The _festa_ of San Sebastiano fell on a Sunday.
The ancient church a mile and a half outside Rome on the Appian Way--the
road constructed three hundred years before the birth of Christ--was
thronged by the populace in _festa_ attire, for San Sebastiano, built as
it is over the Catacombs where reposed the remains of the Christian
martyrs, is one of the seven churches to which pilgrims have flocked
from every part of western Christendom, while in its chapel is the
marble slab bearing what is held by tradition to be the footprints of
Christ, and which, therefore, is held by the Romans in special
veneration.
Though January, the morning was sunny and cloudless, and with Lady
Cathcart, the Ambassador's wife, and young Edward Mervyn, the rather
foppish honorary attache, Hubert Waldron had motored out to watch the
festival with all its gorgeous procession of priests and acolytes, its
swinging censers and musical chants.
As at all the _festas_ in Rome, there was the usual crowd of gaping
Cookites and the five-guinea excursionists of other agencies, for is not
the Eternal City the city of the tourist _par excellence_? In it he can
live in a cheap _pension_ for four lire a night, or he can spend a
hundred lire a night in certain _hotels de luxe_ on his room alone.
The road was dusty and crowded as, the ceremony over, the party sped
back, past the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla--paltry indeed after
those left by Rameses in Egypt--and the churches of Santi Nereo ed
Achilleo and San Cesareo, afterwards re-entering the city and speeding
up the broad modern Via Nazionale and into the long, straight Via Venti
Settembre, at last pulling up before the great grey facade of the
British Embassy.
Hubert Waldron was no stranger to Rome. For five years he had lived at
the Embassy when his father was Ambassador, and in those days had been
very popular in the very exclusive Society of the Italian capital.
Nowadays, however, he did not live at the Embassy, but rented the same
cosy flat over a bank in the Via Nazionale which had been occupied by
his predecessor--a charming, artistic little place which was the very
ideal of a bachelor _pied-a-terre_.
That day there was a smart luncheon-party at the Embassy; among the
guests being the Austrian and Russian Ambassadors with their wives,
Prince Ghika, of the Roumanian Legation, the stout and wealthy Duca di
Carpenito, the old Marchesa Genazzano, a hideous guy with her protruding
yellow teeth, yet one of the leaders of Roman Society, the young
Marchese Montalcino, who wore upturned moustachios and yellow boots; the
pretty Contessa Stella Pizzoli, one of the Queen's _dames de la Cour_,
and half a dozen others whose names in the Italian capital were as
household words.
Around the luncheon-table, charmingly arranged with delicate floral
decorations, the chatter had been universal, Sir Francis Cathcart,
K.C.M.G., the British Ambassador, holding a long and animated
conversation with Princess Bezanoff, wife of "The Russian"--as the
Tzar's representative was termed in the diplomatic circle--while Lady
Cathcart had been gossiping with the Duca di Carpenito, who was perhaps
the greatest landowner in all Italy, and whose ancient Palazzo in the
Corso is pointed out to the traveller as one of the finest mediaeval
residences in the city.
Waldron, who had taken in the Contessa Stella and sat at her side, was
listening to her gossip about the Court, of the doings of the Queen, and
of their recent stay at Racconigi. Though most of the conversation at
table was in French they spoke in Italian, Hubert speaking that language
with scarce a trace of foreign accent.
"Curiously enough, Signor Waldron, I first knew of you by hearing His
Majesty speak of you," remarked the pretty young woman. "I heard him
telling General Olivieri, the first aide-de-camp, that you had been
attached to the Embassy here."
"It is a great honour that His Majesty should remember me," replied the
secretary. "He knew me, however, years ago, before he succeeded. I was
here with my father, who was Ambassador."
"Yes. The King said so, and he paid your father a very high compliment.
He said that he was the only diplomat whom his father, the late King
Victor, ever trusted with a secret."
Waldron smiled. Then he said:
"His Majesty is exceedingly gracious to me. I had not been back here a
week before I had a command to private audience, and he was kind enough
to say that he was pleased to resume my acquaintance after my years of
absence from Rome. Yes, Contessa," he added, "here I feel that I am at
home and among friends, for I love Italy and her people. Your country
possesses a grace and charm which one does not find elsewhere in Europe.
There is but one Italy as there is but one Rome in all the world."
"I fear you flatter us rather too much, Signor Waldron," replied the
pretty young woman. "Now that you have come back to us I hope you will
honour my husband with a visit. You know the Palazzo Pizzoli, no doubt,
and I hope in the autumn you will come out to us in the Romagna. We can
give you a little shooting, I believe. You Englishmen always love that,
I know," she laughed.
"I'm sure I shall be very charmed to make the acquaintance of the
Count," he replied. "And if I may be permitted to call upon you I shall
esteem it a great honour, Contessa," and he smiled at the elegant _dame
de la Cour_ with his best diplomatic smile.
