It was only to usher in, almost immediately, a stately personage in an evening dress, and wearing a decoration of a high class, who saluted the monsignore with great cordiality.
“I am engaged to dine with the Prussian ambassador, who has been obliged to come to town to receive a prince of the blood who is visiting the dockyards here; but I thought you might be later than you expected, and I ordered my carriage to be in waiting, so that we have a good little hour—and I can come on to you again afterward, if that will not do.”
“A little hour with us is a long hour with other people,” said the monsignore, “because we are friends and can speak without windings. You are a true friend to the Holy See; you have proved it. We are in great trouble and need of aid.”
“I hear that things are not altogether as we could wish,” said the gentleman in an evening dress; “but I hope, and should think, only annoyances.”
“Well, we have invasion threatening us without and insurrection within,” said Berwick. “We might, though it is doubtful, successfully encounter one of these perils, but their united action must be fatal.”
“All this has come suddenly,” said the gentleman. “In the summer you had no fear, and our people wrote to us that we might be perfectly tranquil.”
“Just so,” said Berwick. “If we had met a month ago, I should have told you the same thing. A month ago the revolution seemed lifeless, penniless; without a future, without a resource. They had no money, no credit, no men. At present, quietly but regularly, they are assembling by thousands on our frontiers; thy have to our knowledge received two large consignments of small arms, and apparently have unlimited credit with the trade, both in Birmingham and Liége; they have even artillery; every thing is paid for in coin or in good bills—and, worst of all, they have a man, the most consummate soldier in Europe. I thought he was at New York, and was in hopes he would never have recrossed the Atlantic—but I know that he passed through Florence a fortnight ago, and I have seen a man who says he spoke to him at Narni.”
“The Italian government must stop all this,” said the gentleman.
“They do not stop it,” said Berwick. “The government of his holiness has made every representation to them: we have placed in their hands indubitable evidence of the illegal proceedings that are taking place and of the internal dangers we experience in consequence of their exterior movements. But they do nothing: it is even believed that the royal troops are joining the insurgents, and Garibaldi is spouting with impunity in every balcony of Florence.”
