“Ah!  I was not speaking of you, Duchessa,” answered the statesman.  “You are too noble a woman to be easily consoled.  And yet, though you may not find relief from your great sorrow, there are many things within your reach which you might do, and feel that in your mourning you have done honour to your departed husband as well as to yourself.  You have great estates—­you can improve them, and especially you can improve the condition of your peasants, and strengthen their loyalty to you and to the State.  You can find many a village on your lands where a school might be established, an asylum built, a road opened—­anything which shall give employment to the poor, and which, when finished, shall benefit their condition.  Especially about Astrardente they are very poor; I know the country well.  In six months you might change many things; and then you might return to Rome next winter.  If it pleases you, you can do anything with society.  You can make your house a centre for a new party—­the oldest of all parties it is, but it would now be thought new here.  We have no centre.  There is no salon in the good old sense of the word—­no house where all that is intelligent, all that is powerful, all that is influential, is irresistibly drawn.  To make a centre of that kind would be a worthy object, it seems to me.  You would surround yourself with men of genius; you would bring those together who cannot meet elsewhere; you would give a vigorous tone to a society which is fast falling to decay from inanition; you could become a power, a real power, not only in Rome, but in Europe; you could make your house famous as the point from which, in Rome, all that is good and great should radiate to the very ends of the earth.  You could do all this in your young widowhood, and you would not dishonour the memory of him you loved so dearly.”

Corona looked earnestly at the Cardinal as he enlarged upon the possibilities of her life.  What he said seemed true and good.  It opened to her a larger field than she had dreamed of half an hour ago.  Especially the plan of working for the improvement of her estates and people attracted her.  She wanted to do something at once—­something good, and something worth doing.

“I believe you are right,” she said.  “I shall die if I am idle.”

“I know I am right,” returned the Cardinal, in a tone of conviction.  “Not that I propose all this as an unalterable plan for you.  I would not have you think I mean to lay down any system, or even to advise you at all.  I was merely thinking aloud.  I am too happy if my thoughts please you—­if anything I say can even for a moment relieve your mind from the pressure of this sudden grief.  It is not consolation I offer you.  I am not a priest, but a man of action; and it is action I propose to you, not as an anodyne for sorrow, but simply because it is right that in these days we should all strive with a good will.  Your peasants are many of them in an evil case:  you can save them and make them