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[Illustration: Decoration]


THE CONQUEST OF ROME

_By_
MATILDE SERAO

AUTHOR OF
"THE LAND OF COCKAYNE"
"THE BALLET DANCER" ETC.

[Illustration: Logo]

HARPER & BROTHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
PUBLISHERS.. 1902


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Published October, 1902




PART I




CHAPTER I


The train stopped.

'Capua! Capua!' three or four voices cried monotonously into the night.

A clanking of swords dragged on the ground was heard, and some lively
muttering that passed between a Lombard and a Piedmontese. It came from
a group of subaltern officers, who were ending their evening's amusement
in coming to see the night train from Naples to Rome pass through. While
the conductor chatted respectfully with the station-master, who gave him
a commission for Caianello, and while the postman handed up a mail-sack
full of letters to the clerk in the postal van, the officers, talking to
each other and making their spurs ring (from habit), looked to see if
anyone got in or out of the train, peeping through the doors which were
open for the sight of a fair feminine face or that of a friend. But many
of the doors were closed. Blue blinds were stretched over the panes,
through which glimmered a faint lamplight, as if coming from a place
where lay travellers overpowered by sleep. Bodies curled up in a dark
tangle of coats, shawls, and sundry coverings, were dimly discernible.

'They are all asleep,' said one of the officers; 'let us go to bed.'

'This is probably a newly-married couple,' suggested another, reading
over a door the word 'Reserved.' And since the blind was not drawn, the
officer, aflame with youthful curiosity, jumped on the step and
flattened his face against the window. But he came down at once,
disappointed and shrugging his shoulders.

'It is a man, alone,' he said--'a deputy, no doubt; he is asleep, too.'

But the solitary man was not asleep. He was stretched out at full length
on the seat, an arm under his neck, and one hand in his hair; the other
hand was lost in the bosom of his coat. His eyes were closed, but his
face bore not the soft expression of repose, not the deep peace of human
lineaments in sleep. Instead, the effort of thought was to be read in
those contracted features.

When the train had passed the bridge over the Volturno, and ran into the
dark, deserted, open country, the man reopened his eyes, and tried
another position more favourable to repose. But the monotonous,
everlasting _grind, grind_ of the train racked his head. Now and then a
farmhouse, a little villa, a rural cottage, stood out darkly from a dark
background; a thin streak of light would ooze out through a crack; a
lantern would throw a glimmering, dancing circle in the path of the
speeding train. The cold prevented him from sleeping. Accustomed to the
mild Southern nights, and not in the habit of travelling, he had set out
with a simple light overcoat and neither rug nor shawl; he had a small
handbag, and other luggage was following him on the train. Of
importance to him were neither clothes, nor maps, nor books, nor
linen--nothing but that little gold medal, that precious amulet
suspended from his watch-chain. From the day it was his--it had been
obtained for him by special request through the quaestor of the
Chamber--his fingers were perpetually running over it with light touch,
as if in a mechanical caress. At such times as he was alone he crushed
it into the palm of his hand so hard that a red mark would remain on the
skin. In order to have the compartment reserved, he had shown this to
the station-master, lowering his eyes and compressing his lips to fight
down a look of triumph and a smile of complacency. And since the
beginning of the journey he held it in his hand, as though afraid to
lose it, so infusing it with the warmth of the epiderm it was scorching.
And so acute was the sensation of pleasure derived from the contact of
that possession that he faintly felt every protuberance and every hollow
in the face of the metal--_felt_ under his fingers the number and the
words:


     '_XIV. Legislature._'


On the reverse were a Christian name and a surname, indicative of the
ownership:


     'FRANCESCO SANGIORGIO.'


His hands were hot, yet he shook with the cold. He rose and went to the
door. The train was now running through open country, but its noise was
subdued. It seemed as though the wheels were anointed with oil as they
rolled noiselessly along the rails, accompanying the travellers' sleep
without disturbing it. The luminous windows stamped themselves as they
fled by on a high, black embankment. Not a shadow behind the panes. The
great house of slumbers coursed through the night, driven, as it were,
by an iron, fervent will, whirling away with it those wills inert in
repose.

'Let us try to sleep,' thought the Honourable Sangiorgio.

Stretching out once more, he attempted to do so. But the name of
Sparanise, called out softly two or three times at a stoppage, reminded
him of a small and obscure place in the Basilicata, whence he hailed,
and which, together with twenty other wretched villages, had given all
their votes to make him a deputy. The little spot, three or four hours
distant from an unknown station on the Eboli-Reggio line, seemed very
far oft to the Honourable Sangiorgio--far off in a swampy vale, among
the noxious mists which in autumn emanate from the streams, whose
dried-up beds are stony, arid, and yellow in summertime. On the way to
the railway-station from that little lonely place in the dreary tracts
of the Basilicata he had passed close to the cemetery--a large, square
piece of ground, with black crosses standing up, and two tall, graceful
pines. There lay, under the ground, under a single block of marble, his
erstwhile opponent, the old deputy who had always been re-elected
because of patriotic tradition, and whom he had always fought with the
enthusiasm of an ambitious young man ignoring the existence of
obstacles. Not once had he defeated him, had this presumptuous young
fellow, who was born too late, as the other said, to do anything for his
country. But Death, as a considerate ally, had secured him a sweeping
and easy victory. His triumph was an act of homage to the old, departed
patriot. But as he had passed the burial-ground he had felt in his
heart neither reverence nor envy in respect to the tired old soldier who
had gone down to the great, serene indolence of the tomb. All of this
recurred to his mind, as well as the long, odious ten years of his life
as a provincial advocate, with the mean, daily task common in the
courts, and rare appearance at assizes. Perhaps a land litigation over
an inheritance of three hundred lire, a mere spadeful of ground; a whole
miniature world of sordid, paltry affairs, of peasants' rascalities, of
complicated lies for a low object, in which the client would suspect his
lawyer and try to cheat him, while the lawyer would look upon the client
as an unarmed enemy. Amid such surroundings the young advocate had felt
every instinct of ardour die in his soul; speech, too, had died in his
throat. And since the cause he must defend was barren and trivial, and
the men he must address listened with indifference, he at last took
refuge in hastening through the defence in a few dry words; therefore
his reputation as an advocate was not great. Now he was entirely bereft
of the capacity to regret leaving his home and his old parents, who at
seeing him go had wept like all old persons of advanced years when
someone departs through that great selfishness which is a trait of old
age. Many secret, furious tempests, smothered eruptions that could find
no vent, had exhausted the well-springs of tenderness in his heart. Now,
during this journey, he remembered it all quite clearly, but without
emotion, like an impartial observer. He shut his eyes and attempted to
sleep, but could not.

In the train, however, everyone else appeared to be wrapped in deep
slumber. Through the noise and the increased rocking the Honourable
Sangiorgio seemed to hear a long, even respiration; he seemed almost to
see a gigantic chest slowly rising and falling in the happy, mechanical
process of breathing.

At Cassino, where there was a stop of five minutes at one in the
morning, no one got out. The waiter in the cafe was asleep under the
