"If any thoughts of mine are great, they are so because you are the mainspring of them," he answered.

"Will it always be so?" she asked. "You will be a very great man some day, Giovanni; will you always feel that I am something to you?"

"Always--more than anything to me, more than all of me together."

"I sometimes wonder," said Corona. "I think I understand you better than I used to do. I like to think that you feel how I understand you when you tell me anything. Of course I am not clever like you, but I love you so much that just while you are talking I seem to understand everything. It is like a flash of light in a dark room."

Giovanni kissed her again.

"What makes you think that I shall be great, Corona? n.o.body ever thinks I am even clever. My father would laugh at you, and say it is quite enough greatness to be born a Saracinesca. What makes you think it?"

Corona stood up beside him and laid her delicate hand upon his thick, close-cut black hair, and gazed into his eyes.

"I know it," she said. "I know it, because I love you so. A man like you must be great. There is something in you that n.o.body guesses but I, that will amaze people some day--I know it."

"I wonder if you could tell me what it is? I wonder if it is really there at all?" said Giovanni.

"It is ambition," said Corona, gravely. "You are the most ambitious man I ever knew, and n.o.body has found it out."

"I believe it is true, Corona," said Giovanni, turning away and leaning upon the chimneypiece, his head supported on one hand. "I believe you are right. I am ambitious: if I only had the brains that some men have I would do great things."

"You are wrong, Giovanni. It is neither brains nor ambition nor strength that you lack--it is opportunity."

"They say that a man who has anything in him creates opportunities for himself," answered Giovanni, rather sadly. "I fear it is because I really have nothing in me that I can do nothing. It sometimes makes me very unhappy to think so. I suppose that is because my vanity is wounded."

"Do not talk like that," said Corona. "You have vanity, of course, but it is of the large kind, and I call it ambition. It is not only because I love you better than any man was ever loved before that I say that. It is that I know it instinctively I have heard you say that these are unsettled times. Wait; your opportunity will come, as it came often to your forefathers in other centuries."

"I hardly think that their example is a good one," replied Giovanni, with a smile.

"They generally did something remarkable in remarkable times," said Corona. "You will do the same. Your father, for instance, would not."

"He is far more clever than I," objected Giovanni.

"Clever! It pa.s.ses for cleverness. He is quick, active, a good talker, a man with a ready wit and a sharp answer--kind-hearted when the fancy takes him, cruel when he is so disposed--but not a man of great convictions or of great actions. You are very different from him."

"Will you draw my portrait, Corona?" asked Giovanni.

"As far as I know you. You are a man quick to think and slow to make a decision. You are not brilliant in conversation--you see I do not flatter you; I am just. You have the very remarkable quality of growing cold when others grow hot, and of keeping the full use of your faculties in any situation. When you have made a decision, you cannot be moved from it; but you are open to conviction in argument. You have a great repose of manner, which conceals a very restless brain. All your pa.s.sions are very strong. You never forgive, never forget, and scarcely ever repent.

Beneath all, you have an untamable ambition which has not yet found its proper field. Those are your qualities--and I love them all, and you more than them all."

Corona finished her speech by throwing her arms round his neck, and breaking into a happy laugh as she buried her face upon his shoulder. No one who saw her in the world would have believed her capable of those sudden and violent demonstrations--she was thought so very cold.

When Giovanni reached home, he was informed that his father had left Rome an hour earlier by the train for Terni, leaving word that he had gone to Aquila.

CHAPTER XXIX.

In those days the railroad did not extend beyond Terni in the direction of Aquila, and it was necessary to perform the journey of forty miles between those towns by diligence. It was late in the afternoon of the next day before the c.u.mbrous coach rolled up to the door of the Locanda del Sole in Aquila, and Prince Saracinesca found himself at his destination. The red evening sun gilded the snow of the Gran Sa.s.so d'Italia, the huge domed mountain that towers above the city of Frederick. The city itself had long been in the shade, and the spring air was sharp and biting. Saracinesca deposited his slender luggage with the portly landlord, said he would return for supper in half an hour, and inquired the way to the church of San Bernardino da Siena. There was no difficulty in finding it, at the end of the Corso--the inevitable "Corso" of every Italian town. The old gentleman walked briskly along the broad, clean street, and reached the door of the church just as the sacristan was hoisting the heavy leathern curtain, preparatory to locking up for the night.

