ct might prove
successful it had been necessary that it should be formed at a particular
brief moment--a moment when a supreme effort was being made to conciliate
the Vatican and the Quirinal. A report circulated that an agreement was
on the point of being arrived at, that the King consented to recognise
the Pope's absolute sovereignty over the Leonine City,* and a narrow band
of territory extending to the sea. And if such were the case would not
the marriage of Benedetta and Prada become, so to say, a symbol of union,
of national reconciliation? That lovely girl, the pure lily of the black
world, was she not the acquiescent sacrifice, the pledge granted to the
whites?

* The Vatican suburb of Rome, called the _Civitas Leonina_,
because Leo IV, to protect it from the Saracens and Arabs,
enclosed it with walls in the ninth century.--Trans.

For a fortnight nothing else was talked of; people discussed the
question, allowed their emotion rein, indulged in all sorts of hopes. The
girl, for her part, did not enter into the political reasons, but simply
listened to her heart, which she could not bestow since it was hers no
more. From morn till night, however, she had to encounter her mother's
prayers entreating her not to refuse the fortune, the life which offered.
And she was particularly exercised by the counsels of her confessor, good
Abbe Pisoni, whose patriotic zeal now burst forth. He weighed upon her
with all his faith in the Christian destinies of Italy, and returned
heartfelt thanks to Providence for having chosen one of his penitents as
the instrument for hastening the reconciliation which would work God's
triumph throughout the world. And her confessor's influence was certainly
one of the decisive factors in shaping Benedetta's decision, for she was
very pious, very devout, especially with regard to a certain Madonna
whose image she went to adore every Sunday at the little church on the
Piazza Farnese. One circumstance in particular struck her: Abbe Pisoni
related that the flame of the lamp before the image in question whitened
each time that he himself knelt there to beg the Virgin to incline his
penitent to the all-redeeming marriage. And thus superior forces
intervened; and she yielded in obedience to her mother, whom the Cardinal
and Donna Serafina had at first opposed, but whom they left free to act
when the religious question arose.

Benedetta had grown up in such absolute purity and ignorance, kn