"So the young Princess Luisa is in disgrace again, I hear," remarked the
old Marchesa Genazzano, who sat on Waldron's other hand, showing her
yellow teeth as she spoke. "She's always in some scrape or other.
Girls in my day were never allowed the liberty she has--and she a Royal
Highness, too!"
"We mustn't tell tales out of school," remarked the pretty Countess,
with a comical grimace. "Her Royal Highness is, I fear, a sad tomboy.
She always was--ever since she left the schoolroom."
The old Marchesa, a woman of the bluest blood of Italy, and bosom friend
of Her Majesty the Queen, grunted.
"Like her mother--like the whole House of Savoy. Always venturesome,"
she said.
"But the Princess is charming. Surely you will agree, Marchesa?"
protested the _dame de la Cour_.
"A very delightful girl. But she's been spoilt. Her mother was too
lenient with her, and her goings-on are becoming a public scandal."
"Hardly that, I think," remarked the Countess. "I know the King is
pretty annoyed very often, yet he hasn't the heart to put his foot down
firmly. Even though she is of royal blood she's very human, after all."
"Her flirtations are positively disgraceful," declared the old Marchesa,
a woman of the ancient regime of exclusiveness.
Hubert laughed and said:
"I have not the pleasure of knowing Her Royal Highness--perhaps Her
Royal Naughtiness might describe her--but as one who has no knowledge of
the circumstances, I might be permitted to remark that the love that
beats in the heart of a princess is the same love as that beneath the
cotton corsets of the _femme de chambre_."
"Ah, you diplomats are incorrigible," cried the old woman with the
yellow teeth. "But the Princess Luisa is becoming a scandal. The Queen
declared to me only yesterday that she was intensely annoyed at her
niece's behaviour. Her latest escapade, it seems, has been to go to
Bologna and take part in some motor-cycle races, riding astride like a
man, and calling herself Signorina Merli. And she actually won one of
the races. She carried a passenger in a side-car, a young clerk in a
bank there, who, of course, was quite unaware of her real identity."
"Quite sporting," declared Waldron. "She evidently does not believe
much in the royal exclusiveness."
"Well, she cannot pretend that life at the Quirinale is at all dull.
Since the death of her charming mother, the Princess of Milan, she has
lived at the Palace, and must have had a very pleasant time."
"Is she pretty?" asked Waldron, interested.
"Very--and most accomplished," replied the old stiff-backed Marchesa
whose word was law in social Rome. "The House of Savoy is not
distinguished by its good looks on the female side, but the Princess
Luisa is an exception. Personally, I consider her the best-looking
among the marriageable royalties in Europe at the present moment."
"But are her indiscretions really so very dreadful?" asked the diplomat,
"or are they exaggerated?"
"Dreadful!" echoed the noble Montalcino, whose elegant attire and
carefully trained moustache were so well-known during the hour of the
_passeggiate_ in the Corso. He had been listening to the conversation.
"Why, _cara mio_," he drawled, "only the other night I saw her with her
maid sitting in the stalls at the Salone Margherita, which is, as you
know, hardly the place to which a Royal Highness should go. _Madonna
mia_! There are lots of stories about Rome of her escapades," declared
the young sprig of the nobility. "It is said she often escapes from the
Palace at night and goes long runs in her car, driving it herself.
Bindo Peruzzi found her early one morning broken down away out at
Castelnuovo, and gave her a lift back in his car. She got out at the
Porta Pia and Bindo pretended not to know who she was. I suppose she
sent her chauffeur back for the car later on."
"Rather a daring escapade for a Royal Highness," Waldron said. "But,
after all, Court life, Court etiquette, and Court exclusiveness must
bore a girl to death, if in her youth she has been used to Society, as I
suppose she had been during her mother's lifetime."
"Oh, of course one may easily make lots of excuses," shuffled the old
Marchesa. "But I feel sure the girl must be a source of great anxiety
to both Their Majesties. It would be a great relief to them if she were
to marry."
"They say she is a favourite with the King, and that he never reproves
her," exclaimed the young fellow across the table.
"Well," declared Hubert, "in any case she must be a merry, go-ahead
little person. I shall look forward to meeting her."
"Oh, no doubt you will, signore, very soon," laughed the old leader of
Society, when just at that moment the Ambassador's wife gave the signal
to rise, and the ladies passed out, the men bowing as they filed from
the room.
A quarter of an hour later when the male guests joined the ladies in the
big, handsome drawing-room overlooking the garden of the Embassy, the
Marchesa beckoned Hubert over to where she was ensconced in a corner.
"Signor Waldron," she said, "I find that Lady Cathcart has a portrait of
Princess Luisa, the young lady whom we have been discussing. Look! It
is yonder, on the table in the corner. The one in the oval silver
frame."
Hubert crossed to where she directed and there saw a large oval
photograph which he had not before noticed, for he had never
particularly examined the portraits in the room. Beneath was scrawled
in a bold Italian hand the autograph--"Luisa di Savoia."
He gazed upon the pictured, smiling face, utterly staggered.
The portrait was that of Lola!