in exploiting his solemn mother's complete lack of humor, come in that evening to take his place at table with a long face and some heavy sighs. To the Princess's anxious questions he replied that he was not ill, but that a strange melancholy had come over him. He believed—mamma must keep his secret—he really believed he had fallen in love! There!

Mamma gave a cry like a soul in pain, and then braced herself for the worst. Onorato had been singularly stubborn in the matter of taking a wife and to all his mother's entreaties had replied that life was very pleasant now, that no one could say what marriage would make of it, and finally that when mamma found a woman as charming as herself to propose to him he would think about it—not till then. Thus placated, the Princess would hold her peace for a while, but Heaven was daily stormed with prayers for the ideal daughter-in-law. Consternation and hope divided her feelings at this sudden announcement. Unaided, unguided—was it yet possible that her son's choice had fallen on some really desirable maiden? With clasped hands she entreated him to speak, she could bear the suspense no longer.

Then the young rascal, with much sham hesitation and contrition, confessed that his heart was gone from him forever—into the keeping of the exquisitely beautiful creature who embroidered the family arms on the sheets and towels! The Princess sank back in her chair, white with the shock. This was the most dreadful thing that could have happened. "My son," she gasped, "do you know what you are saying? But this is perfectly horrible. I cannot believe it."

"I never meant you to, you dear, solemn, innocent mamma," he cried, laughing as he jumped up and came to throw his arms round her neck and kiss her—he was very much of a child for all his twenty-eight years—"I was only joking. Don't you understand? When I fall in love—oh then there really will be trouble, for I intend to devote my whole attention to the accomplishment. But now—no. There mamma mia cara, smile again. Your little embroideress is as pretty as an angel, but I am not going to make a fool of myself by losing my heart to her. Come, let us find her a husband. Wouldn't you like to marry her to Ferretti? They say he is looking out for a second wife."

The Princess rallied her courage with a heroic effort and pretended to believe him. Calling up a strained smile, she said, "These are not proper subjects for joking, my son. Marriage is a sacrament, matrimony a holy state into which I trust you will enter with fitting dispositions when the time comes. You are quite old enough, you know I was thinking—"

"For the love of Heaven," cried Onorato, terrified in his turn, "don't 'think,' I conjure you, don't think. You promised not to speak again on that subject for at least six months. As for fitting dispositions, I have not the first symptom of the disease at present and cannot imagine where I shall find them when the fatal moment arrives. If Churchmen could drive fast horses I assure you I could more easily catch the distemper called a vocation. Uncle Paolo was a wise man and he strikes me as a very happy one."

"Your uncle had two elder brothers when he decided to enter the Church," the Princess replied. "It pleased God to remove them before either of them was married—a great misfortune. Pray speak of these subjects with proper respect, Onorato."

"I will respect everything—so long as it leaves me alone," he said rather crossly. Really dear mamma made every word he spoke the occasion for a lecture. What would become of him if there were another woman in the house doing the same? He saluted her abruptly and went away to his own rooms.

It was a long time before he caught sight of Giannella again. By eight o'clock the next morning a note was brought to her from Signora Dati, stating that there was much going on in the house at present, and that the Excellency had intimated that it would be more convenient for her to have the work sent across to the Professor's apartment, where the writer would call in person on Tuesdays and Saturdays to inspect its progress. Giannella need not come to the piano nobile in future.

So the last door was shut on her prison, doubtless, as she told herself, through some misdemeanor of her own. Tears welled up in her eyes. Life meant to be cruel. For the first time a little line marked itself between her brows and the fresh curves of her mouth closed in a straight line. Then she dried her eyes angrily and sat down to the embroidery frame where the silver orange blossoms on Donna Laura's wedding dress were beginning to cover the material with regal splendor of bloom.

CHAPTER VIII

San Severino, as you pass under the portico of its front entrance, appears to be very much like other Roman churches, spacious, marble-floored, roofed with frescoed cupola and rounded arches; its wide nave is flanked with chapels, some unowned and bare; others, the vested property of great families, gorgeously or artistically decorated, marking to the experienced eye the precise date of each family's apogee of power—pure pre-Raphaelite, Renaissance, Barocco, First Empire sham classic, Gregory the Sixteenth tawdry stucco and color. Even the latest abomination, however, is chastened into harmony by the merciful siftings of years, by the ever-lessening light which struggles through the darkened yellow of windows set too high in dome and walls to be meddled with more than once or twice in a century. When the sun strikes them, long swathes of dusty gold shoot transversely down the unpeopled spaces of the church touching the mote-laden air to slow vibrations of light, calling back to a mockery of life some periwigged or pseudo-classic bust on a monument, or lingering on the lovely, flower-tinted lines of a Renaissance tomb. It is Rome in the church as elsewhere, Rome, superbly indifferent to the quality of the spoils Time chooses to fling in her lap, because she has but to let them lie there awhile in the supernal alembic of her glory-haunted air, to have them subdued, ripened, enriched, and finally incorporated into her own stricken yet transcendent beauty.

Out of the last chapel to the right of the High Altar of San Severino a low swing door gives access to a darker, dimmer sanctuary, formerly a choir, as the blackened stalls and lecterns testify, but now used only once a month for the meeting of the Sodality of the Bona Mors. An unlit altar rises against one wall, supporting a painting always curtained from the dampness save when the doors are closed to the public and the members congregate for their exercises. Only a few can tell what the picture represents—whether Saint Joseph breathes his last sigh in the arms of God Incarnate, or the Penitent Thief writhes on his cross beside the King of the Jews. "Morte certa, modo incerto," the veiled shrine seems to whisper, and something cold and deathly in the air brings the first axiom at least shudderingly home to those who pass through.

Beyond this chapel lies a small irregular chamber, its walls and pavement of marble so darkened with age that it is hard to decipher the inscriptions with which both are covered, brief Latin epitaphs recording the names of the dead who lie in the crypt below, good monks of an order which once prayed in the little chapel of the Bona Mors and has been superseded and absorbed in the course of centuries, even as its modest temple has been absorbed and dominated by the great church of San Severino.