"Where can I find the Padre Curato?" inquired the Prince. The man looked at him but made no answer, and proceeded to close the doors with great care. He was an old man in a shabby ca.s.sock, with four days' beard on his face, and he appeared to have taken snuff recently.

"Where is the Curator?" repeated the Prince, plucking him by the sleeve.

But the man shook his head, and began turning the ponderous key in the lock. Two little ragged boys were playing a game upon the church steps, piling five chestnuts in a heap and then knocking them down with a small stone. One of them having upset the heap, desisted and came near the Prince.

"That one is deaf," he said, pointing to the sacristan. Then running behind, him he stood on tiptoe and screamed in his ear--"_Brutta bestia_!"

The sacristan did not hear, but caught sight of the urchin and made a lunge at him. He missed him, however, and nearly fell over.

"What education!--_che educazione_!" cried the old man, angrily.

Meanwhile the little boy took refuge behind Saracinesca, and pulling his coat asked for a _soldo_. The sacristan calmly withdrew the key from the lock, and went away without vouchsafing a look to the Prince.

"He is deaf," screamed the little boy, who was now joined by his companion, and both in great excitement danced round the fine gentleman.

"Give me a _soldo_," they yelled together.

"Show me the house of the Padre Curato," answered the Prince, "then I will give you each a _soldo. Lesti!_ Quick!"

Whereupon both the boys began turning cart-wheels on their feet and hands with marvellous dexterity. At last they subsided into a natural position, and led the way to the curate's house, not twenty yards from the church, in a narrow alley. The Prince pulled the bell by the long chain which hung beside the open street door, and gave the boys the promised coppers.

They did not leave him, however, but stood by to see what would happen.

An old woman looked out of an upper window, and after surveying the Prince with care, called down to him--

"What do you want?"

"Is the Padre Curato at home?"

"Of course he is at home," screamed the old woman, "At this hour!" she added, contemptuously.

"_Ebbene_--can I see him?"

"What! is the door shut?" returned the hag.

"No."

"Then why don't you come up without asking?" The old woman's head disappeared, and the window was shut with a clattering noise.

"She is a woman without education," remarked one of the ragged boys, making a face towards the closed window.

The Prince entered the door and stumbled up the dark stairs, and after some further palaver obtained admittance to the curate's lodging. The curate sat in a room which appeared to serve as dining-room, living-room, and study. A small table was spread with a clean cloth, upon which were arranged a plate, a loaf of bread, a battered spoon, a knife, and a small measure of thin-looking wine. A bra.s.s lamp with three wicks, one of which only was burning, shed a feeble light through the poor apartment. Against the wall stood a rough table with an inkstand and three or four mouldy books. Above this hung a little black cross bearing a bra.s.s Christ, and above this again a coloured print of San Bernardino of Siena. The walls were whitewashed, and perfectly clean,--as indeed was everything else in the room,--and there was a sweet smell of flowers from a huge pot of pinks which had been taken in for the night, and stood upon the stone sill within the closed window.

The curate was a tall old man, with a singularly gentle face and soft brown eyes. He wore a threadbare ca.s.sock, carefully brushed; and from beneath his three-cornered black cap his thin hair hung in a straight grey fringe. As the Prince entered the room, the old woman called over his shoulder to the priest an uncertain formula of introduction.

"Don Paolo, _c'e uno_--there is one." Then she retired, grumbling audibly.

The priest removed his cap, and bowing politely, offered one of the two chairs to his visitor. With an apology, he replaced his cap upon his head, and seated himself opposite the Prince. There was much courteous simplicity in his manner.