Don Orsino | Page 4

has little political but much
social importance. It was not possible that people who had grown up
together in the intimacy of a close caste-life, calling each other "thee"
and "thou," and forming the hereditary elements of a still feudal
organisation, should suddenly break off all acquaintance and be
strangers one to another. The brother, a born and convinced clerical,
found that his own sister had followed her husband to the court of the
new King. The rigid adherent of the old order met his own son in the
street, arrayed in the garb of an Italian officer. The two friends who had
stood side by side in good and evil case for a score of years saw
themselves suddenly divided by the gulf which lies between a Roman
cardinal and a Senator of the Italian Kingdom. The breach was sudden
and great, but it was bridged for many by the invention of a fourth,
proportional. The points of contact between White and Black became
Grey, and a social power, politically neutral and constitutionally
indifferent, arose as a mediator between the Contents and the
Malcontents. There were families that had never loved the old order but
which distinctly disliked the new, and who opened their doors to the
adherents of both. There is a house which has become Grey out of a
sort of superstition inspired by the unfortunate circumstances which
oddly coincided with each movement of its members to join the new
order. There is another, and one of the greatest, in which a very high
hereditary dignity in the one party, still exercised by force of
circumstances, effectually forbids the expression of a sincere sympathy
with the opposed power. Another there is, whose members are cousins
of the one sovereign and personal friends of the other.
A further means of amalgamation has been found in the existence of
the double embassies of the great powers. Austria, France and Spain
each send an Ambassador to the King of Italy and an Ambassador to
the Pope, of like state and importance. Even Protestant Prussia
maintains a Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See. Russia has her
diplomatic agent to the Vatican, and several of the smaller powers keep
up two distinct legations. It is naturally neither possible nor intended

that these diplomatists should never meet on friendly terms, though
they are strictly interdicted from issuing official invitations to each
other. Their point of contact is another grey square on the chess-board.
The foreigner, too, is generally a neutral individual, for if his political
convictions lean towards the wrong side of the Tiber his social tastes
incline to Court balls; or if he is an admirer of Italian institutions, his
curiosity may yet lead him to seek a presentation at the Vatican, and his
inexplicable though recent love of feudal princedom may take him,
card-case in hand, to that great stronghold of Vaticanism which lies due
west of the Piazza di Venezia and due north of the Capitol.
During the early years which followed the change, the attitude of
society in Rome was that of protest and indignation on the one hand, of
enthusiasm and rather brutally expressed triumph on the other. The line
was very clearly drawn, for the adherence was of the nature of personal
loyalty on both sides. Eight years and a half later the personal feeling
disappeared with the almost simultaneous death of Pius IX. and Victor
Emmanuel II. From that time the great strife degenerated by degrees
into a difference of opinion. It may perhaps be said also that both
parties became aware of their common enemy, the social democrat,
soon after the disappearance of the popular King whose great
individual influence was of more value to the cause of a united
monarchy than all the political clubs and organisations in Italy put
together. He was a strong man. He only once, I think, yielded to the
pressure of a popular excitement, namely, in the matter of seizing
Rome when the French troops were withdrawn, thereby violating a
ratified Treaty. But his position was a hard one. He regretted the
apparent necessity, and to the day of his death he never would sleep
under the roof of Pius the Ninth's Palace on the Quirinal, but had his
private apartments in an adjoining building. He was brave and generous.
Such faults as he had were no burden to the nation and concerned
himself alone. The same praise may be worthily bestowed upon his
successor, but the personal influence is no longer the same, any more
than that of Leo XIII. can be compared with that of Pius IX., though all
the world is aware of the present Pope's intellectual superiority and
lofty moral principle.

Let us try to be just. The unification of Italy has been the result of a