A heavy leather curtain hangs over the outer door of the marble chamber of epitaphs, and is lifted for those who pass in and out by courteous mendicants of a more retiring disposition than those who guard the grand portico. A long, narrow courtyard, high walled but pleasantly open to the sky, and ornamented with a fountain made out of an acanthus capital, marks the final limits of the sacred premises, which run, from the Ripetta, parallel with the Santafede palace, through the entire block to the piazza of that name. The palace has its imposing front on the piazza, but the back door of San Severino leads into an obscure street opening out of the square. The street is narrow and crooked, shut in between the side walls of two or three ancient palaces, great houses of diminished splendors, whose owners do not disdain to let the ground floors of these purlieus as livery stables and small shops. Over one dark, malodorous doorway hangs a picture of a fearfully obese cow, sadly contemplating a yellow ochre field under a cracked blue sky, denoting that milk and butter are to be had within. From a cavernous den opposite, an avalanche of vegetables invades the sidewalk, crisp green lettuces, scarlet tomatoes, the magically fragrant fennel, pumpkins like globes of battered gold—the cornucopia of Ceres seems to be shaken out on the worn stones every morning. But Ceres has grown old; she sits, dark-browed, saturnine, wrinkled, on a low chair in the midst of her trophies, knitting stockings. Customers pause, select their purchases, hold up as many fingers as may represent the coppers they suppose them to be worth, and look inquiringly at Ceres. She bends a frowning glance on the questioner; if the guess be right, she nods her head; if mistaken, she corrects it by the same finger language; and the coppers drop into the basket where her ball of yarn dances at her feet. Few venture to bargain with Sora Rosa; she considers it waste of time. People pay and carry away the stuff; or they will not pay, and then somebody else will, for there is no other vegetable stall within ten minutes' walk, and who is going to risk an apoplexy from over-exercise?

In the early morning, great ladies, quietly dressed, glide past Sora Rosa, avoid the horses which are being confidentially curried in the street, and disappear through the low doorway into the court of San Severino on their way to Mass. During the rest of the day the genial squalor of the Via Tresette is not disturbed by any jarring reminder of the prosperity and cleanliness of neighboring quarters. Near the ground at any rate all is dark, promiscuous, and prehistoric so far as modern ways are concerned. But the monastery building of San Severino rises up and up, a long, irregular pile, reaching the higher air and the sunshine at last, and breaking out into little terraces and balconies, flowery and bird-haunted, where the Fathers whom Fra Tommaso served with such zeal took their rest after the labors of the day. Fra Tommaso's own little loggia, the hanging garden which Giannella had begged to be taken to see so many years ago, was one of these, the least accessible from the larger apartments, but possessing for its owner the immense advantage of looking directly down into the Via Santafede and commanding a view of a section of the piazza at one end and of the Ripetta at the other; also of some fifty windows of the palace itself. The incorrigible amateur of the human drama, as he climbed from his forum, the church, to his villa, the loggia, always thanked Heaven for having cast his lines in pleasant places, and pitied his immediate opposite neighbors, Mariuccia and Giannella, for being exposed to the distracting temptations and vanities of the world and at the same time deprived of the delights of flower tending and pigeon feeding which he enjoyed on his terrace.

The vanities of the world had only approached Giannella by proxy for a long time past. Since Onorato's chance admiration and his untimely bit of farce had closed the doors of the piano nobile to her, life had become so narrow, so uniform, that she hardly recognized it for life at all. Three colorless years had slipped by; good Signori Dati was dead; the Princess, busy as ever, but in failing health, seemed to have forgotten her former protegé's very existence. The brief churchgoing and shopping with Mariuccia, the needlework by which she still earned small sums from ladies who remembered her address, the assistance rendered in housework and in waiting on the Professor, who, after his first surprise at her presence, never seemed to know whether she or Mariuccia brought him his meals—these made the round of Giannella's days; and since she had, in obedience to the advice of her spiritual director, put rebellion down and accepted her fate by sheer effort of will, she lacked even the stimulus of conflict with her unnatural destiny. She had not lost either her health or her beauty in the strait abode of frowning circumstance, but her buoyancy seemed gone; her eyes were deep rather than bright, and no gallant resolve to smile on life could keep the corners of her pretty mouth from drooping pathetically out of the happy upward curves of her childhood. That period was so long past that it seemed to belong to life on another planet, one much nearer the sun than this earth; but when, as in piety bound, she made one meditation a month on the joys of paradise, the angels, and the heavenly gardens and the celestial music, slid into the familiar semblance of her friends and play-fellows at Castel Gandolfo, the vineyards and the chestnut woods, the barking of the old dog—the braying of the donkey—Madonna Santissima, what abominable sacrilege were her thoughts committing? Dogs and donkeys in heaven? Those red-cheeked, dusty-legged contadini children as angels of the Lord? Oh, what a wicked girl Giannella Brockmann must be—and what would Padre Anselmo say when she told him?

She had fallen into this grievous sin for the twentieth time one winter afternoon. The light was failing, and as she rose from her seat to put her work away, the door bell, grown terribly decrepit in its advanced age, jangled with an imperious querulousness which announced a stranger. The Professor always handled it with tender care for fear of expense in repairs. Mariuccia, who seemed to have grown suddenly old, came out from the back room groaning with headache, for which she had applied her favorite remedy of tufts of "madrecara" stuffed up her nostrils. The sight of her thus adorned was one of the few things which still made Giannella shake with laughter; the dear old face resembled a boar's head in a butcher's window at Christmas time.

"Go back to bed, Mariuccia," said the girl, "I will see who it is. The padrone is in his study. I had better ask him if he wishes to see any visitors."

She went quickly down the passage, pausing to put her head in at the study door. The Professor had grown older too, and bent more closely over his book than of yore. Not risking speech, Giannella looked a question as he raised his head; he nodded assent, and then the bell began its crazy dance again. Giannella hastily opened the front door and found herself face to face with a short, rather stout man, whose features she could not discern in the gloom, but who asked in an imperious tone whether the distintissimo Professor were at home. At the same time he handed her a card, from which she decided that this must be his first visit to the house.

"Favorisca," she murmured, and the stout gentleman followed her to Bianchi's room. She saw the Professor rise and come forward with a puzzled air, and heard the visitor begin an apology for his intrusion. Then she closed the door on them and went back to the kitchen, not sufficiently interested even to glance at the card, which she dropped on the little table beside the umbrella-stand in the passage.

"Is he never going, then, this cataplasm of a visitor?" exclaimed Mariuccia an hour later. "The padrone's supper is ready and spoiling. Take in the lamp, Giannella. They must be in the dark in there."

When Giannella entered the study, lamp in hand, she found that Bianchi had lighted a candle and was examining some papers, which he laid down quickly on seeing her. His sallow cheeks were flushed, and as he glanced up it struck the girl that his eyes looked unusually bright.

Opposite to him, leaning back in an arm-chair, sat the visitor, whom the light revealed as a youngish man with narrow black eyes and a round countenance, evidently intended for smiles, but disciplined just now into a kind of judicial severity which could not altogether suppress the under element of amusement with which he was regarding his host.

He too glanced quickly up at the girl who stood in the doorway, the lamp she carried illuminating her fair hair and grave young face. After a moment's hesitation she advanced and set the lamp on the table between the two men. Bianchi dropped his hands over the papers and looked across to his guest.

"This is Giannella Brockmann, Signor' Avvocato," he said; "you perceive that she is alive and in good health."

