d by collision with
the absolute. And then, too, one had to bow to practical necessities; the
most obstinate ended by submitting. And nowadays would a republic save
us? In any case it would differ but little from our parliamentary
monarchy. Just think of what goes on in France! And so why risk a
revolution which would place power in the hands of the extreme
revolutionists, the anarchists? We fear all that, and this explains our
resignation. I know very well that a few think they can detect salvation
in a republican federation, a reconstitution of all the former little
states in so many republics, over which Rome would preside. The Vatican
would gain largely by any such transformation; still one cannot say that
it endeavours to bring it about; it simply regards the eventuality
without disfavour. But it is a dream, a dream!"

At this Orlando's gaiety came back to him, with even a little gentle
irony: "You don't know, I suppose, what it was that took my fancy in your
book--for, in spite of all my protests, I have read it twice. Well, what
pleased me was that Mazzini himself might almost have written it at one
time. Yes! I found all my youth again in your pages, all the wild hope of
my twenty-fifth year, the new religion of a humanitarian Christ, the
pacification of the world effected by the Gospel! Are you aware that,
long before your time, Mazzini desired the renovation of Christianity? He
set dogma and discipline on one side and only retained morals. And it was
new Rome, the Rome of the people, which he would have given as see to the
universal Church, in which all the churches of the past were to be
fused--Rome, the eternal and predestined city, the mother and queen,
whose domination was to arise anew to ensure the definitive happiness of
mankind! Is it not curious that all the present-day Neo-Catholicism, the
vague, spiritualistic awakening, the evolution towards communion and
Christian charity, with which some are making so much stir, should be
simply a return of the mystical and humanitarian ideas of 1848? Alas! I
saw all that, I believed and burned, and I know in what a fine mess those
flights into the azure of mystery landed us! So it cannot be helped, I
lack confidence."

Then, as Pierre on his side was growing impassioned and sought to reply,
he stopped him: "No, let me finish. I only want to convince you how
absolutely necessary it was that we should take Rome and make her the
capital of Italy. Without Rome new