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The Heart of Rome

F >> Francis Marion Crawford >> The Heart of Rome




The door opened, and the footman admitted a quiet little woman, about
thirty years old, already inclined to be stout. She was very simply
but very well dressed, she had beautiful brown hair, and when she came
forward Sabina looked into a pair of luminous and trustful hazel eyes.

"Donna Sabina Conti?" asked the Signora Malipieri in a gentle voice.

"Yes," Sabina answered.

She and Malipieri had both risen. The Signora made a timid movement
with her hand, as if she expected that Sabina would offer hers, which
Sabina did, rather late, when she saw that it was expected. The lady
glanced at Malipieri and then at Sabina with a look of enquiry, as he
held out his hand to her and she took it. He saw that she did not
recognize him.

"I am Marino Malipieri," he said.

"You?" she cried in surprise.

Then a faint flush rose in her smooth cheeks, and Sabina, who was
watching her, saw that her lip trembled a little, and that tears rose
in her eyes.

"Forgive me," she said, in an unsteady voice. "I should have known
you, after all you have done for me."

"I think it is nearly thirteen years since we met," Malipieri
answered. "I had no beard then."

She looked at him long, evidently in strong emotion, but the tears did
not overflow, and the clear light came back gradually in her gaze.
Then the three sat down.

"I thought I had better come," she said. "It seemed easier than to
write."

"Yes," Sabina answered, not knowing what to say.

"You see," said the Signora, "I could not easily write to you frankly,
as I had never seen you, and I did not like to write to Signor
Malipieri about what I wanted to know."

"Yes," said Sabina, once more, but this time she looked at Malipieri.

"What is it that you wish to know, Signora?" he asked kindly, "Whether
it is all exactly as my letter told you? Is that it?"

She turned to him with a look of reproach.

"Does a woman doubt a man who has done what you have done for me?" she
asked. "I wanted to know something more--a little more than what you
wrote to me. It would make a difference, perhaps."

"To you, Signora?" asked Sabina quickly.

"No. To you. Perhaps it would make a great difference in the way I
should act." She paused an instant. "It is rather hard to ask, I
know," she added shyly.

She seemed to be a timid little woman.

"Please tell us what it is that you wish to know, Signora," said
Malipieri, in the same kind tone, trying to encourage her.

"I should like to ask--I hardly know just how to say it--if you would
tell me whether you are fond of each other--"

"What difference can that make to you, Signora?" Malipieri asked with
sudden hardness. "You know that I shall not break my word."

She was hurt by the tone, and looked down meekly, as if she had
deserved the words.

"We love each other with all our hearts," said Sabina, before either
of the others could say more. "Nothing shall ever part us, in this
world or the next."

There was a ring of clear defiance to fate in the girl's voice, and
Signora Malipieri turned to her quickly, with a look of sympathy. She
knew the cry that comes from the heart.

"But you think that you can never be married," she said, almost to
herself.

"How can we? You know that we cannot!" It was Malipieri who answered.

Then the timid little woman raised her head and looked him full in the
face, and spoke without any more hesitation.

"Do you think that I have never thought of this possibility, during
all these years?" she asked. "Do you really believe that I would let
you suffer for me, let your life be broken, let you give up the best
thing that any life holds, after you have done for me what perhaps no
man ever did for a woman before?"

"I know you are grateful," Malipieri answered very gently. "Do not
speak of what I have done. It has not been at any sacrifice, till
now."

But Sabina leaned forward and grasped the Signora Malipieri's hands.
Her own were trembling.

"You have come to help us!" she cried. "It is so easy, now that I know
that you love each other."

"How?" asked Sabina, breathless. "By a divorce?"

"Yes."

"I shall never ask for that," Malipieri said, shaking his head.

"You are the best and truest gentleman that ever protected a woman in
trouble, Signor Malipieri," said the little woman quietly. "I know
that you will never divorce me. I know you would not even think of
it."

"Well, but then--" Malipieri stopped and looked at her.

"I shall get a divorce from you," she said, and then she looked
happily from one to the other.

Malipieri covered his eyes with his hand. He had not even thought of
such a solution, and the thought came upon him in his despair like a
flood of dazzling light. Sabina was on her knees, and had thrown her
arms wildly round the Signora Malipieri's neck, and was kissing her
again and again.

"But it is nothing," protested the Signora, beaming with delight. "It
is so simple, so easy, and I know exactly what to do."

"You?" cried Sabina between laughing and crying.

"Yes. I once gave lessons in the house of a famous lawyer, and
sometimes I was asked to stay to luncheon, and I heard a great case
discussed, and I asked questions, until I thoroughly understood it
all. You see, it was what I always meant to do. There is a little
fiction about the way it is managed, but it is perfectly legal. Though
Italians may naturalize themselves in a foreign country, they can
regain their own nationality by a simple declaration. Now, Signor
Malipieri and I must be naturalized in Switzerland. I know a place
where it can be done easily. Then we can be divorced by mutual consent
at once. We come back to Italy, declare our nationality wherever we
please, and we are free to be married to any one else, under Italian
law. The fiction is only that by paying some money, it can all be done
in three months, instead of in three years."

Malipieri had listened attentively.

"Are you positively sure of that?" he asked.

"I have the authority of one of the first lawyers in Italy."

