of
the terrible question of human misery. And suddenly he realised that,
with that daughter of the sun who had inherited so many centuries of
sovereign aristocracy, all his endeavours at conversion were vain. He had
wished to bring her to a Christian love for the lowly and the wretched,
win her over to the new, enlightened, and compassionate Italy that he had
dreamt of; but if she had been moved by the sufferings of the multitude
at the time when she herself had suffered, when grievous wounds had made
her own heart bleed, she was no sooner healed than she proclaimed the
doctrine of universal felicity like a true daughter of a clime of burning
summers, and winters as mild as spring. "But everybody is not happy!"
said he.

"Yes, yes, they are!" she exclaimed. "You don't know the poor! Give a
girl of the Trastevere the lad she loves, and she becomes as radiant as a
queen, and finds her dry bread quite sweet. The mothers who save a child
from sickness, the men who conquer in a battle, or who win at the
lottery, one and all in fact are like that, people only ask for good
fortune and pleasure. And despite all your striving to be just and to
arrive at a more even distribution of fortune, the only satisfied ones
will be those whose hearts sing--often without their knowing the
cause--on a fine sunny day like this."

Pierre made a gesture of surrender, not wishing to sadden her by again
pleading the cause of all the poor ones who at that very moment were
somewhere agonising with physical or mental pain. But, all at once,
through the luminous mild atmosphere a shadow seemed to fall, tingeing
joy with sadness, the sunshine with despair. And the sight of the old
sarcophagus, with its bacchanal of satyrs and nymphs, brought back the
memory that death lurks even amidst the bliss of passion, the unsatiated
kisses of love. For a moment the clear song of the water sounded in
Pierre's ears like a long-drawn sob, and all seemed to crumble in the
terrible shadow which had fallen from the invisible.

Benedetta, however, caught hold of his hands and roused him once more to
the delight of being there beside her. "Your pupil is rebellious, is she
not, my friend?" said she. "But what would you have? There are ideas
which can't enter into our heads. No, you will never get those things
into the head of a Roman girl. So be content with loving us as we are,
beautiful with all our strength, as beautiful as we can be."

She herself, in her resple