"I know my husband has other things to think about, great things,
high and noble aims and objects, but I am only a woman in spite of
my loud pretences, and I must be loved, or I shall die. Not that I
am afraid of dying, because I know that if I die I shall be with
you in a moment, and this cruel separation will be at an end. But
I want to live, and I'm certain I shall begin to feel better after
I have passed a few moments at your side. So I shall pack up
immediately and start away on the wings of the morning.
"Don't be alarmed if you find me looking pale and thin and old and
ugly. How could I be anything else when the particular world I
live in has been sunless all these weeks? I know your work is very
pressing, especially now when so many things are happening; but
you will put it aside for a little while, won't you, and take me
up into the Alps somewhere, and nurse me back to health and
happiness? Fancy! We shall be boy and girl again, as in the days
when you used to catch butterflies for me, and then look sad when,
like a naughty child, I scrunched them!
"Au revoir, dearest. I shall fall into your hands nearly as soon
as this letter. I tremble to think you may be angry with me for
following you and interrupting your work. If you show it in your
face I shall certainly expire. But you will be good to your poor
pilgrim of love and comfort and strengthen her. All the time you
have been away she has never forgotten you for a moment--no, not
one waking moment. An ordinary woman who loved an ordinary man
would not tell him this, but you are not ordinary, and if I am I
don't care a pin to pretend.
"Expect me, then, by the fastest train leaving Rome to-morrow
morning, and don't budge from Paris until I arrive.
"ROMA."
The strain of this letter, with its conscious subterfuge and its
unconscious truth, put Roma into a state of fever; and when she had
finished it and sent it to the post, her head was light, and she was
aware for the first time that she was really ill.
The deaf old woman, who helped her to pack, talked without ceasing of
Rossi and Bruno and Elena and little Joseph, and finally of the King and
his intended jubilee.
"I don't take no notice of Governments, Signora. It's the same as it
used to be in the old days. One Pope died, and his soul went into the
next. First an ugly Pope, then a handsome one, but the soul was the same
in all. Wet soup or dry--that's all I trouble about now; and I don't
care who gets the taxes so long as I can pay.... What do you say,
Tommaso?"