He could see Roma herself, and his heart throbbed as of old under the
influence of her sweet indescribable presence. Those dear features,
those marvellous eyes, that voice, that smile--they swam up and tortured
him with love and with remorse.
How bravely she had withstood his enemies! To think of that young,
ardent, brilliant, happy life sacrificed to his sufferings! And then her
poor, pathetic secret--how sweet and honest she had been about it! Only
a pure and courageous woman could have done as she did; while he, in his
blundering passion and mad wrath, had behaved like a foul-minded tyrant
and a coward. What loud protestations of heroic love he had made when he
imagined the matter affected another man! And when he had learned that
it concerned himself, how his vaunted constancy had failed him, and he
had cursed the poor soul whose confidence he had invited!
But above all the pangs of love and remorse, Rossi was conscious of an
overpowering despair. It took the form of revolt against God, who had
allowed such a blind and cruel sequence of events to wreck the lives of
two of His innocent children. When he took refuge in the Vatican he must
have been clinging to some waif and stray of hope. It was gone now, and
there was no use struggling. The nothingness of man against the
pitilessness of fate made all the world a blank.
Rossi had rung the bell to ask for an audience with his Holiness when
the door opened and the Pope himself entered.
"Holy Father, I wished to speak to you."
"What about, my son?"
"Myself. Now I see that I did wrong to ask for your protection. You
thought I was innocent, and there was something I did not tell you. When
I said I was guilty before God and man, you did not understand what I
meant. Holy Father, I meant that I had committed murder."
The Pope did not answer, and Rossi went on, his voice ringing with the
baleful sentiments which possessed him.
"To tell you the truth, Holy Father, I hardly thought of it myself. What
I had done was partly in self-defence, and I did not consider it a
crime. And then, he whose life I had taken was an evil man, with the
devil's dues in him, and I felt no more remorse after killing him than
if I had trodden on a poisonous adder. But now I see things differently.
In coming here I exposed you to danger at the hands of the State. I ask
your pardon, and I beg you to let me go."