“What an idea!”

“Do not men of great genius notoriously forget themselves, forget to eat and drink and dress themselves like Christians?  That is because they have not two heads.  Providence expects a man to do two things at once—­an air from an opera and invent the steam-engine at the same moment.  Nature rebels.  Then Providence and Nature do not agree.  What becomes of religion?  It is all a mystery.  Believe me, Madame, art is easier than, nature, and painting is simpler than theology.”

Maria Consuelo listened to Gouache’s extraordinary remarks with a smile.

“You are either paradoxical, or irreligious, or both,” she said.

“Irreligious?  I, who carried a rifle at Mentana?  No, Madame, I am a good Catholic.”

“What does that mean?”

“I believe in God, and I love my wife.  I leave it to the Church to define my other articles of belief.  I have only one head, as you see.”

Gouache smiled, but there was a note of sincerity in the odd statement which did not escape his hearer.

“You are not of the type which belongs to the end of the century,” she said.

“That type was not invented when I was forming myself.”

“Perhaps you belong rather to the coming age—­the age of simplification.”

“As distinguished from the age of mystification—­religious, political, scientific and artistic,” suggested Gouache.  “The people of that day will guess the Sphynx’s riddle.”

“Mine?  You were comparing me to a sphynx the other day.”

“Yours, perhaps, Madame.  Who knows?  Are you the typical woman of the ending century?”

“Why not?” asked Maria Consuelo with a sleepy look.

CHAPTER V.

There is something grand in any great assembly of animals belonging to the same race.  The very idea of an immense number of living creatures conveys an impression not suggested by anything else.  A compact herd of fifty or sixty thousand lions would be an appalling vision, beside which a like multitude of human beings would sink into insignificance.  A drove of wild cattle is, I think, a finer sight than a regiment of cavalry in motion, for the cavalry is composite, half man and half horse, whereas the cattle have the advantage of unity.  But we can never see so many animals of any species driven together into one limited space as to be equal to a vast throng of men and women, and we conclude naturally enough that a crowd consisting solely of our own kind is the most imposing one conceivable.

It was scarcely light on the morning of New Year’s Day when the Princess Sant’ Ilario found herself seated in one of the low tribunes on the north side of the high altar in Saint Peter’s.  Her husband and her eldest son had accompanied her, and having placed her in a position from which they judged she could easily escape at the end of the ceremony, they remained standing in the narrow, winding passage