The stranger rose to his feet and seemed about to speak, but the Professor raised a warning hand, and, turning to Giannella, dismissed her with a nod of the head. As she closed the door she heard him say hurriedly, "Later, later. Not at present—it is a nervous temperament."

Her curiosity was aroused from its years of sleep, awakened as by the twang of a bowstring letting an invisible arrow fly past her. Was Bianchi referring to her? What was the communication which the other had wished to make and which he had arrested so peremptorily? She had scarcely had time to formulate the queries in her mind when she heard murmurs of farewells, the sound of the front door closing, and the Professor's footsteps returning to his study, where he locked himself in. It was all very unusual.

She did not see the padrone again that evening, for Mariuccia, still wearing her satyr-like adornment, took the tray from her hands and carried in his supper. The next day, however, Giannella was surprised by his pausing, as he met her in the passage, to return her dutiful "good-morning," a mark of interest which he had never shown before. A little later he actually called her by name and showed her a row of books on a lower shelf, which, he said, required dusting. Mariuccia seemed unwell, and she had much to do; would Giannella undertake to dust the books regularly? He would be much obliged.

When she informed Mariuccia of this order the old woman laughed sardonically. "It has taken him a great many years to find out that I have much to do," she sneered, "and I have waited on him when I was so shaking with fever that the plates rattled in my hands—and he never noticed that I was ill. Cipicchia! That visitor must have been an angel in disguise, to have thus opened the padrone's heart to poor you and me, Giannella. Let us hope that he will soon come again."

He did come again, two or three times in the course of the next fortnight, and with each visit the Professor's kind notice of Giannella increased, until she began to have an uncomfortable feeling in his hitherto impersonal presence. As she came and went, his eyes followed her with a growing lambency behind the big spectacles. She was called into his room on frivolous pretexts, and one day he asked her if she could kindly cook his supper. Mariuccia had brought in some polpetti, and he had remarked that Giannella cooked polpetti divinely.

Mariuccia's sharp eyes had marked the padrone's new attitude and she was much disquieted. Was it possible that at fifty-seven he was committing the folly of falling in love? And that, suddenly and unreasonably, with the girl who had waited on him for years past without winning so much as a word or a glance of recognition from him? If so, it was nothing but bewitchment, dark bewitchment. The lawyer who came to see him now must be quite the opposite of an angel, since the spell dated from his first visit. The spell had evidently been cast by him.

Well, she would counteract it if she could. Giannella should not go near that fatal sitting-room and its occupant if she could help it. Giannella seconded the precautionary measures with all her might. She was thankful to be spared the attentions which were becoming too obvious to be ignored. Resolutely she stayed at the other end of the house, but Bianchi took to wandering over there after her. She pondered on the possibility of paying for a place in the vettura and taking refuge with the old friends at Castel Gandolfo; but money was painfully scarce; she and Mariuccia now depended entirely on the latter's wages and on the fifteen baiocchi a day which her generous master had so unwillingly granted when she first came to live with him twenty years before. No, a journey was out of the question; the prison doors could not be pushed ajar.

The door was opening even now, but Giannella had no premonition of it. Having attained the sober age of twenty without possessing a single young acquaintance in Rome (for none of her former schoolfellows lived in that remote quarter), she was allowed by Mariuccia, when the old joints felt stiff, to go out alone sometimes for Mass and marketing. Mariuccia's dreams of a bright future for her foster-child were fading sadly away at last; Giannella would be considered an old maid in another year or two, and the good young man with fifty thousand scudi had never come. Instead, by an ugly "scherzo" of fate, Carlo Bianchi, the shrunken recluse who had never looked at anything more closely resembling a woman than some statue thousands of years old, dead and cold as the creature deserved to be for having been perpetuated in such indecent nudity, Carlo Bianchi was waking up to the fact that a beautiful young woman was a member of his household; and, unless Mariuccia's own shrewdness was at fault, he would soon propose to install her as its mistress.

With all his failings, his domestic tyrant could not credit him with baser intentions, but this was bad enough. If he should succeed—Mariuccia groaned aloud at the possibility—the rest of Giannella's life would be "in Galera," that of a slave at the galleys. Let the poor child get out into the air and sunshine, exchange a word with Fra Tommaso, with stout, smiling Sora Amalia, who lived under the sign of the cow, even with cross old Sora Rosa, who had so far unbent to "la Biondina" as to make her a present of figs or cherries once or twice. It was hard, after all the struggles to keep Giannella a lady, that she should be reduced to friends like these, that not a person of her own class should ever remember or notice her. But there, it was destiny! "Run along, Giannella, and see if ricotta is cheap to-day. The padrone would like some for his breakfast."

So Giannella came and went a little more freely, and she did not attract the attention which the good nuns had dreaded for that dangerous golden hair when they let their dove fly from the convent ark four years before. Everyone in the vicinity knew her by sight, and it was a vicinity whose staid inhabitants rarely changed. The world, the flesh, and the devil, might go roaring up and down the Corso a few blocks away, but within sound of the bells of San Severino all was calm, ancient, safe. Mariuccia's Biondina, as she was called, could come and go, in her dark dress, with the bit of black lace veiling her modest head, and no curious or disrespectful glance would follow her. She could escape from the house and venture on a little walk by the river, past the palace where kind Cardinal Cestaldini was basking in a rarefied atmosphere of contemplation, good works, and learning, could pass the time of day with Fra Tommaso and the incurables, and linger among the monuments and frescoes of the church or try to decipher the inscriptions in the funereal gallery beyond the chapel of the Bona Mors, all without embarrassment or molestation. And as was natural, the small, new liberty was sweet and reviving to her repressed youth. She saw no tragedy in it, as did Mariuccia, to whom the acknowledgment of Giannella's passing youth and apparently irrevocable spinsterhood was a bitter trial. She was not sure now that in choosing the single state for herself she had not made a big mistake; but then she had chosen it for herself, and that was quite a different thing.

The winter had softened into spring and the spring warmed to summer, when Mariuccia's enemy, the mysterious avvocato, made his last visit to the Professor. He carried an imposing sheaf of papers in his hand and was accompanied by an older man who looked like a notary, for he wore even bigger spectacles than the padrone's and his right forefinger was dyed dark with ink. A few minutes after the two had been admitted, Giannella was summoned to the study. Some very direct questions were put to her by the lawyer, as to her name, age, and recollections of childhood, questions which surprised her greatly, for she could not imagine why these details should interest strangers. Then a paper was laid before her which she was requested to sign. She drew back, a chill fear coming over her that it might be a marriage contract—that she was being entrapped into a union with Bianchi, who stood beside her, breathing hard with suppressed excitement and considerately holding a sand castor over the page, ready to dry the writing at once. As she hesitated, he touched her arm with his free hand, and the touch spelled compelling will. She was conscious that the other two men were staring at her in bewilderment, and she obeyed—as she had obeyed authority, in one form or another, all her life, and signed her name.

