1889] The Duke of Sermoneta 29 



stud, which she has established very successfully here, and for which she 

 had bought a couple of Arab stallions a year or two ago. The Duke much 

 busied with public affairs, and the municipal elections now going on at 

 Rome. He was on the committee of selection, and after much telephon- 

 ing to and from headquarters ended by sending in his resignation. 

 This was an early stage of his public career which led him later to the 

 mayoralty of Rome, and later still to office in the Government. " The 

 Duke," I write, 9th November, after much talk on these subjects, " is 

 certainly a most distinguished man, not a man of genius but of very 

 superior talents. He has read enormously, philosophy, science, his- 

 tory, and can talk well on most subjects. He is president of the Italian 

 Geographical Society and the Italian Alpine Club, an honest man in 

 public affairs, but disenchanted with knowledge and doubtful of the 

 ends of life like all the rest of us. ' Neither the moral law nor the 

 law of beauty,' he says, ' can be found in nature, and without these the 

 world must be lacking in interest.' He is not religious, but supports 

 religion as being the reason of these two ideas, at least so I gather 

 from what he has told me." 



It was in accordance with this view of religion, and out of politeness 

 to us, that on Sunday the 10th it was arranged that mass should be 

 said in a little movable hut on wheels like a bathing machine, evidently 

 a new experiment, a talked-of chapel not being finished or apparently 

 likely to be. " The Duke is clearly a latitudinarian though he attended 

 mass, and the Duchess enjoys life too much to be very devote. There 

 were some thirty servants and peasant neighbours brought in and a 

 sprinkling of dogs to make up the congregation, which was all out of 

 doors in front of the house, the celebrant a mass priest brought in from 

 a distance. Altogether a quaint admixture of mediaeval simplicity 

 with a nineteenth century lack of faith, but it is not for me to criticize." 

 On our return to Rome the same afternoon, ipth November, I found 

 letters and newspapers with news from Egypt. " The Stanley expedi- 

 tion has come to grief in Africa, and Wadelai was really captured by 

 the Mahadists just as Osman Digna declared it to be more than a year 

 ago. Stanley and Emin are now reported to be together endeavouring 

 to get to the coast, but an end will have been put to their filibustering 

 projects of re-conquest on the Upper Nile. The German, Peters, too, 

 has been knocked on the head by the Somalis, and Islam triumphs all 

 along the equatorial line. The German Emperor, meanwhile, is at 

 Constantinople being feted with all honour by Abdul Hamid." 



The news inspired me "with a fresh longing for the East, where my 

 true heart lay, and hastened our departure for Egypt, the rest of our 

 time at Rome being spent partly, as I have said, with my old friends the 

 Irish priests in the various colleges and monasteries, partly with new 

 artistic acquaintances, of whom there are so many resident in the 



