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Cesare's father had not always been cruel.  In his faded memories of a lost youth, the only blows his father ever laid on him were gestures of fondness expressed in gentle aggression—soft punches to the shoulder, or a rough tousle of Cesare's hair.  But between the loss of his wife in a horrific carriage accident, and the strike to the head he himself sustained in the crash, the man transformed overnight into a monster.  The entire household took to creeping silently through the corridors, desperate not to provoke any random, violent outbursts, and Cesare guiltily breathed a sigh of relief on the frequent evenings his father spent deep in his cups, as a drunken tyrant could do far less harm than a sober one.

Giulia was only eight at the time.  She had always been a small and quiet child, but she seemed to shrink into even more of a wisp of a person, receding into herself in the hopes that her father might overlook her as well.  Cesare understood, but it still broke his heart to see his darling little sister fade into a sombre shadow of the quick-witted, precocious girl she had always been.  He did what he could for her, read to her late at night in the library after their father had fallen into a stupor, taught her bits and pieces of his own lessons when it became clear that their father never intended to resume his daughter's education.  Despite their opulent surroundings, both children tacitly understood that they now only had each other in this large, unforgiving world.

So when Giulia dashed into Cesare's room one evening, her face even paler than usual, Cesare immediately leapt to his feet in alarm.

"What's happened?" he asked urgently.  From down the hallway echoed their father's bellows, accompanied by the crash of crockery and glass as he rampaged through his own house.

"He's after me," Giulia whispered.  The ribbons were slipping from her blonde plaits and her earnest blue eyes were wide, making her look all the more like a terrified little doll.  "Help me, Cesare."

Cesare nodded, then wrenched open the deep bottom drawer of the dresser that stood in the corner of his bedroom.  Giulia stepped in and folded herself downwards, and Cesare barely had time to shut the drawer and return to his bed before his father appeared at the door.

"Where is she?" he snarled, flecks of spit flying from his reddened face as he grasped the door frame for support.

"She ran past my room a moment ago," Cesare replied, heart pounding, his entire body tense.

"Like hell, she did."  His father released the door frame and lurched into the room, breathing heavily.  His right fist was bloody, and Cesare wondered if he had shattered yet another of the mirrors in his current rage.  "What a family I have, eh?  My daughter is a wretched little thief, and now you, my only son and heir, turn out to be a fucking liar.  Where is she?"

"I don't know," answered Cesare through gritted teeth.  He flinched as his father slammed open the doors of the armoire and grasped blindly within its depths.

"Damn you," hissed his father, reeling round and kicking viciously under the bed.  "I know she's here somewhere, Cesare, and it won't take me long to find out where.  You used to obey me, boy.  When did your loyalty to that little cunt become more important than your duty to me?"

"When you stopped being someone worth obeying," Cesare burst out.  "And don't you dare call my sister that word, you cowardly bastard."

His father had had one hand on the bottom drawer of the dresser, but at this he straightened and turned.  Cesare held his gaze, hoping he wasn't shaking too visibly as his father approached him, praying that the terrifying glare his father now fixed on him would somehow give way instead to one of the broad smiles he used to turn on his son.  The first blow made Cesare stagger backwards; the second dropped him to his knees.  He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands, his ears ringing as he cried out weakly with each kick his father landed.

Finally, his father tired of this sport, and with a final heel to Cesare's ribs, he staggered out of the room, wheezing.  Cesare could not guess how long he lay there, his breaths ragged with bloody spit, but finally a soft knock reminded him that Giulia was still trapped in the dresser.  Opening one bruised eye, he dragged himself slowly across the carpet and grimaced in pain as he slowly pulled open the drawer.  Giulia uncurled herself swiftly, then gasped and clapped her hand to her mouth as she caught sight of him.

"Oh, Cesare!" she whispered.  She clambered awkwardly out of the drawer and fell to the ground next to him, shaking out one foot that had gone pins-and-needles.

"I'm all right," he croaked, trying to smile bravely for her sake.  "My nose is still on straight, and see?  I still have all my teeth."

Giulia did not attempt to reply, only tugged out her crumpled handkerchief to try to mop up some of the blood dripping profusely from Cesare's brow.  As she did so, something unfurled itself from the cloth, and Cesare limply grasped it.  It was a little perfume bottle made of Meissen porcelain, shaped like a pretty young shepherdess in a deep green skirt.  Cesare smiled slightly at the shepherdess's familiar smile and sharp dark eyes, at the associated memories of the various fragrances his mother once had dabbed on her wrists and neck (lilac, rosewater, orange blossom, drifting above the sweetness of ambergris).  With a pang of longing, he recalled the many hours in his youth he had sat contentedly at his mother's side as she prepared herself for the evening, Giulia snuggled into her lap, listening to the little stories she made up for the two of them about the shepherdess and the other figurines scattered across her dressing table.