Bianchi instantly took possession of the sheet and handed it to the lawyer, who wrote on it in his turn. Then, as Bianchi signified to Giannella that she might retire, the lawyer came round to her side of the table, shook hands with her, congratulated her on her good fortune, and, with quite a friendly ring in his voice, begged her to consider his services at her disposal in the future. She thanked him, inwardly wondering at his optimism. The only good fortune apparent in her circumstances was the one of having found a shelter and a home—to which she had less future claim than the swallows to their nests in the palace eaves.

Emerging from the study she found Mariuccia hovering near the door, wild with curiosity and suspicion. Giannella described what had taken place, and as soon as the visitors had departed Mariuccia stormed into the study and assailed the Professor with angry questions as to what the child had been made to sign. What was this indecent secrecy? What had anyone to say to Giannella that she, who had brought her up, might not hear? Was that abominable paper a marriage contract? She would tear it up and light the fire with it. Did he figure to himself that Giannella was to be disposed of without Mariuccia Botti's consent?

Bianchi, who seemed calm and triumphant now, locked the drawer of his secretary and put the key in his pocket before deigning to reply to her tirade; indeed its fluency and fury left no opening for reply until she paused for want of breath, her eyes like coals, her grizzled locks shaking above her brow like angry snakes. The master had never seen her in a passion before, and he shrank back instinctively. Then, as she was opening her lips to speak again, he said quickly and with some dignity, "Calm yourself, Mariuccia. One does not speak to one's padrone in that manner. The paper which Giannella signed was just a legal one, connected with ... business of mine. You cannot write—it would have been useless to call you in. You perceive that you have made a foolish mistake? Oh, I forgive you. You have had no instruction, and you women of the people are ever illogical and suspicious. As to marriage ... listen to me, and do not transport yourself with anger—it sours the blood and might bring on an apoplexy which I have so greatly feared for you, overloading yourself with food as you do. Fifteen baiocchi a day for one woman. Holy Æsculapius, how have you survived it for twenty years?"

"Man without eyes, without vitals," cried Mariuccia, "what do you suppose Giannella has lived on since she came back from the convent? Air? Trevi water? Have I not fed the poor child for years? Have you ever given her a crumb from your table, a sugar-plum at Epiphany, or a maritozzo in Lent? Domine Dio, keep Thy Hand on my head or I shall end by losing patience with this blind and heartless one."

The Professor was roused to reprisals at last. "Do not imagine that I am blind, O female without judgment!" he exclaimed. "Gladly would I have made presents of food to Giannella, though I am a poor man and could ill afford it—but I perceived that your charity to her might be the means of saving your life, preventing you from dying of surfeit—a most painful end. Thus has your good deed already had its reward. But to show you, O ignorant and audacious one, that I have a true affection for Giannella and a mind full of generosity I will now—" He choked, then went on manfully, "I will now give you five baiocchi a day for her board, out of my own pocket. It is imprudent—I shall suffer—but I am resolved. Behold." And he held out five dingy coppers in his half-closed hand.

Then he found out what Mariuccia meant when she spoke of losing patience. She came up to him in two strides and shook both hands in his face. "What?" she screamed, "you want to pay for Giannella now? Why have you never thought of it before? Four years last Easter she came home, and never once have you said, 'Mariuccia mia, there is a paul, to buy something for the girl—what do I know, a cake, a bit of ribbon?' No, she grew up, she has waited on you and ironed for you and mended your old rags of shirts that only hold together by the grace of God. She has combated with the butcher and the baker and the fishmonger till they had to take something off their prices for you—they fear to see her coming, though she is as beautiful as an angel—and you never even spoke to her till a few weeks ago. But now—the devil in hell alone knows why—you have suddenly found out that she is good and pretty, and you make big eyes at her and call her to dust your wicked old books—and now you have the temerity to offer me money for her! No indeed, Professore mio, this you shall never do. Go back to your Veneres and Giunones—I wonder the Holy Father did not send the shameless females to the galleys for having their portraits taken like that—and leave Giannella to me."

Bianchi had not listened to this tide of reproaches, accompanied as it was by violently menacing gestures, without taking immediate measures for self-preservation. He edged round the room, keeping his back to the wall and facing Mariuccia, who followed him step by step, never allowing the distance between them to diminish by a handbreadth, until the door was reached. Carefully the Professor put out one hand behind him and ascertained that it was ajar. Then with amazing agility he stepped back into the passage, and from there hurled his last bomb. "You spoke of marriage. Yes, woman of hard head and mountainous ignorance, I intend to marry Giannella." Then the door was slammed in Mariuccia's face and the next moment the padrone was flying down the stairs.

His enemy, haggard, and trembling from reaction, remained in possession of the field, but she knew that she was vanquished. When Giannella heard the front door close she ran to the study, whence sounds of battle had rolled for the last half-hour. She found her old friend with her head sunk forward on the table while slow tears trickled through her knotty fingers all over the padrone's papers. The master had evidently been put to flight, but Mariuccia's victory seemed to have been a costly one. She refused to confide to Giannella the subject of her "piccolo argomento," as she called it, with Bianchi. The long habit of silence gave her strength to keep her counsel about his alarming proposal. Taken together with his changed attitude towards the girl, it could, in her judgment, point to but one thing, "passione," the fatal, sudden, all-devouring passion in which the Roman believes as blindly as did the Greek tragedian. This poisoned arrow had entered the padrone's heart. Mamma mia, here was a complication over which to astrologize her poor head! Who was going to sustain the combat, day in day out, under that narrow roof, with an obstinate man who was undoubtedly being smitten in his dried-up middle age with just retribution for the unnatural repressions of his youth, and who, moreover, held all the advantages of the situation, since he was the master of the house? She did not abandon her belief in the spell which she accused the strange lawyer of weaving around the poor man; no, that was a part of the doom; he was Satan's emissary, permitted, for some inexplicable reason, to sow the seed which had taken such violent possession of the unfortunate Professor. He had disappeared when his evil work was done and it could probably not be undone by anyone else. It was all destiny—but most afflicting.

As for telling Giannella—no. Love was not a proper subject to discuss with young girls, and then, such love as this? So she informed Giannella that she had been asked to sign the mysterious paper as a witness to something or other that had no connection with her, and that the slight disagreement had arisen from Bianchi's irritation at being questioned. Why had she been crying? Oh, she was feeling "strana" that day—it was all the fault of the scirocco.

