Magnanimity was a form of commodity which could be exchanged for
popularity, and popularity was ready money. A thousand votes were as
good as two million francs, any day, when one was not a senator for
life, and wished to be re-elected; and a reputation for spotless
integrity would cover a multitude of financial sins. Since it had been
impossible to keep what did not belong to him, the next best thing was
to restore it to the accompaniment of a brass band and a chorus of
public approval. The Princess, clever woman, knew exactly how he felt
and helped him to do the inevitable in a showy way; and it all helped
her to carry her daughter and herself out of a difficult position in a
blaze of triumph.
"My dear," she said to the girl, "you may do anything you please, if
you will only do it in public. Lock your door to say your prayers, and
the world will shriek out that you have a scandal to conceal."
It dawned upon Sabina that her cynical, careless, spendthrift,
scatter-brained mother had perhaps after all a share of the cunning
and the force which rule the world to-day, and which were so
thoroughly combined in Volterra's character. That would account for
the way in which she sailed through storms that would have wrecked the
Baroness and drowned poor little Sabina herself.
Meanwhile a hundred workmen had dug down to the vault under the
courtyard of the Palazzo Conti, the statues had been lifted out
intact, with cranes, and had been set upon temporary pedestals, under
a spacious wooden shed; and the world, the flesh and the devil,
including royalty, went to see them and talked of nothing else.
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