. 'I will go at once to the Cardinal himself,
and say that I cannot undertake to write the mass for the Pope. Instead
of taking a new lodging, we will leave Rome on the feast of Saint
John.'

CHAPTER XX

The following days passed quietly, and Don Alberto did not again attempt
to see Ortensia alone. He was, indeed, much occupied with more urgent
affairs, for Queen Christina had noticed the signs of his approaching
defection and was becoming daily more exigent. On his side, young
Altieri only desired to be dismissed, and instead of submitting to her
despotic commands in a spirit of contrition, he cleverly managed to obey
them with a sort of superior indifference that irritated her to the
verge of fury. She wreaked her temper on every one who came near her,
and so far forgot her royal dignity as to box the ears of poor Guidi,
the deformed poet, for pointing out a grammatical mistake in some
Italian verses she had composed. But he would not bear the indignity of
a blow, even from her royal hand, and on that same night he packed his
manuscripts and his few belongings and left Rome to seek his fortune
where he might. The ex-Queen had Rome searched for him the very next day
by a score of her servants, and it was one of her grooms who had
mistaken Cucurullo for Guidi, because he hardly knew the poet by sight,
and thought that hunchbacks were all very much alike.

Don Alberto had not neglected to speak to the Cardinal about Stradella's
mass, nor was he surprised at the careless way in which His Eminence
acquiesced to the proposal and agreed that the composer should receive
a handsome fee. The young man did not notice that his uncle's thin lips
twitched a little, as if with amusement. The truth was that Stradella
had come to him before Don Alberto, and had explained that it was
materially impossible to do what His Eminence had so kindly proposed
through his nephew. The Cardinal was well aware of the latter's passion
for the musician's wife, and was not at all inclined to encourage it,
judging that there was more political advantage to be gained by his
young kinsman's continued intimacy with the ex-Queen than by a
love-affair with Ortensia. For Christina was almost always engaged in
some intrigue, if not in actual conspiracy, and though her dealings of
this kind were as futile as her whole life had been, it was as well that
the Papal Government should know what she was really about.

A week before the Feast of Saint Jo