"DEAREST,--Your letter to Sister Angelica arrived safely, and
worked more miracles in her cloistered heart than ever happened to
the 'Blessed Bambino.' Before it came I was always thinking,
'Where is he now? Is he having his breakfast? Or is it dinner,
according to the difference of time and longitude?' All I knew was
that you had travelled north, and though the sun doesn't
ordinarily set in that direction, the sky over Monte Mario used to
glow for my special pleasure like the gates of the New Jerusalem.
"Your letters are so precious that I will ask you not to fill them
with useless things. Don't tell me to love you. The idea! Didn't I
say I should think of you always? I do! I think of you when I go
to bed at night, and that is like opening a jewel-case in the
moonlight. I think of you when I am asleep, and that is like an
invisible bridge which unites us in our dreams; and I think of you
when I wake in the morning, and that is like a cage of song-birds
that sing in my breast the whole day long.
"But you are dying to hear what is really happening in Rome, so
your own special envoy must send off her budget as a set-off
against those official telegrams. 'Not a day with out a line,' so
my letter will look like words shaken out of a literary pepper-box.
Let me bring my despatches up to date.
"Military rule severer than ever, and poverty and misery on all
sides. Families of reserve soldiers starving, and meetings of
chief citizens to succour them. Donation from the King and from
the 'Black' Charity Circle of St. Peter. Even the clergy are
sending francs, so none can question their sincerity. Bureau of
Labour besieged by men out of work, and offices occupied by
Carabineers. People eating maize in polenta and granturco with the
certainty of sickness to follow. Red Cross Society organised as in
time of war, and many sick and wounded hidden in houses.
"And now for more personal matters. The proclamation is in hand,
and paid for, and will be posted first thing in the morning. From
the printer's I went on to the Piazza Navona and found a
wilderness of woe. Elena has gone away, leaving an ambiguous
letter behind her, saying that she wished her Madonna to be given
to me, as she would have no need of it in the place she was going
to. This led the old people to believe that for the loss of her
son and husband she had become demented and had destroyed herself.
I pretended to think differently, and warned them to say nothing
of their daughter's disappearance, thinking that Bruno might hear
of it, and find food for still further suspicions.
"Lawyer Napoleon F. has seen the poor soul again, and been here
this evening to tell me the result. It will seem to you
incredible. Bruno will do nothing to help in his own defence.
Talks of 'treachery' and the 'King's pardon.' Napoleon F. thinks
the Camorra is at work with him, and tells how criminals in the
prisons of Italy have a league of crime, with captains, corporals,
and cadets. My own reading of the mystery is different. I think
the Camorra in this case is the Council, and the only design is to
entrap by treachery one of the 'greater delinquents not in
custody.' I want to find out where Charles Minghelli is at
present. Nobody seems to know.
"As for me, what do you suppose is my last performance? I've sold
my jewels! Yesterday I sent for one of the _strozzini_, and the
old Shylock came this evening and cheated me unmercifully. No
matter! What do I want with jewellery, or a fine house, and
servants to follow me about as if I were a Cardinal? If _you_ can
do without them so can I. But you need not say you are anxious
about what is happening to me. I'm as happy as the day is long. I
am happy because I love you, and that is everything.
"Only one thing troubles me--the grief of the poor girl I told you
of. She follows me about, and is here all the time, so that I feel
as if I were possessed by her secret. In fact, I'm afraid I'll
blab it out to somebody. I think you would be sorry to see her.
She tries to persuade herself that because her soul did not
consent she was really not to blame. That is the thing that women
are always saying, isn't it? They draw this distinction when it is
too late, and use it as a quibble to gloss over their fault. Oh, I
gave it her! I told her she should have thought of that in time,
and died rather than yield. It was all very fine to talk of a
minute of weakness--mere weakness of bodily will, not of virtue,
but the world splits no straws of that sort. If a woman has fallen
she has fallen, and there is no question of body or soul.
"Oh dear, how she cried! When I caught sight of her red eyes, I
felt she ought to get herself forgiven. And after all I'm not so
sure that she should tell her husband, seeing that it would so
shock and hurt him. She thinks that after one has done wrong the
best thing to do next is to say nothing about it. There _is_
something in that, isn't there?
"One thing I must say for the poor girl--she has been a different
woman since this happened. It has converted her. That's a shocking
thing to say, but it's true. I remember that when I was a girl in
the convent, and didn't go to mass because I hadn't been baptized
and it was agreed with the Baron that I shouldn't be, I used to
read in the Lives of the Saints that the darkest moments of 'the
drunkenness of sin' were the instants of salvation. Who knows?
Perhaps the very fact by which the world usually stamps a woman as
bad is in this case the fact of her conversion. As for my friend,
she used to be the vainest young thing in Rome, and now she cares
nothing for the world and its vanities.
"Two days hence my letter will fall into your hands--why can't I
do so too? Love me always. That will lift me up to your own level,
and prove that when you fell in love with me love wasn't quite
blind. I'm not so old and ugly as I was yesterday, and at all
events nobody could love you more. Good-night! I open my window to
say my last good-night to the stars over Monte Mario, for that's
where England is! How bright they are to-night! How beautiful!
ROMA."