"But the Church?" asked Sabina anxiously. "I should not think it a
marriage at all, if I were not married in church."

"I have asked a good priest about that," answered the Signora. "I go
to confession to him, and he is a good man, and wise too. He told me
that the Church could make no objection at all, since there has really
been no marriage at all, and since Signor Malipieri will present
himself after being properly and legally married to you at the
municipality. He told me, on the contrary, that it is my duty to do
everything in my power to help you."

"God bless you!" Sabina cried. "You are the best woman in the world!"

Malipieri took the Signora's hand and pressed it to his lips
fervently, for he could not find any words.

"I shall only ask one thing," she said, speaking timidly again.

"Ask all I have," he answered, her hand still in his.

"But you may not like it. I should like to keep the name, if you do
not mind very much, on account of my little girl. She need never know.
I can leave her with a friend while we are in Switzerland."

"It is yours," he said. "Few of my own people have borne it as
worthily as you have, since I gave it to you."

* * * * * *

Here, therefore, ends the story of Sabina Conti and Marino Malipieri,
whose marriage took place quietly during the autumn, as the Princess
had confidently said that it should. It is a tale without a "purpose"
and without any particular "moral," in the present appalling
acceptation, of those simple words. If it has interested or pleased
those who have read it, the writer is glad; if it has not, he can find
some consolation in having made two young people unutterably blissful
in his own imagination, whereas he manifestly had it in his power to
bring them to awful grief; and when one cannot make living men and
women happy in real life, it is a harmless satisfaction to do it in a
novel. If this one shows anything worth learning about the world, it
is that a gifted man of strong character and honourable life may do a
foolish and generous thing whereby he may become in a few days the
helpless toy of fate. He who has never repented of a good impulse
which has brought great trouble to other people, must be indeed a
selfish soul.

As for the strange circumstances I have described, I do not think any
of them impossible, and many of them are founded upon well-known
facts. I have myself seen, within not many years, a construction like
the dry well in the Palazzo Conti, which was discovered in the
foundations of a Roman palace, and had been used as an oubliette.
There were skeletons in it and fragments of weapons of the sixteenth
century and evec of the seventeenth. There was also a communication
between the cellars of the palace and the Tiber.

I read George Sand's fantastic novel _Consuelo_ many years ago, and I
am aware that she introduced a well, in an ancient castle, in which
the water could be made to rise and fall at will, in order to
establish or interrupt communication with a secret chamber. I do not
know whether she imagined the construction or had seen a similar one,
for such wells are said to be found in more than one old fortress in
Europe. The "lost water" really exists at many points under Rome; its
rising and falling are sometimes unaccountable; and I know at least
one old palace in which it has been used and found pure, within the
memory of man. So far, the explanations suggested by engineers have
neither satisfied those who have propounded them, nor those who have
had practical experience of the "lost water." The subject is extremely
interesting but is one of very great difficulty, as it is generally
quite impossible to make explorations in the places where the water is
near the surface. The older part of modern Rome was built haphazard,
and often upon the enormous substructures of ancient buildings, of
which the positions can be conjectured only, and of which the plans
and dimensions are very vaguely guessed by archaeologists. All that
can be said with approximate certainty of the "lost water" is that it
must run through long-forgotten conduits, that it rises here and there
in wells, and that it is mostly uncontaminated by the river.

Those familiar with the Vatican museum will have at once recognized
the colossal statue of gilt bronze which now stands in the circular
hall known as the "Rotonda." It was accidentally found, when I was a
boy, in the courtyard of the Palazzo Righetti in the Campo dei Fiori,
carefully and securely concealed by a well-built vault, evidently
constructed for the purpose, in the foundations of the Theatre of
Pompey. I went to see it, when only a portion of the vault had been
removed, and I shall never forget the vivid impression it made upon
me. So far as I know, there has not been any explanation of its having
been hidden there, but among the lower classes in Rome there are
traditions of great treasure supposed to be buried in other parts of
the city. I have taken the liberty of making the discovery over again
at a point some distance from the Palazzo Righetti, and in the present
time. The statue was really found in 1864, and the gem in the ring was
stolen. The marble Venus which Malipieri saw with it is imaginary, but
I was also taken to see the beautiful statue of Augustus, now in the
Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, on the spot where it came to light in
the Villa of Livia, in 1863.

The great mediaeval family of Conti became extinct long ago. The
palace to which I have given their name would stand on the site of one
now the property of the Vatican, but would be of a somewhat different
construction.

Finally, I wish to protest that there are no so-called "portraits" in
this story of the heart of old Rome. Many Romans were ruined by the
financial crisis of 1888 and its consequences, either at the time or
later. The family to which Sabina belonged is wholly imaginary, and
its fall was due to other causes. I trust that no ingenious reader
will try to trace a parallel where none exists. I would not even have
a certain young and famous architect and engineer, for whom I
entertain the highest admiration and esteem, recognize a "portrait" of
himself in Marino Malipieri, if these pages should ever come to his
notice, and I have purposely made my imaginary hero as unlike him as
possible, in appearance, manner and speech.

Those who have noticed the increasing tendency of modern readers to
bring accusations of plagiarism against novels that deal partly with
facts will understand why I have said this much about my own work. To
others, the few details I have given may be of some interest.

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