"Well?"

"Well, I will find it all out for you."

"My dear Roma!"

"Leave him to me, and within a month you shall know"--she laughed, a little ashamed--"the inmost secrets of his soul."

She was walking to and fro again, to prevent the Baron from looking into her face, which was now red over its white, like a rose moon in a stormy sky.

The Baron thought. "She is going to humble the man by her charms--to draw him on and then fling him away, and thus pay him back for what he has done to-day. So much the better for me if I may stand by and do nothing. A strong Minister should be unmoved by personal attacks. He should appear to regard them with contempt."

He looked at her, and the brilliancy of her eyes set his heart on fire.

The terrible attraction of her face at that moment stirred in him the only love he had for her. At the same time it awakened the first spasm of jealousy.

"I understand you, Roma," he said. "You are splendid! You are irresistible! But remember--the man is one of the incorruptible."

She laughed.

"No woman who has yet crossed his path seems to have touched him, and it is the pride of all such men that no woman ever can."

"I've seen him," she said.

"Take care! As you say, he is young and handsome."

She tossed her head and laughed again.

The Baron thought: "Certainly he has wounded her in a way no woman can forgive."

"And what about Bruno?" he said.

"He shall stay," she answered. "Such men are easy enough to manage."

"You wish me to liberate David Rossi and leave you to deal with him?"

"I do! Oh, for the day when I can turn the laugh against him as he has turned the laugh against me! At the top of his hopes, at the height of his ambitions, at the moment when he says to himself, 'It is done'--he shall fall."

The Baron touched the bell. "Very well!" he said. "One can sometimes catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hogshead of vinegar. We shall see."

A moment later the Chief of Police entered the room. "The Honourable Rossi is safely lodged in prison," he said.

"Commendatore," said the Baron, pointing to the book lying open on the table, "I have been looking again at the statute, and now I am satisfied that a Deputy can be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament alone."

"But, Excellency, if he is taken in the act, according to the forty-fifth article, the parliamentary immunity ceases."

"Commendatore, I have given you my opinion, and now it is my wish that the Honourable David Rossi should be set at liberty."

"Excellency!"

"Be so good as to liberate him instantly, and let your officers see him safely through the streets to his home in the Piazza Navona."

The little head like a hen's went down like a hatchet, and Commendatore Angelelli backed out of the room.

PART TWO--THE REPUBLIC OF MAN

I

The Piazza Navona is the heart and soul of old Rome. In other quarters of the living city you feel tempted to ask: "Is this London?" or, "Is this Paris?" or, "Is this New York or Berlin?" but in the Piazza Navona you can only tell yourself, "This is Rome!"

In an apartment-house of the Piazza Navona, David Rossi had lived during the seven years since he became Member of Parliament for Rome. The ground floor is a Trattoria, half eating-house and half wine-shop, with rude frescoes on its distempered walls, representing the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius in eruption. A passage running by the side of the Trattoria leads to the apartments overhead, and at the foot of the staircase there is a porter's lodge, a closet always lighted by a lamp, which burns down the dark passage day and night, like a bloodshot eye.

In this lodge lived a veteran Garibaldian, in his red shirt and pork-pie hat, with his old wife, wrinkled like a turkey, and wearing a red handkerchief over her head, fastened by a silver pin. David Rossi's apartments consisted of three rooms on the fourth floor, two to the front, the third to the back, and a lead flat opening out of them on to the roof.

In one of the front rooms on the afternoon of the Pope's Jubilee, a young woman sat knitting with an open book on her lap, while a boy of six knelt by her side, and pretended to learn his lesson. She was a comely but timid creature, with liquid eyes and a soft voice, and he was a shock-headed little giant, like the cub of a young lion.

"Go on, Joseph," said the woman, pointing with her knitting-needle to the line on the page. "'And it came to pass....'"

But Joseph's little eyes were peering first at the clock on the mantel-piece, and then out at the window and down the square.

"Didn't you say they were to be here at two, mamma?"

"Yes, dear. Mr. Rossi was to be set free immediately, and papa, who ran home with the good news, has gone back to fetch him."

"Oh! 'And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came unto her, and said unto her, Entice him and see wherein his great strength lieth....' But, mamma...."

"Go on with your lesson, Joseph. 'And she made him sleep....'"

"'And she made him sleep upon her knees, and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head....'"

At that moment there came a knock at the door, whereupon the boy uttered a cry of delight, and with a radiant face went plunging and shouting out of the room.

"Uncle David! It's Uncle David!"

The tumultuous voice rolled like baby thunder through the apartment until it reached the door, and then it dropped to a dead silence.

"Who is it, Joseph?"

"A gentleman," said the boy.

II

It was the fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up moustache, who had stood by the old Frenchman's carriage in the Piazza of St. Peter.