All the public squares seemed to be full of motley, ill-clad,
ill-nourished, but formidable multitudes. Towards evening the tradesmen
began to shut up their shops, and a regiment of cavalry paraded the
principal streets with a band that played the royal march.
Meantime, the leader, to whom thousands were looking up, was miserable
and alone. He had cried "Peace," but the perils of protest were so many
and so near. A blow, a push, a quarrel at a street corner, and God knows
what might happen!
Elena came with his coffee. The timid creature kept looking at him out
of her liquid eyes as if struggling with a desire to speak, but when she
did so it was only on indifferent subjects.
Bruno had got up with a headache and gone off to work. Little Joseph was
very trying this morning, and she had threatened to whip him.
Her father had been upstairs to say that countless people were asking
for the Deputy, and he wished to know if anybody was to come up.
"Tell him I wish to be quite alone to-day," said Rossi, and then the
soft voice ceased, and the timid creature went out with a guilty look.
Like a man who is going on a long and perilous journey, David Rossi
spent the morning in arranging his affairs. He looked over his letters
and destroyed most of them. The letters from Roma were hard to burn, but
he read each of them again, as if trying to stamp their words and
characters on his brain, and with a deep sigh he committed them to the
flames.
It was twelve o'clock by this time, and Francesca, in her red cotton
handkerchief, brought up his lunch. The good old thing looked at him
with a comical expression of pity on her wrinkled face, and he knew that
Bruno had told his story.
"Come now, my son! Put away your papers and get something on your
stomach. People eat even if they're going to the gallows, you know."
After lunch Rossi called upstairs for Joseph, and the shock-headed
little cub was brought down, with his wet eyes twinkling and his petted
lip beginning to smile.
"Joseph has been naughty, Uncle David," said Elena. "He is crying for
the clothes Donna Roma gave him, and he says he must go out because it
is his birthday."
"Does a man cry when he is seven?" said Uncle David.
Thereupon Joseph, keeping his eyes upon his mother, whispered something
in Uncle David's ear, and straightway the gorgeous garments were
produced.