By the first post next morning "Sister Angelica" received a letter from
David Rossi.
"Dearest,--Your budget arrived safely and brought me great joy and
perhaps a little sadness. Apart from the pain I always suffer when
I think of our poor people, there was a little twinge as I read
between the lines of your letter. Are you not dissimulating some
of your happiness to keep up my spirits and to prevent me from
rushing back to you at all hazards? You shall be really happy some
day, my dear one. I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did
on that glorious day in the Campagna. Wait, only wait! We are
still young and we shall live.
"Pray for me, my heart, that what my hand is doing may not be done
amiss. I am working day and night. Meetings, committees,
correspondence early and late. A great scheme is afoot, dearest,
and you shall hear all about it presently. I am proud that I
judged rightly of the moral grandeur of your nature, and that it
is possible to tell you everything.
"We have elected a centre of action and mapped out our
organisation. Everybody agrees with me on the necessity for united
action. Europe seems to be ready for a complete change, but the
first great act must be done in Rome. I find encouragement
everywhere. The brotherly union of the peoples is going on. A
power stronger than brute force is sweeping through the world.
"Poor Bruno! You are no doubt right that pressure is being put
upon him to betray me. It is not for myself only that I am
troubled. It would be a lasting grief to me if his mind were
poisoned. Charles Minghelli being in prison in the disguise of a
prisoner means that anything may happen. When the man came to me
after his dismissal in London, it was to ask help to assassinate
the Baron. I refused it, and he went over to the other side. The
secret tribunal in which cases are prepared for public trial is a
hellish machine for cruelty and injustice. It has been abolished
in nearly every other civilised country, but the courts and jails
of our beautiful Italy continue to be the scene of plots in which
helpless unfortunates are terrorised by expedients which leave not
a trace of crime. A prisoner is no longer a man, but a human agent
to incriminate others. His soul is corrupted, and a price is put
upon treachery. See Bruno yourself if you can, and save him from
himself and the people whose only occupation in life is to secure
convictions.
"And now, as to your friend. Comfort her. The poor girl is no more
guilty than if a traction engine had run over her or a wild beast
had broken on her out of his cage. She must not torture herself
any longer. It is not right, it is not good. Our body is not the
only part of use that is subject to diseases, and you must save
her from a disease of the soul.
"As to whether she should tell her husband, I can have but one
opinion. I say, Yes, by all means. In the court of conscience the
sin, where it exists, is not wholly or mainly in the act. That has
been pardoned in secret as well as in public. God pardoned it in
David. Christ pardoned it in the woman of Jerusalem. But the
concealment, the lying and duplicity, these cannot be pardoned
until they have been confessed.
"Another point, which your pure mind, dearest, has never thought
of. There is the other man. Think of the power he holds over your
friend. If he still wishes to possess her in spite of herself, he
may intimidate her, he may threaten to reveal all to her husband.
This would make her miserable, and perhaps in the long run, her
will being broken, it might even make her yield. Or the man may
really tell her husband in order to insult and outrage both of
them. _If he does so, where is she? Is her husband to believe her
story then?_
"To meet these dangers let her speak out now. Let her trust her
husband's love and tell him everything. If he is a man he will
think, 'Only her purity has prompted her to tell me,' and he will
love her more than ever. Some momentary spasm he may feel. Every
man wishes to believe that the flower he plucks is flawless. But
his higher nature will conquer his vanity and he will say, 'She
loves me, I love her, she is innocent, and if any blow is to be
struck at her it must go through me.'
"My love to you, dearest. Your friend must be a true woman, and it
was very sweet of you to be so tender with her. It was noble of
you to be severe with her too, and to make her go through
purgatorial fires. That is what good women always do with the
injured of their own sex. It is a kind of pledge and badge of
their purity, and it is a safeguard and shield, whatever the
unthinking may say. I love you for your severity to the poor
soiled dove, my dear one, just as much as I love you for your
tenderness. It shows me how rightly I judged the moral elevation
of your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and heart of
gold. Until we meet again, my darling, D. R."