The Professor returned towards evening, very haughty and dignified. Mariuccio contradicted all her explanations of the morning by forbidding Giannella to go near him, and carried in his supper tray herself, in grim silence more aggressive than words, even those of her rich vocabulary. She was only waiting for the rattle of a plate or the turning of a door handle to put an end to the armistice and serve as a declaration of renewed hostilities, but Bianchi was deaf and dumb. He informed her, when she came in to remove his tray, that he would be going to Ostia the next day; his coffee must be ready and his clothes brushed by seven o'clock. Then he returned to the perusal of a letter, and Mariuccia, greatly relieved at the prospect of his absence for so many hours, prayed for the intervention of protecting Providence in Giannella's affairs before his return—and sat up till late, brushing his clothes and preparing the frugal lunch which he always carried with him on such archæological expeditions.

CHAPTER IX

The morning after these disturbing events an exciting stir delighted the inhabitants of the Via Tresette, the street of the cow. The owner of the dairy had in the course of years become the proprietor of the old house which sheltered his trade; and, having prospered of late, he had built on the roof a new apartment, containing four small rooms and a large airy studio, which he hoped to let to some painter. His neighbors had shaken their heads over this bold speculation, but it seemed that his optimism was justified, for here, at the small door beside the shop, stood a handcart loaded with stiff-legged easels, canvases tied together in a red tablecloth, a chair similarly protected by a green one, the disjointed limbs of an iron bedstead, cooking utensils, and various odds and ends, all of which proved incontestably that a tenant had been found for the appartamentino on the roof.

Beside the cart, helping the perspiring facchino to unload the things, stood a young man of cheerful countenance and remarkably dapper costume. Adjuring the porter to move delicately, he unearthed a life-sized mummy-like object swathed in a drab sheet, which he hoisted tenderly on the man's back. Then, turning to the landlord, who stood by, beaming on this visible proof of his own good luck, he begged him, in language more elegant than usually echoed through that obscure thoroughfare, to favor him by keeping an eye on the other belongings while he accompanied the bearer of this particular treasure up the stairs.

No sooner had he disappeared than an excited group gathered round the owner of the premises to find out all about him. What was his name? Had he really taken the new room? What rent was he going to pay? Even Sora Rosa, the sybil among the cabbages opposite, raised her head and cocked an ear to catch the answer.

Why yes, the gentleman had taken the studio apartment for three years, paying half-a-year's rent in advance. (The landlord in the just pride of his heart mentioned precisely double the sum he had asked and received.) The signorino's name was Goffi, Rinaldo Goffi, and he was an artist—but distintissimo. Signor Freschi, the picture dealer in Via Condotti, bought everything he painted, and for sums!

At this juncture the distinguished artist came out from the doorway and, quite unembarrassed by his growing audience, gathered up more of his properties—a paint box under each arm, a saucepan in one hand and a wicker cage tied up in a yellow handkerchief in the other, and, thus loaded, ducked back into the Cimmerian darkness of the passage. The handcart was now empty, the porter paid, with a joke and a "bicchiere" thrown in, and Signor Goffi, rather out of breath, ascended the four flights of stairs and took possession of his new domain.

He was a Roman of the Romans, although not born within the walls of the city. His father, a lawyer of good old provincial stock, had risen to be mayor of his native town, Orbetello, and, being also the owner of rich vine lands, was a man of solid position and comfortable fortune. His eldest son was following in his father's steps, and would inherit the fat Orbetello property; the second was a rising engineer; and the third, Rinaldo, having early shown quick intelligence and some artistic talent, had been sent to Rome for his education, with the understanding that if he satisfactorily completed his studies at the university he should be permitted to devote himself to the career of his choice in the very cradle of Art itself.

The parental allowance, a very modest one, was to be continued until he could earn his own living; but having inherited from a maternal relative a tiny property near Rome, he, as in duty bound, renounced the allowance in order that his sisters' doweries might be increased, and lived as Romans so well know how to live, decorously and comfortably, on a very small income. The "vigna" outside Porta San Giovanni was cultivated by peasants, whose family had tenanted it for some generations, on the mezzadria system, an equal division of profits with the owner. As hardly any taxes were levied in the Papal States, and no duty assessed on provisions passing the city gates, the full value of ownership and labor was reaped from the land, and the half-and-half arrangement, while equally distributing the losses of lean years, insured to both landlord and tenant the entire benefit of fat ones.

The lean years had been few in the garden vineyard outside the Lateran Gate; the vines flowered into heady fragrance in the divine Roman spring behind their tall hedges of canes and roses, and bore their splendid bunches nobly when the late summer rains came to swell, nearly to bursting, the tightly clustered fruit baked black on the brown stems whence every leaf had been stripped in August to let the sun and air do their magic work. Then came the crown of the year, the October vintage, when every little winepress poured its purple froth from under the bare feet of the treaders into the seething vat below; when the very air was wine, from Lombardy to Messina, and each Sunday of the glowing month brought the population of the city, in gay attire, out to eat and drink, to laugh and dance and make music, from dawn to dark, in the garden of the gods, the vinelands of Romagna.

Rinaldo went with the rest, inviting a chosen party of fellow-students to the vigna, where the padroncino was always delightedly welcomed and the best the house could afford brought out for him and his friends. The meal was served in the open air, by the fountain, under the brown thatch woven in between the branches of the four cypress-trees as a shelter from the sun; old songs and young laughter accompanied the repast; the new wine, cloudy and sweet still and of terrific headiness, was tasted, and healths drunk in the safer product of past years. Then a game of bowls was played, a substantial present made to the "vignarolo," and, in the cool of the evening, the "raggazzi" climbed, six at a time, into the small open carriage hired for the occasion, and were borne back to the town. The jolly driver, who had had his share of the day's good things, cracked his beribboned whip high over the heads of the little black horses, who, with roses on their ears and bows on their tails, frisked gaily along in a cloud of dust, running races with dozens of other vehicles full of noisy, happy people twanging guitars and shaking tamborines, very few of them at all the worse for the innocent orgy. At last came the scamper for the Lateran Gate before Ave Maria rang and it should be closed for the night, and the usually severe guardians only smiled at the merry scramble and closed the huge portals, regretfully when the last carrozzella had romped safely through.

Such holidays were the more enjoyed by Rinaldo because they were rare. In general he led a life as orderly and studious as that of Carlo Bianchi himself; but it was illuminated with hope for the future, with pleasure in the present in spite of the slow labor necessary, in spite of the many discouragements to be lived down before he could attain even modest proficiency in his kindly art. His chief relaxation in the summer time was provided by Father Tiber. The "Cannottieri" club had not been organized in those early days, but its forerunner, a river boating society, drew the young men together in the warm afternoons and gave them many a cool swim and invigorating hour of rowing on the full yellow tide. Rinaldo was a favorite with his compeers, but he never allowed their importunities to interfere with the great business of his life, success in his reasonable aims. He had gone through every step of the art student's course with sturdy conscientiousness, trusting nothing to inspiration, avoiding what he recognized as impressionism (the word itself had not been coined) as he avoided bad women and sour wine. He never imagined himself a genius; he was content to have talent and to cultivate it faithfully. Month after month he copied in the galleries, reverently tracing the perceptive lines of great masterpieces on his canvas and his memory. Constant work in the Life School filled the evening hours when the days were short, and humble acceptance of the master's sharp criticisms corrected any slightest tendency to conceit. With native shrewdness he had understood that there was always a market for good, unostentatious work, and he was not too proud to take commissions for copies when he could not sell his own really charming little pictures. For Rinaldo had an end in view, and he worked steadily towards it. Loneliness did not appeal to his cheerful nature; he meant to find a pretty, sweet-tempered wife as soon as he could support her, and to have a home as strongly foundationed as the one in Orbetello, of which he retained admiring and affectionate memories.

