IV
When the Baron awoke on Saturday he remembered Roma with a good deal of
self-reproach, and everything that happened during the following days
made him think of her with tenderness. During the morning an
aide-de-camp brought him the casket containing the Collar of the
Annunziata, and spoke a formal speech. He fingered the jewelled band and
golden pendant as he made the answer prescribed by etiquette, but he was
thinking of Roma and the joy she might have felt in hailing him cousin
of the King.
Towards noon he received the telegram which announced the death of his
maniac wife, and he set off instantly for his castle in the Alban Hills.
He remained long enough to see the body removed to the church, and then
returned to Rome. Nazzareno carried to the station the little hand-bag
full of despatches with which he had occupied the hour spent in the
train. They passed by the tree which had been planted on the first of
Roma's Roman birthdays. It was covered with white roses. The Baron
plucked one of them, and wore it in his button-hole on the return
journey.
Before midnight he was back in the Piazza Leone, where the Commendatore
Angelelli was waiting with news of the arrest of Rossi. He gave orders
to have the editor of the Sunrise sent to him so that he might make a
tentative suggestion. But in spite of himself his satisfaction at
Rossi's complete collapse and possible extermination was disturbed by
pity for Roma.
Sunday was given up to the interview with the journalist, the last
preparations for the Jubilee, and various secular duties. Monday's
ceremonials began with the Mass. The Piazza of the Pantheon was lined
with a splendid array of soldiers in glistening breastplates and
helmets, a tall bodyguard through which the little King passed to his
place amid the playing of the national hymn. In the old Pantheon itself,
roofed with an awning of white silk which bore the royal arms, flares
were burning up to the topmost cornice of the round walls. A temporary
altar decorated in white and gold was ablaze with candles, and the
choir, conducted by a fashionable composer of opera, were in a golden
cage. The King and Queen and royal princes sat in chairs under a velvet
canopy, and there were tribunes for cabinet ministers, senators,
deputies, and foreign ambassadors. Religion was necessary to all state
functions, and the Mass was a magnificent political demonstration
carried out on lines arranged by the Baron himself. He had forgotten
God, but he had remembered the King, and he had thought of Roma also.
She wept at all religious ceremonies, and would have shed tears if she
had been present at this one.