She fell upon the ground, and as the mingled sobs and cries rose through the troubled crowd, a boy tore his way through the dense ma.s.s, and fighting with all the energy of infuriated strength, gained the open s.p.a.ce where she lay. Dropping on his knees, he bent over, and clasping her hand kissed it wildly over and over, crying out in a voice of broken agony, 'Oh! Marietta, Marietta mia, come back to us--come back, we will love you and cherish you.'

A great roar of laughter--the revulsion to that intensity of feeling so lately diffused among them--now shook the mob. Revenging, as it were, the illusion that had so enthralled themselves, they now turned all their ridicule upon the poor boy.

'Santissima Virginia! if he isn't a scholar of the Holy Order!' shouted one.

'Ecco! a real Jesuit!' said another; 'had he been a little older, though, he 'd have done it more secretly.'

'The little priest is offering the consolation of his order,' cried a third; and there rained upon him, from every side, words of mockery and sarcasm.

'Don't you see that he is a mere boy--have you no shame that you can mock a simple-hearted child like this?' said the burly Fra, as he pushed the crowd right and left, and forced a pa.s.sage through the mob. 'Come along, Gerald, come along. They are a cowardly pack, and if they were not fifty to one, they 'd think twice ere they 'd insult us.' This speech he delivered in Italian, with a daring emphasis of look and gesture that made the craven listeners tremble. They opened a little path for the friar and his charge to retire; nor was it until they had nearly gained the corner of the Piazza that they dared to yell forth a cry of insult and derision.

The boy grasped the Fra's hand as he heard it, and looked up in his face with an expression there was no mistaking, so full was it of wild and daring courage.

'No, no, Gerald,' said he, 'there are too many of them, and what should we get by it after all? See, too, how they have torn your soutane all to pieces. I almost suspect we ought to go back again to the college, my boy. I scarcely like to present you in such a state as this.'

Well indeed might the Fra have come to this doubtful issue, for the youth's gown hung in ribbons around him, and his cap was flattened to his head.

'I wish I knew what was best to be done, Gerald,' said he, wiping the sweat from his brawny face. 'What do you advise yourself?'

'I'd say, go on,' cried the youth. 'Will a great signor think whether my poor and threadbare frock be torn or whole?--he 'll not know if I be in rags or in purple. Tell him, if you like, that we met with rough usage in the streets. Tell him, that in pa.s.sing through the crowd they left me thus. Say nothing about Marietta, Fra; you need not speak of her.'

The boy's voice, as he uttered the last words, became little louder than a mere whisper.

'Come along then; and, with the help of the saints, we 'll go through with what we 've begun.'

And with this vigorous resolve the stout friar strode along down the Corso.

CHAPTER VI. THE INTERVIEW

It was full an hour after the time appointed when the friar, accompanied by young Gerald, entered the arched gate of the Altieri Palace.

'You have been asked for twice, Frate,' said the porter; 'and I doubt if you will be admitted now. It is the time his Royal Highness takes his siesta.'

'I must only hope for the best,' sighed out the Fra, as he ascended the wide stairs of white marble, with a sinking heart.

'Let us go a little slower, Fra Luke,' whispered the boy; 'I 'd like to have a look at these statues. See what a fine fellow that is strangling the serpent; and, oh! is she not beautiful, crouching in that large sh.e.l.l?'

'Heathen vanities, all of them,' muttered the Fra; 'what are they compared to the pure face of our blessed Lady?'

The youth felt rebuked, and was silent. While the friar, however, was communicating with the servant in waiting, the boy had time to stroll down the long gallery, admiring as he went the various works of art it contained. Stands of weapons, too, and spoils of the chase abounded, and these he examined with a wistful curiosity, reading from short inscriptions attached to the cases, which told him how this wolf had been killed by his Royal Highness on such a day of such a year, and how that boar had received his death-wound from the Prince's hand at such another time.

It almost required force from the friar to tear him away from objects so full of interest, nor did he succeed without a promise that he should see them all some other day. Pa.s.sing through a long suite of rooms, magnificently furnished, but whose splendour was dimmed and faded by years, they reached an octagonal chamber of small but beautiful proportions; and here the friar was told the youth was to wait, while he himself was admitted to the Prince.