Having no fortune beyond the small income derived from the vigna, he could not expect to marry a girl with much of a dowry; in such matters a certain similarity of circumstances was the accepted rule. So he put by all that it was possible for him to save, resolved to marry while young and in love with life, and equally resolved to feel no pinch of poverty afterwards. His attitude was one not at all uncommon among his fellow-students and contemporaries; nothing could have been further from the happy-go-lucky Bohemianism of the foreign artistic coteries, Scandinavian, German, Anglo-Saxon, which swarmed in Rome at that time. There is but one calling which makes Bohemians of the sober-going yet light-hearted children of Latium, the musical one. What would you have? When a man is born with a voice that can sing the stars down from heaven and the angels from paradise, is it not to be expected that he should also be born drunk with celestial wine? When he can compose operas whose airs, after the first hearing, are sung in every alley of the city—as happened the morning after the production of the Trovatore—no one can demand that he should understand the intricacies of account books. It is the world's business to see to the daily wants of its Orpheuses and Apollos—and the world, as a rule, attends to the obligation nobly.

When Rinaldo took possession of his new studio he felt that he was marking an important point on the road of his ambitions. Hitherto he had shared the workshop of a friend, in the warren of studios which climb from the Via Babuino to the lower terraces of the Pincian Hill. Now, having sold some small pictures, and having secured through the dealer an order from a rich foreigner for a large one, he felt justified in assuming the responsibilities of quiet, airy quarters where he could work without interruptions. As he sat among his queer belongings—scattered over the floor in wild disorder—an unreasoning joy took possession of him, a certainty that he had found more in this new home than clean, bright rooms and a superb north light. He rose and walked about, exploring his new domain, and lingering on the little terrace to breathe in the breeze which, rioting over from the coast, twenty miles away, seemed to disdain ever to sink into the hot streets so far below.

His attention was called to material things by the protests of the inhabitant of the wicker cage, still wrapped in the yellow handkerchief. He took it up gently and in a moment liberated a splendid gray and purple pigeon, which hopped on his shoulder and began to preen its ruffled feathers with a deeply injured air. "My poor Themistocles," Rinaldo apologized, "I had forgotten all about you. And your grain is spilt and your cup is empty." Gravely he attended to the creature's wants, while it fluttered about, taking in all the possibilities of the place. Themistocles was accused by Rinaldo's friends of being a most uncanny bird, watching their actions with a sarcastic eye and understanding many things which did not come within his province at all. Though he was allowed to roam at will over the housetops he always returned to his master in the evening and generally slept on the head of the lay figure, the carefully swathed treasure which had so excited the curiosity of the denizens of the street of the cow.

Rinaldo had become so accustomed to this quaint feathered companion that he would have felt lonely without him; indeed Themistocles had been the recipient of many a confidence and ambition which his master would have betrayed to no articulate listener. One must talk to something about the things nearest one's heart, and it was fine to have a confidant who never objected or contradicted.

In an hour the properties were all in place. The little platform was set in the best light, and the ancient chair, topped with gilt cherubs and covered with ragged crimson velvet, was placed on it at the usual angle. How many cardinals, fair ladies, and swaggering bravos had sat in that chair during the last few years! Of each and all the corporeal body was supplied by the trusty lay figure, which, now liberated from its cerecloth, disclosed the amputation of one leg below the knee, the dislocation of the other, incurable paralysis of the fingers; a pink but blistered countenance, a nose injured by contact with a mahlstick hurled at it by Rinaldo's former studio companion; vacuous blue eyes and a set smile completed the model's attractions, and these were crowned by a damaged wig of a sickly yellow hue, much impoverished by the attentions of Themistocles, who was in the habit of tearing out locks of hair when playing at building a nest in the angle of the least-used easel. In a few minutes, however, the warworn veteran of the studio was sitting in the gilt chair, cleverly robed in the red tablecloth and impersonating a cardinal in full canonicals; a large canvas was brought out, the dear, bedaubed paint boxes opened, the favorite palette loaded with its daily rainbow of colors—and behold Rinaldo, forgetful of everything else, utterly happy, absorbed in his immortal work for the rich foreigner.

That evening he sat and smoked on his loggia, lifted far above the nightmare of fever which stalks in the lowlying streets on summer nights. He felt that he had come into a new world, where stars and sky were a part of the bargain. Going over to the balustrade he leaned out and looked down into the street—a chasm of blackness at that hour—then up at the violet dome of the heavens quivering with a thousand points of tender radiance, and, remembering his schooldays, softly quoted, "Donde uscimmo a riveder le stelle!"

He too had left his purgatory behind and had entered a paradise all-sufficing to his simple soul, save for one thing, it contained no Beatrice. He did not call her that, however. Dante's impersonal goddess would never have filled the vacant throne in Rinaldo's heart. The unattainable had no charms for him, and the idea of worshiping another man's wife at a respectful distance seemed both a mortal sin and a waste of time; he meant to fall joyfully in love with his own wife; and, being a sincere beauty worshiper, permitted himself to paint an enchanting picture of the future Signora Goffi. For hard-working, economical Rinaldo, with all his respect for conventionalities and his sound Roman sense, was at heart an exuberant idealist and had never considered it necessary to even clip the plumes of his radiant imagination. He had not yet beheld, but he was sure he should find, the face of holy fairness, the eyes of innocence and love, the golden hair that was to be crown and halo in one—the dear, pretty sister of angels and pattern of housekeepers whom he resolutely intended to marry.

He fell asleep wondering what kind of paper she would ask him to put on these whitewashed walls, and woke—as it seemed to him, immediately afterwards—with a violent start, to find the air full of the pealing of bells, the bells of San Severino, which Fra Tommaso was ringing with all his might for the first Mass.

