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rested upon the Englishman with a scrutiny, instantly withdrawn.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.