"But, oh dear! how stupid the world is! People thought because I

was selling what I didn't want I must be done. You would have

laughed to hear their commentaries. To tell you the truth, I was

so silly that I could have cried, but just at the moment when I

felt a wee bit badly, down came your telegram like an angel from

Heaven--and what do you think I did? The old Adam, or say the new

Eve, took possession of me, and the minute the people were gone I

hired a cab--a common garden cab, Roman variety, with a horse on

its last legs and a driver in ragged tweeds--and drove off to the

Pincio! I wanted to show those fine folk that I wasn't done, and

I did! They were all there, my dear friends and former

flatterers--every one of them who has haunted my house for years,

asking for this favour or that, and paying me in the coin of

sweetest smiles. It seemed as if fate had gathered them all

together for my personal inspection and wouldn't let a creature

escape.

"Did they see me? Not a soul of them! I drove through them and

between them, and they bowed across and before and behind me, and

I might have been as invisible as Asmodeus for all the

consciousness they betrayed of my presence. Was I humiliated?

Confused? Crushed? Oh, dear no! I was proud. I knew the day would

come, the day was near, when they must try to forget all this and

to persuade themselves it had never been, when for my own sake,

even mine, and for yours, most of all for yours, they would come

back humble, so humble and afraid.

"So I gave them every chance. I was bold and I did not spare them.

And when the sun began to sink behind St. Peter's and the band

stopped, and we turned to go, I know which of us went home happy

and unashamed. Oh, David Rossi! If you could have been there!

"I must write again on other matters. Meantime, one item of news.

Lawyer Napoleon, who continues to go to Regina C[oe]li to see the

bewildering Bruno, saw Charles Minghelli there in prison clothes!

If the God who settles the question of sex had only remembered to

make your wife the procurator-general, think how different the

history of the world would have been! The worst of it is he

mightn't have remembered to make you a woman; and in any case,

things being so nicely settled as they are, I don't think I want

to be a man. I waft a kiss to you on the wings of the wind. It's

ponente to-day, so it ought to be warm. "ROMA.




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