Next day the journals were full of the assassin. Many things were

incomprehensible in her character, unless you approached it with the

right key. Young and with a fatal beauty, fantastic, audacious, a great

coquette, always giving out a perfume of seduction and feminine ruin,

she was one of those women who live in the atmosphere of infamous

intrigue, and her last victim had been her first friend.

Once more the Pope was puzzled, and he sent out his Noble Guard again.

The Count de Raymond returned to say that in corners of the cafés people

spoke of the Baron as a dead dog, and said that if Donna Roma had killed

him she did a good act, and God would reward her.

Parliament opened after its Easter vacation, and the Count de Raymond

was sent in plain clothes to its first sitting. The galleries and

lobbies were filled, and there was suppressed but intense excitement.

Rumour said the Government had resigned, and that the King, who was in

despair, had been unable to form another ministry. A leader of the Right

was heard to say that Donna Roma had done more for the people in a day

than the Opposition could have accomplished in a hundred years. "If

these agitators on the Left have any qualities of statesmen, now's their

time to show it," he said. But what would Parliament say about the dead

man? The President entered and took his chair. After the minutes had

been read there was a moment's silence. Not a word was uttered, not a

voice was raised. "Let us pass on to the next business," said the

President.

The assizes happened to be in session, and the opening of the trial was

reported on the following day. When the prisoner was asked whether she

pleaded guilty or not guilty, she answered guilty. The court, however,

requested her to reconsider her plea, assigned her an advocate, and went

through all the formalities of an ordinary case. A principal object of

the prosecution had been to discover accomplices, but the prisoner

continued to protest that she had none. She neither denied nor

extenuated the crime, and she acknowledged it to have been premeditated.

When asked to state her motive, she said it was hatred of the methods

adopted by the dead man to wipe out political opponents, and a

determination to send to the bar of the Almighty one who had placed

himself above human law.

The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the next day's hearing of the trial,

and when the Count de Raymond came back his eyes were red and swollen.

The beautiful and melancholy face of the young prisoner sitting behind

iron bars that were like the cage of a wild beast had made a pitiful

impression. Her calmness, her total self-abandonment, the sublime

feelings that even in the presence of a charge of murder expressed

themselves in her sweet voice, had moved everybody to tears. Then the

prosecution had been so debasing in its questions about her visits to

the Vatican and in its efforts to implicate David Rossi by means of a

letter addressed to the prison at Milan.




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