Roma's disgust deepened to contempt. Why were the people rejoicing?

There was nothing to rejoice at. Why were they shouting and singing? It

was all got-up enthusiasm, all false, all a lie. By a sort of

clairvoyance, Roma could see the Baron in the midst of the scenes he had

prearranged. He was sitting in the carriage with the King and Queen,

smiling his icy smile, while the people bellowed by their side. And

meantime David Rossi was lying in prison in Milan, in a downfall worse

than death, crushed, beaten, and broken-hearted.

Old Francesca brought a morning paper. It was the Sunrise, and it

contained nothing that did not concern the Baron. His wife had died on

Saturday--there were three lines for that incident. The King had made

him a Knight of the Order of Annunziata--there was half a column on the

new cousin to the royal family. A state dinner and ball were to be held

at the Quirinal that night, when it might be expected that the President

of the Council would be nominated Dictator.

In another column of the Sunrise she found an interview with the

Baron. The journal called for exemplary punishment on the criminals who

conspired against the sovereign and endangered the public peace; the

Baron, in guarded words, replied that the natural tendency of the King

would be to pardon such persons, where their crimes were of old date,

and their present conspiracies were averted, but it lay with the public

to say whether it was just to the throne that such lenity ought to be

encouraged.

When Roma read this a red light seemed to flash before her eyes, and in

a moment she understood what she had to do. The Baron intended to make

the King break his promise to save the life of David Rossi, casting the

blame upon the country, to whose wish he had been forced to yield. There

was no earthly tribunal, no judge or jury, for a man who could do a

thing like that. He was putting himself beyond all human law. Therefore

one course only was left--to send him to the bar of God!

When this idea came to Roma she did not think of it as a crime. In the

moral elevation of her soul it seemed like an act of retributive

justice. Her heart throbbed violently, but it was only from the stress

of her thoughts and the intensity of her desire to execute them.

One thing troubled her, the purely material difficulties in the way. She

revolved many plans in her mind. At first she thought of writing to the

Baron asking him to see her, and hinting at submission to his will; but

she abandoned the device as a kind of duplicity that was unworthy of her

high and noble mission. At last she decided to go to the Piazza Leone

late that night and wait for the Baron's return from the Quirinal.

Felice would admit her. She would sit in the Council Room, under the

shaded lamp, until she heard the carriage wheels in the piazza. Then as

the Baron opened the door she would rise out of the red light--and do

it.




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