cannot help thinking that for
an artist he is a little too much occupied in being a gentleman--and for
a gentleman he is quite too much an artist."

The remark was not original with Donna Tullia, but had been reported to
her as Spicca's, and Spicca had really said something similar about
somebody else.

"I had not got that impression," said Maria Consuelo, quietly.

"She hates him, too," she thought. "She seems to hate everybody. That
either means that she knows everybody, or is not received in society."

"But of course you know him better than I do," she added aloud, after a
little pause.

At that moment a strain of music broke out above the great, soft,
muffled whispering that filled the basilica. Some thirty chosen voices
of the choir of Saint Peter's had begun the hymn "Tu es Petrus," as the
procession began to defile from the south aisle into the nave, close by
the great door, to traverse the whole distance thence to the high altar.
The Pope's own choir, consisting solely of the singers of the Sixtine
Chapel, waited silently behind the lattice under the statue of Saint
Veronica.

The song rang out louder and louder, simple and grand. Those who have
heard Italian singers at their best know that thirty young Roman throats
can emit a volume of sound equal to that which a hundred men of any
other nation could produce. The stillness around them increased, too, as
the procession lengthened. The great, dark crowd stood shoulder to
shoulder, breathless with expectation, each man and woman feeling for a
few short moments that thrill of mysterious anxiety and impatience which
Orsino had felt. No one who was there can ever forget what followed.
More than forty cardinals filed out in front from the Chapel of the
Pieta. Then the hereditary assistants of the Holy See, the heads of the
Colonna and the Orsini houses, entered the nave, side by side for the
first time, I believe, in history. Immediately after them, high above
all the procession and the crowd, appeared the great chair of state, the
huge white feathered fans moving slowly on each side, and upon the
throne, the central figure of that vast display, sat the Pope, Leo the
Thirteenth.

Then, without warning and without hesitation, a shout went up such as
has never been heard before in that dim cathedral, nor will, perhaps, be
heard again.

"_Viva il Papa-Re!_ Long life to the Pope-King!"

At the same instant, as though at a preconcerted signal--utterly
impossi