"Your mother?"
"Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in
the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope
was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo
Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a
child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest."
"Oh!"
"Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the
white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered
them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to
foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was
sent to London."
Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes.
"My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho--fifty
foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the
streets with an organ, the little ones with a squirrel or a cage of
white mice. We had a cup of tea and a piece of bread for breakfast, and
were forbidden to return home until we had earned our supper. Then--then
the winter days and nights in the cold northern climate, and the little
southern boys with their organs and squirrels, shivering and starving in
the darkness and the snow."
Roma's eyes were filling frankly, and she was allowing the tears to
flow.
"Thank God, I have another memory," he continued. "It is of a good man,
a saint among men, an Italian refugee, giving his life to the poor,
especially to the poor of his own people."
Roma's labouring breath seemed to be arrested at that moment.
"On several occasions he brought their masters to justice in the English
courts, until, finding they were watched, they gradually became less
cruel. He opened his house to the poor little fellows, and they came for
light and warmth between nine and ten at night, bringing their organs
with them. He taught them to read, and on Sunday evenings he talked to
them of the lives of the great men of their country. He is dead, but
his spirit is alive--alive in the souls he made to live."
Roma's eyes were blinded with the tears that sprang to them, and her
throat was choking, but she said: "What was he?"
"A doctor."
"What was his name?"
David Rossi passed his hand over the furrow in his forehead, and
answered: "They called him Joseph Roselli."