At this moment, my companion fancied he could detect some scrutinizing glances cast upon him, and carelessly changing the low, earnest tone in which he had been speaking, to one of sportive badinage, said something very trifling and ludicrous, which, for a few moments, apparently gave a completely new current to our conversation. Then, as soon as he thought himself no longer observed, he resumed, “I am not half cautious enough, even with only these poor _Rococos_[5] to deal with, deaf and purblind as most of them are. Yet, one never can tell who is listening; and the very walls have ears, I think, sometimes. Amongst Codini, I endeavour never to mention the word politics and all its concomitant delights.”
I told him we had noticed this reserve in others besides himself; and that it was only at my uncle's house that one ever heard anything like the true expression of their feelings.
“Yes,” he said; “it is a compliment we pay you. We can trust strangers—not ourselves! What a miserable people we are! In this late revolution of ours, what opportunities have been lost—what errors committed—what fatuity and treachery displayed! How difficult will it be for future historians to unravel the tangled web of all the events of those memorable three years—from the accession of Pio Nono in '46, to the sieges of Bologna and Ancona, the capitulation of Rome, and the re-establishment of Papal authority. For instance, take as a detached episode the scenes enacted in this good city of Ancona, and you will tell me that a people who could commit such crimes on the one hand, or suffer them to be committed on the other, deserve no better fate than their present servitude. _Basta!_ You have doubtless heard your cousins speak often enough on this subject?”
“Sufficiently so to make me wonder how they lived through such horrible anxiety.”
“Oh, they grew used to it, poor things!” he rejoined; “and they tried to keep up their courage for their father's sake, whose affairs did not admit of his leaving, and they would not go away without him. I remember being at the house one evening, when we heard screams in the street; we all ran to the window, and there was the servant of the Count ——, wringing his hands, and calling for help, over the prostrate body of his master, whose yells of agony mingled with the attendant's cries. Another time, one of them, walking with your uncle in broad daylight, saw a poor Irish friar shot dead at a few paces' distance. Ask them, too, if they remember that Easter Sunday, when, a little after dusk, they were startled by the report of fire-arms; and on sending to investigate the cause, their emissary returned, pale with horror, to say that he had stumbled over two dead bodies yet warm, lying before the Exchange, in the principal street of the town.”