He jumped up and ran out on the terrace, pleased as a schoolboy, to see what everything looked like at this early hour. Glancing over the iron balustrade, he discovered that it lay at a right angle to the street and looked directly into the back court of San Severino. The connection with the church was evident, for there was a mendicant lifting the leather curtain for a lady to pass in. The first ray of the sun shot over the farther wall and lit on a golden head just disappearing under the curtain; the beggar made an aggrieved gesture and stretched out his hand for alms. Then the lady stepped back into the sunshine and stood for a moment seeking for something in her purse. Yes, the head was golden—Rinaldo's heart leaped for joy—and the fingers that dropped a copper in the outstretched hand were white and fine. Then the curtain was lifted once more, the lady disappeared, and the court was empty save for the beggar, who at once assumed his professionally forlorn air so as to be ready for the next passer-by.

"I too will go to Mass," said Rinaldo to himself, "it is a pious habit." Having dressed as fast as he could, he flew downstairs and made his way into the church, quiet and dim still, and holding only a few scattered worshipers. Mass had begun in a side chapel, and, kneeling on a prièdieu before the altar steps was a girl, simply dressed in black, her face hidden in her hands. A smooth roll of hair like spun gold showed under a lace head covering; the figure was young and slight, and the pose perfectly graceful.

Rinaldo turned red with emotion. Might not—oh, Santa Speranza—might not this be the embodiment of his dreams? He actually trembled with apprehension lest the unseen face should fall short of what he asked to find in it; yet how could it, he asked himself, do less than match the harmony of the devout attitude, the fairness of the fingers through which the beads of a white rosary slipped one by one?

He drew nearer and leaned against the wall, where he could see her profile whenever she should raise her head. He crossed himself, took out his handkerchief and knelt down on it at the proper moments, and tried to remember his prayers, but these did not get much further than the attractive apparition before him and resolved themselves into wordless but frightened entreaties that the vision would show its face. The Mass was approaching its end when he was aware of a little stir among the chairs; then an old woman with a scanty handkerchief thrown over her head and its corners tightly held in her mouth, came and knelt down between him and the girl. The latter moved her head slightly in acknowledgment of her neighbor's presence, but continued her devotions without looking up. "What is she praying for so earnestly?" Rinaldo wondered. "Could Heaven refuse anything to such a santarella as that? Oh, what a shame to disturb her."

This was evidently not the old woman's view. She had something to say and meant to get it off her mind at once. She pulled at the girl's sleeve and whispered sharply, "Giannella, listen. I must go to the cleaner for the padrone's coat—he is off to Ostia for the day, thank the Lord—so you take the key and go home, and here is the money for the tomatoes, don't forget."

She fished a heavy housekey and some jingling coppers from her bulging pocket and tried to thrust them into the girl's hand. The latter raised her head and looked round slowly, as if coming back to things of earth against her will. And then Rinaldo leaned heavily against the cold wall and felt dizzy and faint. What he beheld was only a pure young face with shadowed eyes and a rather sad mouth, but the expression was one of such grace, sweetness and candor that the young man might be forgiven the cry of his heart, "Amore mio, I have found you!" The morning hour, the quiet church, with its incense-laden air, the first slow sunbeams creeping across the spaces overhead—all combined to make a perfect setting for the picture of his dreams. He closed his eyes so that it should be imprinted on his memory for ever. Then he opened them quickly, for the young girl and the old woman had risen and were moving away. Should he follow them at once? No, better wait a moment; he could catch up with them unnoticed as soon as they should have passed out into the street. Ah, here came a friendly-looking old sacristan to put the chairs back in their places; he might know by what name heavenly visitants were called in this world of sin.

"La Biondina?" queried Fra Tommaso in answer to the eager inquiry. "Oh, she lives with Sora Mariuccia somewhere over there in the Palazzo Santafede. They serve Professor Bianchi, the archæologist—keep him and his books clean and cook his meals when he gives them anything to buy food with. La Giannella was an orphan whom Mariuccia took into compassion and brought up. Now that she has grown big and pretty, they say the Professor wants to marry her—what silliness! But she is a good girl and a great help to Mariuccia. Thank you, Signorino. Arrivederci," as Rinaldo pressed a coin into his hand and scuttled away down the church in most unseemly haste.

Fra Tommaso looked after him and shook his head with an indulgent smile. Youth and romance appealed to the heart of him still, even as the dew and the sunshine penetrate to the heart of the gray old olive-tree and cause it to break out into leaf and fruit.

When Rinaldo reached the street the elder woman had disappeared, but "la Giannella" (he wished her name had not such a Florentine sound!) was standing before the vegetable stall apparently bargaining for tomatoes with the witch who presided there. The girl was smiling down at her, but the witch kept her eyes on her knitting and growled, "Take them or leave them. They are four baiocchi the pound to you as to others."

When Rinaldo, standing in the cover of his own doorway opposite, wondered what would happen next, Giannella stealthily drew the big key from her pocket and let it fall on the stones. The old lady looked up at the sudden clatter to find the girl still smiling at her and holding out three coppers in her hand.

"It is all I may spend, Sora Rosa," she said coaxingly. "Won't you be kind and give me the pound?"

"Ah, furba, cunning one!" exclaimed the other, "you always get what you want when you make me look at you. There, run along with my beautiful pomidori—and I hope they will choke the old miser you work for," she added viciously, as Giannella gathered up her spoils and went quickly down the street.

Of course Rinaldo followed her; that was a compliment one might pay to any woman so long as the regulation distance was maintained and no attempt made to attract her attention. He saw Giannella vanish into the palace, and then he slowly approached the portone, to try and find out which of the various stairways she would ascend. The building was so enormous, reaching the whole length of the street from Piazza Santafede to the Ripetta (on which thoroughfare its second façade opened) that it would be difficult to locate the modest apartment probably occupied by the Professor and his ministrants. Rinaldo gazed through the archway to where a fountain was bubbling in the courtyard, and found courage to put his question to the porter, who was lounging about, smoking a pipe while his wife scrubbed the lower steps of the chief staircase. It was so early that the maestro di casa had not come to open the cancelleria or office, a hall of sepulchral grimness on the ground floor, where the archives were kept and all the business of the household and estates carried on. The palace was still in dressing-gown and slippers, so to speak, and the porter in a fairly condescending mood, so Rinaldo was informed that to find Professor Bianchi he must take the third staircase to the right and ascend to the fourth floor, where he would see the name on the door. Rinaldo passed in, bent on discovering whether the apartment looked into the courtyard or out on the Via Santafede; if the latter, there might be some chance of catching another glimpse of that lovely girl at one of the windows. Passing along under the colonnade, where grooms were whistling and joking as they curried horses and sluiced down carriage wheels, he reached "Scala III." and raced up the long flights of steps, with two doors on every landing, and his heart beat more with exultation than exercise when at last he sprang on to the fourth of these and ascertained that "Bianchi" was the name on a shabby card nailed to the right-hand door. This was the street side.

