Next day the journals were full of the assassin. Many things were
incomprehensible in her character, unless you approached it with the
right key. Young and with a fatal beauty, fantastic, audacious, a great
coquette, always giving out a perfume of seduction and feminine ruin,
she was one of those women who live in the atmosphere of infamous
intrigue, and her last victim had been her first friend.
Once more the Pope was puzzled, and he sent out his Noble Guard again.
The Count de Raymond returned to say that in corners of the cafés people
spoke of the Baron as a dead dog, and said that if Donna Roma had killed
him she did a good act, and God would reward her.
Parliament opened after its Easter vacation, and the Count de Raymond
was sent in plain clothes to its first sitting. The galleries and
lobbies were filled, and there was suppressed but intense excitement.
Rumour said the Government had resigned, and that the King, who was in
despair, had been unable to form another ministry. A leader of the Right
was heard to say that Donna Roma had done more for the people in a day
than the Opposition could have accomplished in a hundred years. "If
these agitators on the Left have any qualities of statesmen, now's their
time to show it," he said. But what would Parliament say about the dead
man? The President entered and took his chair. After the minutes had
been read there was a moment's silence. Not a word was uttered, not a
voice was raised. "Let us pass on to the next business," said the
President.
The assizes happened to be in session, and the opening of the trial was
reported on the following day. When the prisoner was asked whether she
pleaded guilty or not guilty, she answered guilty. The court, however,
requested her to reconsider her plea, assigned her an advocate, and went
through all the formalities of an ordinary case. A principal object of
the prosecution had been to discover accomplices, but the prisoner
continued to protest that she had none. She neither denied nor
extenuated the crime, and she acknowledged it to have been premeditated.
When asked to state her motive, she said it was hatred of the methods
adopted by the dead man to wipe out political opponents, and a
determination to send to the bar of the Almighty one who had placed
himself above human law.
The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the next day's hearing of the trial,
and when the Count de Raymond came back his eyes were red and swollen.
The beautiful and melancholy face of the young prisoner sitting behind
iron bars that were like the cage of a wild beast had made a pitiful
impression. Her calmness, her total self-abandonment, the sublime
feelings that even in the presence of a charge of murder expressed
themselves in her sweet voice, had moved everybody to tears. Then the
prosecution had been so debasing in its questions about her visits to
the Vatican and in its efforts to implicate David Rossi by means of a
letter addressed to the prison at Milan.