"What is it?"
"That somebody on behalf of the people should take the law into his own hands."
The man had spoken with perfect calmness, and after a moment of silence David Rossi replied as calmly:
"I will ask you to explain what you mean."
The man smiled, made a deferential gesture, and answered, "You will permit me to speak plainly?"
"Certainly."
"Thanks! I have read your Creed and Charter. I have even signed my name to it. It is beautiful as a theory—most beautiful! And the Republic of Man is beautiful too. Beautiful!"
"Well?"
"But more beautiful than practical, dear sir, and the ideal thread that runs through your plan will break the moment the rough world begins to tug at it."
"I will ask you to be more precise," said David Rossi.
"With pleasure. You have called a meeting in the Coliseum to protest against the bread-tax. What if the Government prohibits it? Your principle of passive resistance will not permit you to rebel, and without the right of public meeting your association is powerless. Then where are you?"
David Rossi had taken up his paper-knife dagger and was drawing lines with the point of it on the letter of introduction which now lay open on the desk. The man saw the impression he had produced, and went on with more vigour.
"If the Governments of the world deny you the right of meeting, where are your weapons of warfare? On the one side armies on armies of men marshalled and equipped with all the arts and engines of war; on the other side a helpless multitude with their hands in their pockets, or paying a penny a week subscription to the great association that is to overcome by passive suffering the power of the combined treasuries of the world!"
David Rossi had risen from his seat, and was walking backward and forward with a step that was long and slow.
"Well, and what do you say we ought to do?" he said.
A flash came from the man's eyes, and he said in a thick voice:
"Remove the one man in Rome whose hand crushes the nation."
"The Prime Minister?"
"Yes."
There was silence.
"You expect me to do that?"
"No! I will do it for you. … Why not? If violence is wrong, it is right to resist violence."
David Rossi returned to his seat at the desk, touched the letter of introduction, and said:
"That is the great act referred to in this letter from London?"
"Yes."
"Why do you come to me?" he said.
"Because you can help me to accomplish this act. You are a Member of Parliament, and can give me cards to the Chamber. You can show me the way to the Prime Minister's room in Monte Citorio, and tell me the moment when he is to be found alone."
"I do not deny that the Prime Minister deserves death."
"A thousand deaths, sir, and everybody would hail them with delight."
"I do not deny that his death would be a relief to the people."
"On the day he dies, sir, the people will live."
"Or that crimes—great crimes—have been the means of bringing about great reforms."
"You are right, sir—but it would be no crime."
The stranger's face flushed up, his eyes seemed to burn, and he leaned over to the desk and took up the dagger.
"See! Give me this! It's exactly what I want. I'll put it in a bouquet of flowers, and pretend to offer them. Only a way to do it, sir! Say the word—may I take it?"
"But the man who assumes such a mission," said David Rossi, "must know himself free from every thought of personal vengeance."
The dagger trembled in the stranger's hand.
"He must be prepared to realise the futility of what he has done—to know that even when he succeeds he only changes the persons, not the things; the actors, not the parts."
The man stood like one who had been stunned, with his mouth partly open, and balancing the dagger on one hand.
"More than that," said David Rossi; "he must be prepared to be told by every true friend of freedom that the man who uses force is not worthy of liberty—that the conflict of intellects alone is human, and to fight otherwise is to be on the level of the brute."
The man threw the dagger back on the desk and laughed.
"I knew you talked like that to the people—statesmen do sometimes—that's all right—it's pretty, and it keeps the people quiet—but we. … "
David Rossi rose with a sovereign dignity, but he only said:
"Mr. Minghelli, our interview is at an end."
"So you dismiss me?"
"I do," said David Rossi. "It is such men as you who put back the progress of the world and make it possible for the upholders of authority to describe our efforts as devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and divine. Besides that, you speak as one who has not only a perverted political sentiment, but a personal quarrel against an enemy."
The man faced round sharply, came back with a quick step, and said:
"You say I speak as one who has a personal quarrel with the Prime Minister. Perhaps I have! I heard your speech this morning about his mistress, with her livery of scarlet and gold. You meant the woman who is known as Donna Roma Volonna. What if I tell you she is not a Volonna at all, but a girl the Minister picked up in the streets of London, and has palmed off on Rome as the daughter of a noble house, because he is a liar and a cheat?"
David Rossi gave a start, as if an invisible hand had smitten him.
"Her name is Roma, certainly," said the man; "that was the first thing that helped me to seize the mysterious thread."
David Rossi's face grew pale, and he scarcely breathed.
"Oh, I'm not talking without proof," said the man. "I was at the Embassy in London ten years ago when the Ambassador was consulted by the police authorities about an Italian girl who had been found at night in Leicester Square. Mother dead, father gone back to Italy—she had been living with some people her father gave her to as a child, but had turned out badly and run away."
David Rossi had fixed his eyes on the stranger with a kind of glassy stare.
"I went with the Ambassador to Bow Street, and saw the girl in the magistrate's office. She pleaded that she had been ill-treated, but we didn't believe her story, and gave her back to her guardians. A month later we heard that she had run away once more and disappeared entirely."
David Rossi was breathing audibly, and shrinking like an old man into his shoulders.
"I never saw that girl again until a week ago, and where do you think I saw her?"
David Rossi swallowed his saliva, and said:
"Where?"
"In Rome. I had trouble at the Embassy, and came back to appeal to the Prime Minister. Everybody said I must reach him through Donna Roma, and one of my relatives took me to her rooms. The moment I set eyes on her I knew who she was. Donna Roma Volonna is the girl Roma Roselli, who was lost in the streets of London."
David Rossi seemed suddenly to grow taller.
"You scoundrel!" he said, in a voice that was hollow and choked.
The man staggered back and stammered:
"Why … what. … "