Charles Edward had just dined--and, as was his wont, dined freely--when the Fra was announced. 'You can retire,' said the Prince to the servants in waiting, but never turning his head toward where the friar was standing. The servants retreated noiselessly, and all was now still in the chamber. The Prince had drawn his chair toward the fire, and sat gazing at the burning logs in deep reverie. Apparently he followed his thoughts so far as to forget that the poor friar was yet in waiting; for it was only as a low, faint sigh escaped him that the Prince suddenly turning his head, cried out, 'Ah! our Frate. I had half forgotten you.

You are somewhat late, are you not?'

In a voice tremulous with fear and deference Fra Luke narrated how they had been delayed by a misadventure in the Piazza, contriving to interweave in his story an apology for the torn dress and ragged habiliments the boy was to appear in. 'He is not in a state to be seen by your Royal Highness at all. If it wasn't that your Royal Highness will think little of the sh.e.l.l where the kernel is sound----'

'And who is to warrant me that, sir?' said the Prince angrily. 'Is it your guarantee I 'm to take for it?'

The poor friar almost felt as if he were about to faint at the stern speech, nor did he dare to utter a word of reply. So far, this was in his favour, since, when unprovoked by anything like rejoinder, Charles Edward was usually disposed to turn from any unpleasant theme, and address his thoughts elsewhere.

'I 'm half relenting, my good friar,' said he, in a calmer tone, 'that I should have brought you here on this errand. How am _I_ to burden myself with the care of this boy? I am but a pensioner myself, weighed down already with a ma.s.s of followers. So long as hope remained to us we struggled on manfully enough. Present privation was to have had its recompense--at least we thought so.' He stopped suddenly, and then, as if ashamed of speaking thus confidentially to one he had seen only once before, his voice a.s.sumed a harsher, sterner accent as he said: 'These are not your concerns. What is it you propose I should do? Have you a plan? What is it?'

Had Fra Luke been required to project another scheme of invasion, he could not have been more dumbfounded and confused, and he stood the very picture of hopeless incapacity.

Charles Edward's temper was in that state when he invariably sought to turn upon others the reproaches his own conscience addressed to him, and he angrily said: 'It is by this same train of beggarly followers that my fortunes are rendered irretrievable. I am worried and hara.s.sed by their importunities; they attach the plague-spot of their poverty to me wherever I go. I should have freed myself from this thraldom many a year ago; and if I had, where and what might I not have been to-day? You, and others of your stamp, look upon me as an almoner, not more nor less.'

His pa.s.sion had now spent itself, and he sat moodily gazing at the fire.

'Is the lad here?' asked he, after a long pause.

'Yes, your Royal Highness,' said the friar, while he made a motion toward the door.

Charles Edward stopped him quickly as he said, 'No matter, there is not any need that I should see him. He and his aunt--she is his aunt, you said--must return to Ireland; this is no place for them. I will see Kelly about it to-morrow, and they shall have something to pay their journey. This arrangement does not please you, Frate, eh? Speak out, man. You think it cold, unnatural, and unkind--is it not so?'

'If your gracious Highness would just condescend to say a word to him--one word, that he might carry away in his heart for the rest of his days.'

'Better have no memory of me,' sighed the Prince drearily. 'Oh, don't say so, your Royal Highness; think what pride it will be to him yet, G.o.d knows in what far-away country, to remember that he saw you once, that he stood in your presence, and heard you speak to him.'

'It shall be as you wish, Frate; but I charge you once more to be sure that he may not know with whom he is speaking.'

'By this holy Book,' said the Fra, with a gesture implying a vow of secrecy.

'Go now; send him hither, and wait without till I send for you.'

The door had scarcely closed behind the friar when it opened again to admit the entrance of the youth. The Prince turned his head, and, whether it was the extreme poverty of the lad's appearance, more striking from the ragged and torn condition of his dress, or that something in Gerald's air and look impressed him painfully, he pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes and averted his glance from him.

'Come forward, my boy,' said he at last. 'How are you called?'

'Gerald Fitzgerald, Signor Conte,' said he, firmly but respectfully.

'You are Irish by birth?' said the Prince, in a voice slightly tremulous.

'Yes, Signor Conte,' replied he, while he drew himself up with an air that almost savoured of haughtiness.

'And your friends have destined you for the priesthood, it seems.'

'I never knew I had friends,' said the boy; 'I thought myself a sort of castaway.'

'Why, you have just told me of your Irish blood--how knew you of that?'

'So long as I can remember I have heard that I was a Geraldine, and they call me Irish in the college.'

There was a frank boldness in his manner, totally removed from the slightest trace of rudeness or presumption, that already interested the Prince, who now gazed long and steadily on him.

'Do I remind you of any one you ever saw or cared for, Signor Conte?'