Eleanor by Mrs. Humphry Ward
page 85 of 565 (15%)
page 85 of 565 (15%)
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of the present, spattering all with the same mud, till Italian Liberalism,
from Cavour to Crispi, sat shivering and ugly--stripped of all those pleas and glories wherewith she had once stepped forth adorned upon the page of history. Finally--with the art of the accomplished talker--a transition! Back to the mountains, and the lonely convent on the heights--to the handful of monks left in the old sanctuary, handing on the past, waiting for the future, heirs of a society which would destroy and outlive the New Italy, as it had destroyed and outlived the Old Rome,--offering the daily sacrifice amid the murmur and solitude of the woods,--confident, peaceful, unstained; while the new men in the valleys below peculated and bribed, swarmed and sweated, in the mire of a profitless and purposeless corruption. And all this in no set harangue--but in vivid broken sentences; in snatches of paradox and mockery; of emotion touched and left; interrupted, moreover, by the lively give and take of conversation with the young Italians, by the quiet comments of the Cardinal. None the less, the whole final image emerged, as Manisty meant it to emerge; till the fascinated hearers felt, as it were, a breath of hot bitterness and hate pass between them and the spring day, enveloping the grim phantom of a ruined and a doomed State. The Cardinal said little. Every now and then he put in a fact of his own knowledge--a stroke of character--a phrase of compassion that bit more sharply even than Manisty's scorns--a smile--a shake of the head. And sometimes, as Manisty talked with the young men, the sharp wrinkled eyes rested upon the Englishman with a scrutiny, instantly withdrawn. All the caution of the Roman ecclesiastic,--the inheritance of centuries--spoke in the glance. |
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