rren glory of belonging to some official
administration. And, as you say, the aristocracy is dying, discrowned,
ruined, sunk into the degeneracy which overtakes races towards their
close, most of its members reduced to beggary, the others, the few who
have clung to their money, crushed by heavy imposts, possessing nought
but dead fortunes which constant sharing diminishes and which must soon
disappear with the princes themselves. And then there is the people,
which has suffered so much and suffers still, but is so used to suffering
that it can seemingly conceive no idea of emerging from it, blind and
deaf as it is, almost regretting its ancient bondage, and so ignorant, so
abominably ignorant, which is the one cause of its hopeless, morrowless
misery, for it has not even the consolation of understanding that if we
have conquered and are trying to resuscitate Rome and Italy in their
ancient glory, it is for itself, the people, alone. Yes, yes, no
aristocracy left, no people as yet, and a middle class which really
alarms one. How can one therefore help yielding at times to the terrors
of the pessimists, who pretend that our misfortunes are as yet nothing,
that we are going forward to yet more awful catastrophes, as though,
indeed, what we now behold were but the first symptoms of our race's end,
the premonitory signs of final annihilation!"

As he spoke he raised his long quivering arms towards the window, towards
the light, and Pierre, deeply moved, remembered how Cardinal Boccanera on
the previous day had made a similar gesture of supplicant distress when
appealing to the divine power. And both men, Cardinal and patriot, so
hostile in their beliefs, were instinct with the same fierce and
despairing grandeur.

"As I told you, however, on the first day," continued Orlando, "we only
sought to accomplish logical and inevitable things. As for Rome, with her
past history of splendour and domination which weighs so heavily upon us,
we could not do otherwise than take her for capital, for she alone was
the bond, the living symbol of our unity at the same time as the promise
of eternity, the renewal offered to our great dream of resurrection and
glory."

He went on, recognising the disastrous conditions under which Rome
laboured as a capital. She was a purely decorative city with exhausted
soil, she had remained apart from modern life, she was unhealthy, she
offered no possibility of commerce or industry, she was invincibly pr