All the public squares seemed to be full of motley, ill-clad,

ill-nourished, but formidable multitudes. Towards evening the tradesmen

began to shut up their shops, and a regiment of cavalry paraded the

principal streets with a band that played the royal march.

Meantime, the leader, to whom thousands were looking up, was miserable

and alone. He had cried "Peace," but the perils of protest were so many

and so near. A blow, a push, a quarrel at a street corner, and God knows

what might happen!

Elena came with his coffee. The timid creature kept looking at him out

of her liquid eyes as if struggling with a desire to speak, but when she

did so it was only on indifferent subjects.

Bruno had got up with a headache and gone off to work. Little Joseph was

very trying this morning, and she had threatened to whip him.

Her father had been upstairs to say that countless people were asking

for the Deputy, and he wished to know if anybody was to come up.

"Tell him I wish to be quite alone to-day," said Rossi, and then the

soft voice ceased, and the timid creature went out with a guilty look.

Like a man who is going on a long and perilous journey, David Rossi

spent the morning in arranging his affairs. He looked over his letters

and destroyed most of them. The letters from Roma were hard to burn, but

he read each of them again, as if trying to stamp their words and

characters on his brain, and with a deep sigh he committed them to the

flames.

It was twelve o'clock by this time, and Francesca, in her red cotton

handkerchief, brought up his lunch. The good old thing looked at him

with a comical expression of pity on her wrinkled face, and he knew that

Bruno had told his story.

"Come now, my son! Put away your papers and get something on your

stomach. People eat even if they're going to the gallows, you know."

After lunch Rossi called upstairs for Joseph, and the shock-headed

little cub was brought down, with his wet eyes twinkling and his petted

lip beginning to smile.

"Joseph has been naughty, Uncle David," said Elena. "He is crying for

the clothes Donna Roma gave him, and he says he must go out because it

is his birthday."

"Does a man cry when he is seven?" said Uncle David.

Thereupon Joseph, keeping his eyes upon his mother, whispered something

in Uncle David's ear, and straightway the gorgeous garments were

produced.




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