is upset by
the plain and simple fact, that the French patrols were on the Porta Pia
road, and not in the Corso at all. Indeed, if the whole matter was not
too serious to laugh at, there would be something actually comical in the
notion of the friends of order, or any person in their senses, stopping
to applaud the gendarmes as they trampled their way through the helpless,
screaming, terror-stricken crowd, striking indiscriminately at friend or
foe. The statement has this value, and this value only, that it gives
the formal approval of the Government to the brutal outrages of the Papal
police.

For a time the Pro-Papal party were in a state of high exultation. A
popular demonstration had been suppressed by a score or so of Pontifical
troops. The stock stories about the cowardice of the Italians were
revived, and the more intemperate partizans of the Government asserted
that the support of the French army was no longer needed, and that the
Pope would shortly be able to rely for protection on his own troops
alone. There was in these exultations a certain sad amount of truth. I
am no blind admirer of the Romans, and I freely admit that no
high-spirited crowd would have submitted to be cut down by a mere handful
of gendarmes. I admit, too, that this blood-letting stopped for the time
the fashion of demonstrations. It is however at best a doubtful
compliment to a government that it has succeeded in crushing the spirit
and energy of a nation; but to this compliment, I fear, the Papal rule is
only too well entitled. "The lesson given on St Joseph's day," so wrote
the organ of the Papacy in Paris, "has profited;" how, and to whom, time
will show. Hardly, I think; at any rate, to the religion of love and
mercy, or to those who preach its doctrines, and enforce its teachings by
lessons such as this.

CHAPTER XIV. A COUNTRY FAIR.

Far away among the Sabine hills, right up the valley of the Teverone, as
the Romans now-a-days call the stream which once bore the name of Anio,
hard by the mountain frontier-land of Naples, lies the little town of
Subiaco. I am not aware that of itself this out-of-the-world nook
possesses much claim to notice. Antiquarians, indeed, visit it to search
after the traces of a palace, where Nero may or may not have dwelt.
Students of ecclesiastical lore make pilgrimages thereto, to behold the
famous convent of the Santo Speco, the home of the Benedictine order. In
summer-time the art