. "Much water has run under the bridge
since then, sir. Changed since I was here? Rome? You're right, sir.
'When Rome falls, falls the world;' but it can alter for all that, and
even this square has seen its transformations. Holy Office stands where
it did, the yellow building behind there, but this palace, for
instance--this one with the people in the balcony...."

The Frenchman pointed to the travertine walls of a prison-like house on
the farther side of the piazza.

"Do you know whose palace that is?"

"Baron Bonelli's, President of the Council and Minister of the
Interior."

"Precisely! But do you know whose palace it used to be?"

"Belonged to the English Wolsey, didn't it, in the days when he wanted
the Papacy?"

"Belonged in my time to the father of the Pope, sir--old Baron Leone!"

"Leone! That's the family name of the Pope, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir, and the old Baron was a banker and a cripple. One foot in the
grave, and all his hopes centred in his son. 'My son,' he used to say,
'will be the richest man in Rome some day--richer than all their Roman
princes, and it will be his own fault if he doesn't make himself Pope.'"

"He has, apparently."

"Not that way, though. When his father died, he sold up everything, and
having no relations looking to him, he gave away every penny to the
poor. That's how the old banker's palace fell into the hands of the
Prime Minister of Italy--an infidel, an Antichrist."

"So the Pope is a good man, is he?"

"Good man, sir? He's not a man at all, he's an angel! Only two aims in
life--the glory of the Church and the welfare of the rising generation.
Gave away half his inheritance founding homes all over the world for
poor boys. Boys--that's the Pope's tender point, sir! Tell him anything
tender about a boy and he breaks up like an old swordcut."

The eyes of the young Roman were straying away from the Frenchman to a
rather shabby single-horse hackney carriage which had just come into the
square and taken up its position in the shadow of the grim old palace.
It had one occupant only--a man in a soft black hat. He was quite
without a sign of a decoration, but his arrival had created a general
commotion, and all faces were turning toward him.

"Do you happen to know who that is?" said the gay Roman. "That man in
the cab under the balcony full of ladies? Can it be David Rossi?"

"David Rossi, the anarchist?"

"Some people call him so. Do you know him?"

"I know nothing