"So this is what caused all the trouble?" he asked.

"I shouldn't have taken it!" Giulia sobbed in an impressively quiet state of hysterics.  "But she loved it so much, and he's destroyed so much of her other porcelain in one fit or another.  I wanted something to remember her by.  I didn't think he'd notice it was gone.  And now look at what he's done to you..."

"Giulia, he was in one of those moods tonight," Cesare interjected.  "He would have found some reason or another to beat one of us.  And I'd much rather take a beating than ever be crammed into a cramped drawer like you were, for any amount of time."

"You're not serious," said Giulia quietly.

"I really am," said Cesare, who had always been rather claustrophobic.  "Besides, better me than you.  You're still so small.  He might have killed you."

"He might have killed you, too," argued Giulia, dabbing tentatively at the gashes on her brother's forehead.  Cesare grimaced and nodded slightly in acknowledgement.  His mother had always reassured him that his lanky frame would fill out a bit, once he reached adulthood.  Now, Cesare wondered vaguely if he would even live to see his thirteenth birthday, let alone what sort of man he might be one day.

"Do you want the shepherdess?" Giulia asked hesitantly.  "You've really earned the right to it."

Cesare laughed, but quickly stopped because it made his ribs hurt too much.

"It's all yours, dearest," he said, pressing the perfume bottle back into his sister's delicate little hands.  "Mamma would have wanted you to have it.  Don't ever let anyone bully you out of something you value so highly, promise?"

"Promise," Giulia whispered solemnly, and she continued to wipe the blood out of Cesare's eyes until the bleeding finally abated.

Responding deftly to unexpected violence had become such a staple of Cesare's life that no one was entirely surprised when he announced he was enlisting.  His father sneered at the decision, but conceded that this meant one less mouth to feed, and so wished his son good riddance.  Not that he could have done anything else, by this point; his health had deteriorated precipitously, and Cesare at age eighteen had finally filled out the way his mother had promised.  His father no longer dared to raise a fist against him, but Cesare had had enough of living under such tyranny, and the allure of distant lands and bold adventures called to him.  Better to wait out the sad remainder of his father's life somewhere far beyond his reach.

"What will become of me, though?" asked Giulia quietly, the night Cesare voiced his plans to the family.

"Fret not, dearest," smiled Cesare.  "I've written to our mother's sister in Venezia and told her I'll pay for your upkeep.  I'll take you there by carriage tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"  Giulia's face blanched with fear.  "But that's so soon..."

"My battalion departs for training in two weeks," Cesare explained, "and I dare not let you stay here without me."

Giulia nodded grimly.  There was no need to discuss the unsettling way their father had begun looking at his daughter, now fourteen and beginning to mature into a lovely young woman.

"I'll miss you," she whispered.

"And I, you," Cesare replied, kissing her forehead.  "But I'll come visit when I can, and write when I can't.  I promise."

And Cesare kept his word.  Life as a soldier proved far less glamorous than he had expected, with few daring exploits and moments of valor, and far too many hot tempers, endless blisters, sunburnt noses, growling stomachs, fleas.  But even as he made his peace with the exhaustion and discomfort of military life, Cesare wrote to his sister as often as he could.  His fellow soldiers joked that Cesare must have some secret lover somewhere, teased him for his ostensible betrayals when he joined them in seeking out the comfort of women on their days of leave; but Cesare simply smiled and shrugged, and continued writing.  When he finally was able to visit Giulia, he was astounded by the change that had come over her.  Their aunt's husband was a prominent judge in Venezia, and the first evening that Cesare spent at the family's palazzo, gondoliers singing and splashing past as they navigated the canal beyond the window, Cesare watched in proud astonishment as his sister questioned their uncle about his doings that day in court, then instigated a lively debate over the latest legislation before the Consiglio Maggior and the Pregadi.  Giulia, animated by her convictions, laughed with an ease that Cesare had thought their father had destroyed forever.

"Look at you," he exclaimed when they were alone that evening.  "Giulia, you are positively glowing.  La Serenissima clearly is where you were destined to take root and flourish."

"I have been indescribably happy here," she admitted, grinning.  "Our aunt and uncle take me more seriously than anyone I've ever met, besides you.  Cesare, they regret so much that they didn't know what we suffered in our childhoods; if they had, they would have invited both of us here immediately.  They say that, once I've caught up on my studies with my tutors, I should attend university in Padova or Bologna, like Elena Cornaro Piscopia or Laura Bassi!  Can you imagine?  Even if I can never become a politician or a judge like our uncle, I could become a philosopher and a scholar!"

"And so you will," Cesare vowed, his heart aching with joy.  "You are well within reach of your dreams, my little sister.  I will do whatever I must to help you reach them."

