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.