The Eternal City | Page 9

a pair of thoroughbreds in the Corso every afternoon, and threatens to buy an automobile."
"Has debts enough to sink a ship, but floats through life as if she had never known what it was to be poor."
"And has she?"
The voices from behind the curtained door were louder than usual at that moment, and the young Roman drew his chair closer.
"Donna Roma, dear sir, was the only child of Prince Volonna. Nobody mentions him now, so speak of him in a whisper. The Volonnas were an old papal family, holding office in the Pope's household, but the young Prince of the house was a Liberal, and his youth was cast in the stormy days of the middle of the century. As a son of the revolution he was expelled from Rome for conspiracy against the papal Government, and when the Pope went out and the King came in, he was still a republican, conspiring against the reigning sovereign, and, as such, a rebel. Meanwhile he had wandered over Europe, going from Geneva to Berlin, from Berlin to Paris. Finally he took refuge in London, the home of all the homeless, and there he was lost and forgotten. Some say he practised as a doctor, passing under another name; others say that he spent his life as a poor man in your Italian quarter of Soho, nursing rebellion among the exiles from his own country. Only one thing is certain: late in life he came back to Italy as a conspirator--enticed back, his friends say--was arrested on a charge of attempted regicide, and deported to the island of Elba without a word of public report or trial."
"Domicilio Coatto--a devilish and insane device," said the American Ambassador.
"Was that the fate of Prince Volonna?"
"Just so," said the Roman. "But ten or twelve years after he disappeared from the scene a beautiful girl was brought to Rome and presented as his daughter."
"Donna Roma?"
"Yes. It turned out that the Baron was a kinsman of the refugee, and going to London he discovered that the Prince had married an English wife during the period of his exile, and left a friendless daughter. Out of pity for a great name he undertook the guardianship of the girl, sent her to school in France, finally brought her to Rome, and established her in an apartment on the Trinit�� de' Monti, under the care of an old aunt, poor as herself, and once a great coquette, but now a faded rose which has long since seen its June."
"And then?"
"Then? Ah, who shall say what then, dear friend? We can only judge by what appears--Donna Roma's elegant figure, dressed in silk by the best milliners Paris can provide, queening it over half the women of Rome."
"And now her aunt is conveniently bedridden," said the little Princess, "and she goes about alone like an Englishwoman; and to account for her extravagance, while everybody knows her father's estate was confiscated, she is by way of being a sculptor, and has set up a gorgeous studio, full of nymphs and cupids and limbs."
"And all by virtue of--what?" said the Englishman.
"By virtue of being--the good friend of the Baron Bonelli!"
"Meaning by that?"
"Nothing--and everything!" said the Princess with another trill of laughter.
"In Rome, dear friend," said Don Camillo, "a woman can do anything she likes as long as she can keep people from talking about her."
"Oh, you never do that apparently," said the Englishman. "But why doesn't the Baron make her a Baroness and have done with the danger?"
"Because the Baron has a Baroness already."
"A wife living?"
"Living and yet dead--an imbecile, a maniac, twenty years a prisoner in his castle in the Alban hills."
IV
The curtain parted over the inner doorway, and three gentlemen came out. The first was a tall, spare man, about fifty years of age, with an intellectual head, features cut clear and hard like granite, glittering eyes under overhanging brows, black moustaches turned up at the ends, and iron-grey hair cropped very short over a high forehead. It was the Baron Bonelli.
One of the two men with him had a face which looked as if it had been carved by a sword or an adze, good and honest but blunt and rugged; and the other had a long, narrow head, like the head of a hen--a lanky person with a certain mixture of arrogance and servility in his expression.
The company rose from their places in the Loggia, and there were greetings and introductions.
"Sir Evelyn Wise, gentlemen, the new British Ambassador--General Morra, our Minister of War; Commendatore Angelelli, our Chief of Police. A thousand apologies, ladies! A Minister of the Interior is one of the human atoms that live from minute to minute and are always at the mercy of events. You must excuse the Commendatore, gentlemen; he has urgent duties outside."
The Prime Minister