“I think I understand,” the Cardinal said. “There was a bull to be tamed and it was better to keep red rags out of sight. A stroke of mind against muscle. But in taming the bull you have almost lost--yourself.” With words that his looks did not bear out, Mario strove to assure them all that save for the pain where his head was cut his suffering was slight. “If your Eminence will drive me there,” he said, “I will go to my apartments.” The Bemardines protested in chorus. “Let us care for you here,” Brother Sebastiano pleaded. “It is most kind of you,” Mario said, rising, “but sooner or later we must part, and now I feel able to go.” Seeing him resolute, the Cardinal rose as well and with the brothers all about them they went to the door. “To our meeting again, Signor Forza,” said the prior in bidding adieu. “Some day you will come and tell us the story?” “Yes, and you may expect me soon.” When the rumble of the carriage had drowned the distant roar and crackle of musketry which told that the unequal conflict was still on, Mario spoke his regret that the Cardinal for his sake had lost the train to Como, and an important engagement. “I would lose all the trains in the world in such a cause,” the other returned. “Did your going to the convent not save our Leonardo? As to the journey, I shall accomplish it yet by some means. The railway strike is general. Traffic has ceased on all the lines north and south. When, I wonder, shall we give to the greatest of our problems the reason we apply to the solution of smaller ones?” “We are still in social darkness,” Mario said, and the Cardinal detected a note of despair that was strange to him. To the leader of the New Democracy the last two days had been a season of broken illusion, humiliation, and quailing hope for the cause to which he had devoted his life. He had seen the peasantry of many provinces encouraged and uplifted by the co-operative works his party had fostered; he had endured abuse in their behalf, for his foes delighted to brand the movement a nursery of revolt against the established order. It was true that he had not rested content to develop mere industrial concord. He had striven to keep alive the ideal, the sentimental side of the cause. Those who had risen to the idea of his Democracy knew that it touched humanity at every point, that its aspiration was to imbue government with the scientific leaven of to-day as well as the Golden Rule, to the end that Italy’s many ills might be cured. But now, in the face of this outbreak of class hatred, so hostile to the spirit he had striven to awaken, he apprehended as he never had before how little was the progress made. He felt as a gardener who contemplates the weeds growing faster than he can uproot them. He must have betrayed his gloomy reflections, for the Cardinal said, as they turned into Via Senato, and the carriage stopped at Mario’s door: