It may seem strange that at the time when all Rome was convulsed by an internal revolution, and when the temporal power appeared to be in very great danger, Montevarchi and San Giacinto should have been able to discuss so coolly the conditions of the marriage, and even to fix the wedding day.  The only possible explanation of this fact is that neither of them believed in the revolution at all.  It is a noticeable characteristic of people who are fond of money that they do not readily believe in any great changes.  They are indeed the most conservative of men, and will count their profits at moments of peril with a coolness which would do honour to veteran soldiers.  Those who possess money put their faith in money and give no credence to rumours of revolution which are not backed by cash.  Once or twice in history they have been wrong, but it must be confessed that they have very generally been right.

As for San Giacinto, his own interests were infinitely more absorbing to his attention than those of the world at large, and being a man of uncommonly steady nerves, it seems probable that he would have calmly pursued his course in the midst of much greater disturbances than those which affected Rome at that time.

CHAPTER VIII.

When Anastase Gouache was at last relieved from duty and went home in the gray dawn of the twenty-third, he lay down to rest expecting to reflect upon the events of the night.  The last twelve hours had been the most eventful of his life; indeed less than that time had elapsed since he had bid farewell to Faustina in the drawing-room of the Palazzo Saracinesca, and yet the events which had occurred in that short space had done much towards making him another man.  The change had begun two years earlier, and had progressed slowly until it was completed all at once by a chain of unforeseen circumstances.  He realised the fact, and as this change was not disagreeable to him he set himself to think about it.  Instead of reviewing what had happened, however, he did what was much more natural in his case, he turned upon his pillow and fell fast asleep.  He was younger than his years, though he counted less than thirty, and his happy nature had not yet formed that horrible habit of wakefulness which will not yield even to bodily fatigue.  He lay down and slept like a boy, disturbed by no dreams and troubled by no shadowy revival of dangers or emotions past.

He had placed a gulf between himself and his former life.  What had passed between him and Faustina, might under other circumstances have become but a romantic episode in the past, to be thought of with a certain tender regret, half fatuous, half genuine, whenever the moonlight chanced to cast the right shadow and the artist’s mind was in the contemplative mood.  The peculiar smell of broken masonry, when it is a little damp, would recall the impression, perhaps; an old wall knocked to pieces by builders