It was the fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up
moustache, who had stood by the old Frenchman's carriage in the Piazza
of St. Peter.
"I wish to speak with Mr. Rossi. I bring him an important message from
abroad. He is coming along with the people, but to make sure of an
interview I hurried ahead. May I wait?"
"Certainly! Come in, sir! You say he is coming? Yes? Then he is free?"
The woman's liquid eyes were glistening visibly, and the man's watchful
ones seemed to notice everything.
"Yes, madam, he is free. I saw him arrested, and I also saw him set at
liberty."
"Really? Then you can tell me all about it? That's good! I have heard so
little of all that happened, and my boy and I have not been able to
think of anything else. Sit down, sir!"
"As the police were taking him to the station-house in the Borgo," said
the stranger, "the people made an attempt to rescue him, and it seemed
as if they must certainly have succeeded if it had not been for his own
intervention."
"He stopped them, didn't he? I'm sure he stopped them!"
"He did. The delegate had given his three warnings, and the Brigadier
was on the point of ordering his men to fire, when the prisoner threw up
his hands before the crowd."
"I knew it! Well?"
"'Brothers,' he said, 'let no blood be shed for my sake. We are in God's
hands. Go home!'"
"How like him! And then, sir?"
"Then the crowd broke up like a bubble, and the officer who was in
charge of him uncovered his head. 'Room for the Honourable Rossi!' he
cried, and the prisoner went into the prison."
The liquid eyes were running over by this time, and the soft voice was
trembling: "You say you saw him set at liberty?"
"Yes! I was in the public service myself until lately, so they allowed
me to enter the police station, and when the order for release came I
was present and heard all. 'Deputy,' said the officer, 'I have the
honour to inform you that you are free.' 'But before I go I must say
something,' said the Deputy. 'My only orders are that you are to be set
at liberty,' said the officer. 'Nevertheless, I must see the Minister,'
said Mr. Rossi. But the crowd had pressed in and surrounded him, and in
a moment the flood had carried him out into the street, with shouts and
the waving of hats and a whirlwind of enthusiasm. And now he is being
drawn by force through the city in a mad, glad, wild procession."
"But he deserves it all, and more--far, far more!"
The stranger looked at the woman's beaming eyes, and said, "You are not
his wife--no?"
"Oh, no! I'm only the wife of one of his friends," she answered.
"But you live here?"
"We live in the rooms on the roof."
"Perhaps you keep house for the Deputy?"
"Yes--that is to say--yes, we keep house for Mr. Rossi."
At that moment the room, which had been gloomy, was suddenly lighted by
a shaft of sunshine, and there came from some unseen place a musical
noise like the rippling of waters in a fountain.
"It's the birds," said the woman, and she threw open a window that was
also a door and led to a flat roof on which some twenty or thirty
canaries were piping and shrilling their little swollen throats in a
gigantic bird-cage.
"Mr. Rossi's?"
"Yes, and he is fond of animals also--dogs and cats and rabbits and
squirrels, especially squirrels."
"Squirrels?"
"He has a grey one in a cage on the roof now. But he is not like some
people who love animals--he loves children, too. He loves all children,
and as for Joseph...."
"The little boy who cried 'Uncle David' at the door?"
"Yes, sir. One day my husband said 'Uncle David' to Mr. Rossi, and he
has been Uncle David to my little Joseph ever since."
"This is the dining-room, no doubt," said the stranger.
"Unfortunately, yes, sir."
"Why unfortunately?"
"Because here is the hall, and here is the table, and there's not even a
curtain between, and the moment the door is opened he is exposed to
everybody. People know it, too, and they take advantage. He would give
the chicken off his plate if he hadn't anything else. I have to scold
him a little sometimes--I can't help it. And as for father, he says he
has doubled his days in purgatory by the lies he tells, turning people
away."
"That will be his bedroom, I suppose," said the stranger, indicating a
door which the boy had passed through.
"No, sir, his sitting-room. That is where he receives his colleagues in
Parliament, and his fellow-journalists, and his electors and printers
and so forth. Come in, sir."
The walls were covered with portraits of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth,
Lincoln, Washington, and Cromwell, and the room, which had been
furnished originally with chairs covered in chintz, was loaded with
incongruous furniture.
"Joseph, you've been naughty again! My little boy is all for being a
porter, sir. He has got the butt-end of his father's fishing-rod, you
see, and torn his handkerchief into shreds to make a tassel for his
mace." Then with a sweep of the arm, "All presents, sir. He gets
presents from all parts of the world. The piano is from England, but
nobody plays, so it is never opened; the books are from Germany, and the
bronze is from France, but the strangest thing of all, sir, is this."
"A phonograph?"
"It was most extraordinary. A week ago a cylinder came from the island
of Elba."
"Elba? From some prisoner, perhaps?"
"'A dying man's message,' Mr. Rossi called it. 'We must save up for an
instrument to reproduce it, Sister,' he said. But, look you, the very
next day the carriers brought the phonograph."
"And then he reproduced the message?"
"I don't know--I never asked. He often turns on a cylinder to amuse the
boy, but I never knew him try that one. This is the bedroom, sir; you
may come in."
It was a narrow room, very bright and lightsome, with its white
counterpane, white bed curtains, and white veil over the looking-glass
to keep it from the flies.
"How sweet!" said the stranger.
"It would be but for these," said the woman, and she pointed to the
other end of the room, where a desk stood between two windows, amid
heaps of unopened newspapers, which lay like fishes as they fall from
the herring net.
"I presume this is a present also?" said the stranger. He had taken from
the desk a dagger with a lapis-lazuli handle, and was trying its edge on
his finger-nail.
"Yes, sir, and he has turned it to account as a paper-knife. A
six-chamber revolver came yesterday, but he had no use for that, so he
threw it aside, and it lies under the newspapers."
"And who is this?" said the stranger. He was looking at a faded picture
in an ebony frame which hung by the side of the bed. It was the portrait
of an old man with a beautiful forehead and a patriarchal face.
"Some friend of Mr. Rossi's in England, I think."
"An English photograph, certainly, but the face seems to me Roman for
all that."
At that moment a thousand lusty voices burst on the air, as a great
crowd came pouring out of the narrow lanes into the broad piazza. At
the same instant the boy shouted from the adjoining room, and another
voice that made the walls vibrate came from the direction of the door.
"They're coming! It's my husband! Bruno!" said the woman, and the ripple
of her dress told the stranger she had gone.