But fate had other, crueller plans.  Their father, aging and increasingly infirm, could no longer physically harm his children, but he had one last card to play with respect to his daughter, even as she began preparing for her departure to Padova.  By her reports, their aunt and uncle sent letter after letter, begging the dying tyrant to change his mind, but to no avail: Giulia Angelotti was to wed the Marchese Attavanti, and no amount of pleading from any family member could or would change the arrangements.  Cesare, sick with disgust, offered to accompany his sister from Venezia back to Roma, and the mood of the voyage was as silent and sombre as that of a funeral procession.

"I'm so sorry, Giulia," he said quietly as the carriage bumped along the dusty roads.  (There was no point in offering hopeful, hollow platitudes.)

"I had imagined so clearly what my life was going to be," she answered softly, her fair head leaning against the side of the carriage as she stared listlessly out the window instead of at her brother's tears.  "And what I imagined was indescribably beautiful, brother.  I could have been someone, I could have done something to make an impact on the world.  Instead, that someone I could have been will be dead before my twenty-first birthday.  All that will ever happen to me now are a forced marriage to a man I barely know, beyond his reputation for frivolity; perhaps a child that I will not be able to love nearly as well as any child deserves; and beyond that, years of tedious dinners and staring silently at the walls, listening to the clock tick away the remainder of my days, dreaming of the life that was almost mine.  What kind of existence is that?  I'd rather not continue living, than live such a sad parody of the life I was meant to have.  You remember Mamma's little shepherdess of a perfume bottle?  More times than I've been able to count over the past weeks, I've considered filling her with poison, so I'll be ready if things become too unbearable."

"Don't," choked Cesare, grasping her hands.  "Giulia, please, don't say that.  My dear sister, you are the only reason I have for living, and I cannot bear the thought of existing in this world without you.  We'll find some way for you to regain that happiness you had in Venezia, I promise."

"Farewell, you Most Serene Republic."  Giulia smiled bitterly out the window.  "If only it were possible to recreate you in the heart of the Papal States."

Cesare lurked moodily in the back of Sant'Andrea della Valle throughout the wedding, scuffing at the chipped inlaid marble of the floors with one toe, scowling over the lecherous mutterings of the onlookers as they beheld how incandescently beautiful his golden-haired sister had become.  She should not belong to any man, but only to herself and her pursuit of knowledge, he seethed, even as he nodded politely and took the hand of his new brother-in-law, not daring to meet his sister's solemn gaze for fear he would burst into tears.  Their father was too ill to attend the ceremony, which was a blessing in itself, as Cesare was not sure how he would have handled an encounter with the man who had so thoroughly ruined Giulia's happiness.  When the tyrant finally died some months later, Cesare took possession of the family estate only long enough to sell it, all too glad to be rid of the ghosts that still lurked within its corridors.  With the resulting funds, he took his leave of the military and set off around Europe, travelling aimlessly, pursuing fleeting infatuations without any thought for consequences, drowning himself in distractions and endless misadventures.

"You know, Cesare, this can't continue indefinitely," Giulia reminded him on one of his infrequent visits during these lost years.

"You think I should return to Roma for good?" he asked sullenly.  His sister was always so overjoyed to see him, but it pained Cesare to be in her presence for too long, not when she had faded once more into the quiet, pale shade that had once crept fearfully through their father's house.  Her husband was not cruel, she reassured Cesare, but it was clear that her marriage provided her with neither interest nor comfort, let alone happiness.  The only way to make Giulia's eyes light up these days, it seemed, was to slip her copies of Rousseau and Voltaire that he had acquired on his travels, when her husband was not looking.

"I think you should stop running for long enough to find some greater meaning to your life," she argued.  "You became a soldier to escape, which is fine, and now that chapter of your life is over.  But what will you do now?"

"I don't know," he shrugged.  "I've never had your clarity of purpose.  Nothing has ever excited me the way political philosophy excites you."

"Would you not settle down and marry?" Giulia asked.  "As little as I wish to have children of my own, I wouldn't mind having a bevy of nieces and nephews to dote on."

"That's a thought," laughed Cesare.  "Alas, Giulia, I find it hard to imagine binding myself to one person for the rest of my life.  Especially since, to my lasting regret, the most interesting woman I've ever met happens to be you."

"Well, if you stay put long enough, perhaps you'll notice the other excellent options all around you."  Giulia smiled, then her face grew serious one more.  "Cesare, of the two of us, you still have a life to live.  Please, don't waste it, not when you have the freedom to still make something of your future."

