modicum of cash at the Vatican. And quite as much of course they were received with marked affability by the Holy Father. The benignant old man took occasion, indeed, in the course of his short address, to remark that there was no position in life in which the faithful sons of Holy Church might not render her good service, and that in the present unhappy circumstances, when revolution was let loose, and persecution raged even as in the early days of the Church, it could not be other than a source of satisfaction and hope to see men whose principles were known to be sound in situations where it might be possible for them to use their influence for good and holy ends. It was very generally supposed that his Holiness, duly prompted for the occasion, was specially alluding to the recent election of our friend Pralini, and, indeed, Father Corboli did not hesitate to interpret his words in that sense when speaking of them to the Signora.

After that there could, of course, be no further doubts or misgivings about the matter. And it was not long before the new member of the Municipal Council himself began to have some comprehension of the motives which had led his spiritual guides to act as they had done.

CHAPTER VI.

WHY SIGNOR GIACOMO PRALINI WAS PLACED ON THE ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL.

It was not long as I have already intimated was likely to be the case-before Signor Giacomo Pralini, the rich Mercante di Campagna, whose election to serve on the Municipal Council of the Eternal City, and the manner of whose election has been recounted, began to have some little understanding of the ends and purposes for which he had been placed there, and of the motives of those who had so placed him in acting as they had done.

There is a large school for poor girls, maintained mainly by the funds of an old pious. foundation, which is supported and administered under the superintendence of the Municipal Administrative Council. Now, at the head of this school was a lady eminently well fitted for the

position, and who was doing a world of good service in really educating, and not merely teaching reading and writing to, a large number of girls of the all but poorest classes in Rome. But Signora Ernestina Martinelli-so we will call her was not a Roman. She was a Piedmontese, the widow of an officer whe had died at too early an age to give her any claim to a pension, and wholly dependent for the means of living on her own exertions. Fortunately for her, she had been herself educated far more highly and efficiently than the greater number of women of her position, even in Piedmont ; and few Roman ladies of any class could be found who were her equals in culture. In fact, the chance which enabled the school managers to intrust the institution to such a person was a veritable and most valuable piece of good fortune. She had gifts of management and the talent of governing, moreover, and was, into the bargain, a highly conscientious and active woman-in short, emphatically the right woman in the right place; and she was doing the State good service, the value of which it would be difficult to overestimate.

It must be, however, understood that the

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Signora Martinelli had been placed in her position subsequently to the entry of the Italian troops into Rome, and that for this reason alone, even had there been no others, she was unacceptable to all those attached to the old order of things. She was a Piedmontese, too, as has been said, which made the matter worse. But it must be confessed that there were other and far stronger reasons why the activity of Signora Martinelli in the position intrusted to her was superlatively objectionable to the friends and adherents of the Vatican.

The Signora Ernestina was a Catholic, as Italian ladies, especially in the north of Italy, were in the days before the famous Syllabus and the Ecumenical Council. That is to say, she

went to mass, and at the prescribed times to confession, had no "director," read all sorts of books, whether prohibited or not, and thought little about the matter at all, except on Sundays. Her reading, and yet more perhaps the course of political events in Italy, which had placed the clergy in marked and violent opposition to the national hopes and aspirations of the Italians, had led her, as it has led so many others, both men and women-though the latter necessarily

less frequently than the former-not to question the essential doctrines of her religion, but to minimize the connection of the Church with her daily life and habits of thought, and absolutely to refuse the control of any spiritual pastors and masters in matters appertaining to the general culture of her mind, and the formation of her opinions on all matters whatsoever, save the dogmas propounded in her catechism, which lay in her mind, if assented to, dead to all practical intents and purposes. And even if they had not been so, there are thousands of the best minds in Italy which have taught themselves to consider pretensions to orthodox religious sentiment by no means incompatible with a settled aversion to, and contempt for, the general body of the elergy, and especially for the prelates and dignitaries of the Church.

It will readily be understood that Ernestina Martinelli, deeply penetrated by the paramount importance of the task intrusted to her, in the formation of the minds of those who were to be the mothers of the coming generation of Italians, fully alive to the antagonism between the claims of the clergy and the best hopes of Italian patriots of the stamp of her own father and her