Ten minutes later he was back on his own terrace, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the palace. Only a far corner was visible from where he stood. Between him and it, adjoining the side of his loggia, stretched the wide roof of the Fathers' dwelling, most picturesquely diversified, as he now perceived, by detached rooms opening on flowery terraces perched at different levels, connected by irregular little flights of steps, and here and there by a small bridge, railed in where it spanned the depth of some inner court designed to give light to the central rooms of the old pile.

All was deserted at this hour; the Fathers were busy in the church or with their pupils, far below; and Rinaldo, with a thrilling new sense of adventure, started on a voyage of discovery. Vaulting over his own parapet he landed on the flat gray tiles beyond and made his way, after one or two mistakes, which led him to closed doors, to the farther side of the little city on the roof. It struck him as a charming place, quite operatic in arrangement, and much more appropriate for dreaming lovers than meditating monks.

As he dropped over the last division he started back, dazed by a whirr of wings beating against his face. When they rose and hovered above his head he saw that he had disturbed a flock of pigeons who apparently had their home in this delightful retreat. He was standing on a narrow loggia some twenty feet long, protected on the street side by a solid parapet on whose broad top bloomed carnations, roses and verbenas; a big oleander at one end waved its pink fragrant flowers against the stainless blue of the sky; at the other, a fat little lemon-tree displayed its pale rich fruit. Sweet herbs in boxes filled all available corners, and against a side wall, shaded by a tile roof which projected over a glass door, was a neat dovecote, showing that the protesting pigeons were the rightful inhabitants of the place.

The door was open, and Rinaldo, curious as a girl, peeped in. But there was nothing to attract him inside. A pallet bed, a table, a straw chair; a crucifix; and on the brick range a battered cooking pot; these constituted the furniture, and an embrowned old sacred print the only ornamentation. The explorer made a grimace at the austerity of the abode and stepped back to the parapet to carry out the real object of his visit. Yes, he had come to the right spot. Far below was the Via Santafede, and opposite, on a level slightly lower than the one where he stood, were certain fourth-floor windows which, by all the canons of topography, should belong to the Bianchi apartment. Four were closed and curtained; the fifth and sixth were open and evidently belonged to the kitchen, for Rinaldo could see the bricks of the floor and the corner of the range. There was one more beyond, open too, with a carnation flowering on the sill. Within was a low chair with a basket of work on it. Was this the spot where the Biondina was accustomed to sit? Even as he framed the eager question, she came forward, put the basket down beside the chair and settled herself to her sewing without once glancing up. She had removed her lace veil, and her bent head shone in the morning light as her needle flew in and out of the linen. Once she turned to speak to someone in the room, and Rinaldo ducked behind his flowered defenses in fear of being seen; but in a moment he was leaning over again, taking in every detail of the picture across the street.

Now came another diversion. Giannella found some Indian corn on the window sill and scattered it on the outer ledge, whistling softly. One, two, half-a-dozen pigeons materialized out of blue space, paused a moment among the flower-pots near Rinaldo, cocked their heads, considered well, and then descended in a flock to gather the golden harvest. He heard the girl laugh as she pushed away one which had boldly settled on her shoulder. Then someone within called sharply, and she left her place in haste. Rinaldo lingered awhile, but she did not return; and conscience, suddenly aware of the flight of time, drove him back to his own quarters, to the society of Themistocles, who was sick and sulky to-day, and of the lay figure, fallen stiffly aside in the grand chair, as if the red cotton cardinal were tired of waiting for his truant portrait painter.

CHAPTER X

Mariuccia regarded it as too drastic an answer to her prayers when the erring padrone returned from Ostia shivering and sneezing, his clothes covered with green mud from the excavations where he had been joyously burrowing over some valuable discoveries just made in Tiber's forgotten port. His boots were soaked—his lunch uneaten.

"Figlio mio," cried Mariuccia, all her animosity quenched in anxious pity as she opened the door and beheld him in this heartbreaking condition. "What have you been doing? But this is fatal. Domine Dio, you shake, you have fever. Animal that I was to let you go in those old boots. Come in and let me put you to bed at once."

Bianchi resigned himself to her ministrations only too gladly, and while she rolled him up in hot blankets and surrounded him with fortifications of scalding bricks, Giannella, all undeterred by the late hour, rushed off to the apothecary for quinine and other potent drugs. She had never found herself in the street after dark before, but charity gave her wings and she was whipped along by remorse. Suppose the poor padrone were to die? And she had been feeling so cross with him lately, had been so ungrateful for the little attentions which he had been trying to show her and which probably only her own stupid conceit had distorted into anything more alarming than kindness and condescension. Did man but know it, he has only to catch a cold in the head to make the women of his establishment forget all the grumpinesses and tyrannies of years. Poor darling, he wasn't well all the time! What a shame to have resented shortcomings which one ought to have known were but symptoms of approaching indisposition. Quick, cosset him, doctor him, and in a few days perhaps the gentle invalid will feel well enough to put his pretty foot on our necks again.

The Professor basked contentedly enough in the excitement he had caused, and by the end of the second day was feeling much better. Mariuccia having reduced him to a state of apparent subjugation and tucked him up in his blankets with fearful threats of what would overtake him if he put so much as a hand out of bed, hoisted a basket of wet linen on her head and climbed up to the roof where each tenant was allowed a small space for drying clothes.

Giannella had been feeling unusually light-hearted all day. The padrone was better—what a comfort. And the house was peaceful; there had been no more "little arguments" between him and Mariuccia. Then the morning had been so lovely when she slipped out to the five o'clock Mass, a summer morning with fragrance everywhere, as if ghostly violets and roses had been dancing about the streets all night and had left their sweetness behind them when they fled at the coming of the sun. This was not her own idea; Giannella could not be called imaginative; she had found it in a book of very sentimental poems which somebody had most inappropriately presented to the Professor. But it struck her as pretty, and she had remembered it as she crossed the cool, empty piazza in the summer dawn. Then it had been most consoling to see a young man devoutly following the Mass. Young men were not in the habit of coming to church on weekdays; Mariuccia said they were too lazy or too frivolous. Mariuccia had a bad opinion of men in general, and Giannella accepted it, as she accepted most axioms enounced by her elders, in unruffled good faith. But here was living contradiction to such pessimism, a sprightly-looking young gentleman, as well dressed as Don Onorato himself, kneeling piously on a pretty silk handkerchief from the "Deus in adjutorium" to the "Ite Missa Est." Giannella was sure that she had never turned her head to look at him, and was a little puzzled to know how she had ascertained all these attractive details. True, she had dropped her rosary—very stupidly—and he had picked it up and returned it to her with grave politeness but without attempting to meet her glance of thanks. Ah, how comforting it was to a Christian heart to witness such faith and piety. The world was perhaps not so evil after all. Mariuccia, and the dear nuns who used to rail at it, and Padre Anselmo, who told her to give special thanks for her separation from it, had never seen a good, handsome young man saying his prayers!