"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.