"Thanks! Meantime can I send a message into the prison?"

"Yes."

"And may I pay for a separate cell for a prisoner, with food and light,

if necessary?"

"Undoubtedly."

Roma undertook the expense of these privileges and then scribbled a note

to Bruno.

"DEAR FRIEND,--Don't lose heart! Your dear ones shall be cared for

and comforted. He whom you love is safe and your darling is in

heaven. Sleep well! These days will pass.

"R. V."

III

That night Roma wrote the first part of a letter to David Rossi:

"David--my David! It is early days to call you by a dearer name,

but the sweet word is on the tip of my pen, and I can hardly help

myself from scribbling it. You wished me to tell you what is

happening in Rome, and here I am beginning to write already,

though when and how and where this letter is to reach you, I must

leave it to Fate and to yourself to determine. Fancy! Only

eighteen hours since we parted! It seems inconceivable! I feel as

if I had lived a lifetime.

"Do you know, I did not go to bed when you left me. I had so many

things to think about. And, tired as I was, I slept little, and

was up early. The morning dawned beautifully. It was perfectly

tragic. So bright and sunny after that night of slaughter. No

rattle of cars, no tinkle of trams, no calls of the water-carriers

and of the pedlars in the streets. It was for all the world like

that awful quiet of the sea the morning after a tempest, with the

sun on its placid surface and not a hint of the wrecks beneath.

"I remembered what you said about Elena, and went down to see her.

The poor girl has just parted with her dead child. She did it with

a brave heart, God pity her! taking comfort in the Blessed Virgin,

as the mother in heaven who knows all our sorrows and asks God to

heal them. Ah, what a sweet thing it must be to believe that! Do

you believe it?"

Here she wanted to say something about her great secret. She

tried, but she could not do it.

"I couldn't see Bruno to-day, but I hope to do so to-morrow, and

meantime I have ordered food to be supplied to him. If I could

only do something to some purpose! But five hundred of your

friends are in Regina C[oe]li, and my poor little efforts are a drop

of water in a mighty ocean.




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