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Pius the Ninth fled like the rest, when his favourite minister, Count Rossi, had been stabbed to death on the steps of the Cancelleria. Some of the sovereigns got safely back to their thrones. The Pope was helped back by France and kept on his throne, first by the Republic, and then, with one short intermission, by Louis Napoleon.
Although melancholy and suspicious, often making enemies and losing patronage by misunderstandings, Rossi and Vasari were always faithful to their first boyish friendship, often working together, but never with any spirit of rivalry. Salviati's style was bold and spirited; he was rich in invention, but perhaps a little wild in the matter of draperies and bizarre costumes.
"The dissatisfied were more numerous and noisy in the capital; the contented stronger in the Provinces, especially at Bologna, where an educated community wished for a liberal system, with a government strong in the strength of the law; where the recent terrible events had filled every mind with horror; and where Rossi, the proscribed of 1815, was dear to memory, and rooted in public esteem."
Count Rossi was by birth an Italian. He was so in feeling also, and was naturally led to consider how he should best avail himself in his political arrangements, of the sound and enlightened doctrines of Gioberti and Rosmini. With a view to this end he commenced negotiations at Turin, Naples and Florence, for a confederation of the Italian States.
The leaders of the Red Republic party, on their return from a scientific Congress at Turin, where the name of science was only used as a cloak the better to conceal their plots, decreed that Rossi should be put to death. Mazzini, in a letter which was published, declared that his assassination was indispensable.
But it contains one grand scene namely, that where Kean, whilst playing Hamlet, goes mad upon the stage; and this scene Rossi renders superbly. As to Nero, it is marvelous to witness the complete eclipse of the refined, accomplished gentleman and intellectual actor behind the brutal physiognomy of the wicked emperor. It is Hamlet transformed into a prize-fighter.
The oration was, throughout, a bold and luminous exposition of the ideas and policy which M. Rossi was charged to carry into effect. It was, at the same time, an earnest appeal to the representative body in order to obtain the aid, which was so necessary, of their loyal concurrence, and the minister held himself bound in honor to abide strictly by the provisions of the constitution.
"I am betrayed, then?" snarled the man viciously, though his voice went off into a curious yelp of agony as a twinge reminded him of Brodie's vigorous aim with half a brick. "Yes, the game is up. I know your confederates, and you will be confronted with them before daybreak. . . . No, I am not bluffing. That is not my way. Their names are Gregor Martiny and Ferdinand Rossi. Now are you satisfied?"
There is nothing more cruelly realistic in the world, cruel not only to the base originals but to the feelings of the spectator, than the harmony of villainies, of various combinations of black and hog-like bestiality, and fox and wolf-like cunning and ferocity with wicked human thought and self-command, which Raphael has enshrined in that splendid harmony of scarlet silk and crimson satin, and purple velvet and dull white brocade, as the portraits of Leo X. and his cardinals Rossi and Dei Medici.
DUKE DE TREVISE. M. de Pontecoulant, is he not? MARQUIS DE LAPLACE. NO, President Boyer. He is ninety-two. PRESIDENT BARTHE. He is older than that. BARON D'OBERLIN. He no longer comes to the Chamber. M. VIENNET. They say that M. Rossi is returning from Rome. DUKE DE FESENZAC. Well, I pity him for quitting Rome. It is the finest and most amiable city in the world. I hope to end my days there.
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