The conquest of Rome

From his Centrist bench, where he was pretending to write letters, but where he was in reality mechanically tracing her name twenty, thirty times on a sheet of paper, he distinc...

When he returned that night to his modest lodgings in the Via Angelo Custode, Francesco Sangiorgio was in an almost feverish state. Donna Angelica's promise scourged his blood,...

When the Honourable Sangiorgio entered the Parliament café at seven to dine, when he went into that dark, oppressive vault, which was, as it were, in a state of fumigation, sund...

The Minister had been speaking for an hour. He was no orator: he lacked fire and polish. Rather was he a modest speaker, one who did not strive after effects in political eloque...

Another walk from the corner of the Piazza Sciarra to the Piazza San Carlo, all the way by the Corso--the Corso on a festal day, with all the shops shut and the street empty bet...

It was the last public ball on the last Tuesday of the carnival, at the Costanzi Theatre. The small people whose only amusement during the whole carnival was one public ball; st...

The door marked No. 50 in the Via Angelo Custode was situated two doors from a large, gray, dismal mansion, which was closed up. Francesco Sangiorgio hesitated a moment: there w...

In the glove-shop of the Via di Pietra there was a great bustle. The handsome proprietress, fair and tall, a cheerful Milanese, and two lean girls with weary eyes, did nothing b...

A soft breath of lamentation; a dim light, which the blue flamelets cast against the massive granite walls in tedious pagan obsequies had never dispelled; a veiled light, which...

Mild, genteel applause, coming from small, female, well-gloved, though rather listless hands, greeted the noisy conclusion of the pianist, an insignificant, meagre, dark little...

That day he must resist and not go to Montecitorio. The rain had ceased, as if weary of a week's downpour; a suggestion of dampness still floated in the atmosphere, the streets...

A clanking of swords dragged on the ground was heard, and some lively muttering that passed between a Lombard and a Piedmontese. It came from a group of subaltern officers, who...

Believing this promise, he lived upon it that night and the next morning. By two o'clock she would not have arrived. At first he would think she had been delayed, would take pat...

The case had come up expectedly two days after a public holiday. In one of the Italian provinces, on that festal day of patriotic celebration, some of the municipal board and th...

Scarcely had Francesco Sangiorgio emerged from the Via Babuino into the Piazza del Popolo than a handful of coriander seeds went down his neck, although he could not tell whence...

Sangiorgio was idling under the porch at Montecitorio, while inside the ushers were nimbly extinguishing the gas in the library, reading and writing rooms, and offices. He was g...

Three times they had met on the great road, lined with elms and plane-trees, which skirts the Tiber. She would leave her carriage before it reached the Milvio Bridge, and send h...