It enrages him that he who was so eminently respectable in life
should be made so ludicrous on his eminence after death. He is bitter
at the inertia of the men who set him up. Were he an ornament of the
Church, not of the State that he served so conscientiously, how very
different would be the treatment of his plight! If he were a Saint,
occluded thus by the municipality, how many the prayers that would be
muttered, the candles promised, for his release! There would be
processions, too; and who knows but that there might even be a miracle
vouchsafed, a rending of the veil? The only procession that passes him
is that of the intimidated orphans. No heavenly power intervenes for
him--perhaps (he bitterly conjectures) for fear of offending the
Vatican. Sirocco, now and again, blows furiously at his back, but
never splits the sheeting. Rain often soaks it, never rots it. There
is no help for him. He stands a mock to the pious, a shame and incubus
to the emancipated; received, yet hushed up; exalted, yet made a fool
of; taken and left; a monument to Fate's malice.
>From under the hem of his weather-beaten domino, always, he just
displays, with a sort of tragic coquetry, the toe of a stout and
serviceable marble boot. And this, I have begun to believe, is all
that I shall ever see of him.
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