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Monsignor Gamba, whose cowardice and nullity were legendary, seemed therefore to have no other role than that of enlivening Leo XIII, whose favour he had won by his incessant flattery and the anecdotes which he was ever relating about both the black and the white worlds.
Then Nani's smile came back with its almost imperceptible touch of derision as he resumed: "Impatient ones ought to find a great example in him, my dear son. I heard that Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo had been unable to help you. But you must not be too much distressed on that account.
"Yes; my father is a musician, but he only cares for the very early music, and I have hardly ever touched a piano, but I play the harpsichord.... My instrument is the viola da gamba." "The harpsichord and the viola da gamba! That is very interesting, but" and Madame Savelli laughed good-naturedly "unfortunately we have no harpsichord here, nor yet a spinet only the humble piano."
The talk turning on Gamba, Crescenti spoke of the help which the hunchback gave him in his work among the poor. "His early hardships," said he, "have given him an insight into character that my happier circumstances have denied me; and he has more than once been the means of reclaiming some wretch that I despaired of.
He also loaned him a fiddle and presented him a viola da gamba, and often invited him to dinner. For these favors Gainsborough promised to paint a portrait of Thicknesse, but never got beyond washing in the background. During ten years he made thirty-seven excuses for not doing the work, and as for Mrs.
If, however, despite the lateness of the hour, he had ventured to call there that evening, it was solely on account of Pierre, whom he at once drew on one side. "I felt sure I should find you here," he said. "Just now I managed to see my cousin, Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, and I have some good news for you. He will see us to-morrow at about eleven in his rooms at the Vatican."
If he really believes this movement will be popular with the people, why should he secretly oppose it, instead of making the most of his own share in it as the minister of a popular sovereign?" "For several reasons," Gamba answered promptly.
Gamba, it appeared, owed his early schooling to a Jesuit priest who, visiting the foundling asylum, had been struck by the child's quickness, and had taken him home and bred him to be a clerk. The priest's death left his charge adrift, with a smattering of scholarship above his station, and none to whom he could turn for protection.
"Your Highness may well hesitate," he said at last. "There are always more good reasons against a new state of things than for it. I am not surprised that Count Trescorre appears to have withdrawn his opposition. I believe he now honestly wishes your Highness to proclaim the constitution." Odo looked up in surprise. "You do not mean that he has come to believe in it?" Gamba smiled.
Ah! so you thought of Gamba to bring influence to bear on his Holiness? That's an idea, no doubt; one must see one must see." He repeated these words again and again as if to secure time to see into the matter himself, to weigh the pros and cons of the suggestion.
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