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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 1. The Holy Roman Empire - Chapter 3 |
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_ PART ONE. THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE CHAPTER III The Baron Bonelli had invited certain of his friends to witness the Pope's procession from the windows and balconies of his palace overlooking the piazza, and they had begun to arrive as early as half-past nine. In the green courtyard they were received by the porter in the cocked hat, on the dark stone staircase by lackeys in knee-breeches and yellow stockings, in the outer hall, intended for coats and hats, by more lackeys in powdered wigs, and in the first reception-room, gorgeously decorated in the yellow and gold of the middle ages, by Felice, in a dress coat, the Baron's solemn personal servant, who said, in sepulchral tones: "The Baron's excuses, Excellency! Engaged in the Council-room with some of the Ministers, but expects to be out presently. Sit in the Loggia, Excellency?" "So our host is holding a Cabinet Council, General?" said the English Ambassador. "A sort of scratch council, seemingly. Something that concerns the day's doings, I guess, and is urgent and important." "A great man, General, if half one hears about him is true." "Great?" said the American. "Yes, and no, Sir Evelyn, according as you regard him. In the opinion of some of his followers the Baron Bonelli is the greatest man in the country--greater than the King himself--and a statesman too big for Italy. One of those commanding personages who carry everything before them, so that when they speak even monarchs are bound to obey. That's one view of his picture, Sir Evelyn." "And the other view?" General Potter glanced in the direction of a door hung with curtains, from which there came at intervals the deadened drumming of voices, and then he said: "A man of implacable temper and imperious soul, an infidel of hard and cynical spirit, a sceptic and a tyrant." "Which view do the people take?" "Can you ask? The people hate him for the heavy burden of taxation with which he is destroying the nation in his attempt to build it up." "And the clergy, and the Court, and the aristocracy?" "The clergy fear him, the Court detests him, and the Roman aristocracy are rancorously hostile." "Yet he rules them all, nevertheless?" "Yes, sir, with a rod of iron--people, Court, princes, Parliament, King as well--and seems to have only one unsatisfied desire, to break up the last remaining rights of the Vatican and rule the old Pope himself." "And yet he invites us to sit in his Loggia and look at the Pope's procession." "Perhaps because he intends it shall be the last we may ever see of it." "The Princess Bellini and Don Camillo Murelli," said Felice's sepulchral voice from the door. An elderly aristocratic beauty wearing nodding white plumes came in with a pallid young Roman noble dressed in the English fashion. "_You_ come to church, Don Camillo?" "Heard it was a service which happened only once in a hundred years, dear General, and thought it mightn't be convenient to come next time," said the young Roman. "And you, Princess! Come now, confess, is it the perfume of the incense which brings you to the Pope's procession, or the perfume of the promenaders?" "Nonsense, General!" said the little woman, tapping the American with the tip of her lorgnette. "Who comes to a ceremony like this to say her prayers? Nobody whatever, and if the Holy Father himself were to say...." "Oh! oh!" "Which reminds me," said the little lady, "where is Donna Roma?" "Yes, indeed, where is Donna Roma?" said the young Roman. "_Who_ is Donna Roma?" said the Englishman. "Santo Dio! the man doesn't know Donna Roma!" The white plumes bobbed up, the powdered face fell back, the little twinkling eyes closed, and the company laughed and seated themselves in the Loggia. "Donna Roma, dear sir," said the young Roman, "is a type of the fair lady who has appeared in the history of every nation since the days of Helen of Troy." "Has a woman of this type, then, identified herself with the story of Rome at a moment like the present?" said the Englishman. The young Roman smiled. "Why did the Prime Minister appoint so-and-so?--Donna Roma! Why did he dismiss such-and-such?--Donna Roma! What feminine influence imposed upon the nation this or that?--Donna Roma! Through whom come titles, decorations, honours?--Donna Roma! Who pacifies intractable politicians and makes them the devoted followers of the Ministers?--Donna Roma! Who organises the great charitable committees, collects funds and distributes them?--Donna Roma! Always, always Donna Roma!" "So the day of the petticoat politician is not over in Italy yet?" "Over? It will only end with the last trump. But dear Donna Roma is hardly that. With her light play of grace and a whole artillery of love in her lovely eyes, she only intoxicates a great capital and"--with a glance towards the curtained door--"takes captive a great Minister." "Just that," and the white plumes bobbed up and down. "Hence she defies conventions, and no one dares to question her actions on her scene of gallantry." "Drives a pair of thoroughbreds in the Corso every afternoon, and threatens to buy an automobile." "Has debts enough to sink a ship, but floats through life as if she had never known what it was to be poor." "And has she?" The voices from behind the curtained door were louder than usual at that moment, and the young Roman drew his chair closer. "Donna Roma, dear sir, was the only child of Prince Volonna. Nobody mentions him now, so speak of him in a whisper. The Volonnas were an old papal family, holding office in the Pope's household, but the young Prince of the house was a Liberal, and his youth was cast in the stormy days of the middle of the century. As a son of the revolution he was expelled from Rome for conspiracy against the papal Government, and when the Pope went out and the King came in, he was still a republican, conspiring against the reigning sovereign, and, as such, a rebel. Meanwhile he had wandered over Europe, going from Geneva to Berlin, from Berlin to Paris. Finally he took refuge in London, the home of all the homeless, and there he was lost and forgotten. Some say he practised as a doctor, passing under another name; others say that he spent his life as a poor man in your Italian quarter of Soho, nursing rebellion among the exiles from his own country. Only one thing is certain: late in life he came back to Italy as a conspirator--enticed back, his friends say--was arrested on a charge of attempted regicide, and deported to the island of Elba without a word of public report or trial." "Domicilio Coatto--a devilish and insane device," said the American Ambassador. "Was that the fate of Prince Volonna?" "Just so," said the Roman. "But ten or twelve years after he disappeared from the scene a beautiful girl was brought to Rome and presented as his daughter." "Donna Roma?" "Yes. It turned out that the Baron was a kinsman of the refugee, and going to London he discovered that the Prince had married an English wife during the period of his exile, and left a friendless daughter. Out of pity for a great name he undertook the guardianship of the girl, sent her to school in France, finally brought her to Rome, and established her in an apartment on the Trinita de' Monti, under the care of an old aunt, poor as herself, and once a great coquette, but now a faded rose which has long since seen its June." "And then?" "Then? Ah, who shall say what then, dear friend? We can only judge by what appears--Donna Roma's elegant figure, dressed in silk by the best milliners Paris can provide, queening it over half the women of Rome." "And now her aunt is conveniently bedridden," said the little Princess, "and she goes about alone like an Englishwoman; and to account for her extravagance, while everybody knows her father's estate was confiscated, she is by way of being a sculptor, and has set up a gorgeous studio, full of nymphs and cupids and limbs." "And all by virtue of--what?" said the Englishman. "By virtue of being--the good friend of the Baron Bonelli!" "Meaning by that?" "Nothing--and everything!" said the Princess with another trill of laughter. "In Rome, dear friend," said Don Camillo, "a woman can do anything she likes as long as she can keep people from talking about her." "Oh, you never do that apparently," said the Englishman. "But why doesn't the Baron make her a Baroness and have done with the danger?" "Because the Baron has a Baroness already." "A wife living?" "Living and yet dead--an imbecile, a maniac, twenty years a prisoner in his castle in the Alban hills." _ |
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