"I cannot write any more to-day, my dear one, but there will be news for
you next time, great and serious news."
XI
Roma fulfilled her promise. The funeral pomps, if the Countess could
have seen them, would have satisfied her vain little mind. On going to
the parish church the procession covered the entire length of the
street. First the banner with skull, cross-bones, and hour-glass, then a
confraternity of lay people, then twenty paid mourners in evening dress,
then fifty Capuchins at two francs a head with yellow candles at three
francs each, then the cross, then the secular clergy two and two, then
the parish priest in surplice and black stole with servitors and
acolytes, then a stately funeral car with four horses richly harnessed,
and finally four coaches with coachmen and footmen in gala livery. The
bier was loaded with flowers and streamers, and the cost of the cortège
was nearly a thousand francs.
As Roma passed out of the church with head down some one spoke to her.
It was the Baron, carrying his hat, on which there was a deep black
band. His tall spare figure, high forehead, straight hair, and features
hard as iron, made a painful impression.
"Sorry I cannot go on to the Campo Santo," he said, and then he added
something about breaks in the chain of life which Roma did not hear.
"I trust it is not true, as I am given to understand, that on leaving
your apartment you are going to live in the house of a certain person
whom I need not name. That would, I assure you, be a grave error, and I
would earnestly counsel you not to commit it."
She made no reply but walked on to the door of the carriage. He helped
her to enter it, and then said: "Remember, my attitude is the same as
ever. Do not deny me the satisfaction of serving you in your hour of
need."
When Roma came to full possession of herself after the Requiem Mass, the
cortège was on its way to the cemetery. There was a line of carriages.
Most of them were empty as the mourning of which they formed a part. The
parish priest sat with his acolyte, who held a crucifix before his eyes
so that his thoughts might not wander. He took snuff and said his Matins
for to-morrow.
The necropolis of Rome is outside the Porta San Lorenzo, by the church
of that name. The bier drew up at the House of Deposit. When the coaches
discharged their occupants, Roma saw that except the paid servants of
the funeral she was the only mourner. The Countess's friends, like
herself, disliked the sight of churchyards.