He had never intended to become a revolutionary.  The simple truth was that, once Cesare finally ran low on funds and energy alike, he returned to Roma with few skills other than wielding a sword or shooting a gun.  Giulia had challenged him to do something meaningful with his life, however, and when Cesare could bear to look back to those days before his mother's death and his father's madness, his happiest memories were filled with stories and libraries and the crinkled scent of oft-turned pages.  The city had printing presses enough, but Cesare had the advantage of his travels, and he reached out to his few useful foreign contacts about translating and publishing works not yet widely available in Italian.  His press prospered without ever thriving, but Cesare was content enough to sit late at night rearranging and setting textblocks in the galleys, translating works by candlelight on pages sprawling with annotations and revisions, opening packets of books freshly returned from the binder's and breathing in the musky smell of their leather covers.

The work suited Cesare well enough, but at night, when he closed up his shop with ink-smudged fingers and turned the key in the latch, too often he found himself wandering across the darkened city for hours on end.  He could have attributed his restlessness to the long hours he now sat in one room, after so many years of meandering across the continent.  But the impulse stirred somewhere deeper inside of him, from some conviction that contentment was far from happiness, and that it would not do to simply sit still and wait for happiness to find him.  And so Cesare rambled through the narrow passages of Roma, his way lit by nothing more than moonlight and candles left flickering weakly on windowsills, aimlessly seeking a fulfillment whose name he did not know.

It was on one such evening that he stumbled across the first of the pasquinades.  The moon was bright in a cloudless sky that night, and when he saw the scrap of paper affixed to the pedestal of the statue, Cesare stopped to read it.  It had been years since he had seen any of Roma's talking statues—this one looked to be Abate Luigi, today sporting the head that so often went missing for weeks at a time, before the pranksters of the hour finally returned it.  When he was a child, the pedestals of Abate Luigi and his fellows had been frequently scattered with all sorts of colorful doggerel about political matters, but it did not surprise Cesare to see that only one poem was present tonight.  The unrest in France over the past year had sparked fear in the hearts of all other monarchs across Europe, His Holiness included, and even anonymous public discourse in Roma had gone the way of all expression under paranoid governance.

Gentle sheep of Roma, have some inkling
Who the wolves are now, you sorry bleaters.
No one hears your baa-ing and your tinkling
Over all the tolling from St. Peter's.
Pastoral obedience means you're shut in
When the Roman Pontiff calls for mutton...

Cesare smiled at the crude verse, resplendent in its unwieldy lines and obtuse metaphors and expressive Romanesco, then tugged it from the pedestal and tucked it in his pocket.  Even if any brave souls dared to post their commentaries on the talking statues, no doubt the morning rounds of police efficiently removed any trace of the pasquinades' existence before the wider public could be influenced by them.  And no doubt his sister would enjoy the commentary more than most passersby, anyway.

"This is terrible," Giulia declared, her blue eyes glittering impishly.  "And I'd rather read another bit of doggerel like it than a hundred of the finest Petrarchan sonnets."

And so Cesare took her at her word, finally charting a sure route for his nightly walks that took him past each of the talking statues, stealthily collecting the occasional pasquinade from their pedestals when one or even two happened to be posted.  The poems, ridiculous and yet biting as they were, made Giulia smile and sometimes even laugh, the clear sound piercing like a ray of brilliant light through the lackluster clouds of her existence.  For her birthday, Cesare printed a slim leporello of her favorites and passed it to her with a finger pressed conspiratorially to his lips when her husband had ambled out of the dining room for a moment in search of a servant who could bring more wine.

"Sometimes, you are remarkably brilliant, brother," she grinned at him, concealing the book in the folds of her dress.

"I figured it's small enough that you can slip it into a Bible and subtly re-read it whenever you're ostensibly praying," he winked.

"Is this the only one you printed?  Or have you made others?"

"Just the one."  Cesare frowned.  "Why?  Surely you're not suggesting it would be profitable to become a modern Mazzocchi, in this political climate?"

"Well, I'm not suggesting you do it openly," Giulia shrugged.  "But surely I'm not the only person in Roma who would love to see what the state is determined to hide from view."

She had a point, as usual, and so Cesare printed a few more copies before he disassembled the galley.  How to find others interested in forbidden satirical poetry was entirely another matter, until good fortune stumbled upon Cesare one evening on his walk.  He had just turned onto via del Corso when he spotted a man hovering near the Palazzo di Carolis Simonetti, just by Il Facchino.  Cesare slipped into a shadow, exhilarated to have finally caught one of the anonymous poets at work in posting his missives.  But a moment later, he heard low voices in the Piazza Venezia, and when the pair of police turned onto the darkened street, Cesare quickly stepped out of the shadow and into their path.

"Officers, good evening," he said in a loud voice.  "I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the Piazza Navona?"

By the time the officers had dutifully finished instructing an unnecessarily confused Cesare and moved on, the unknown poet was nowhere to be seen.  Cesare stepped up to Il Facchino, clutching his stone barrel whose endless contents spilled into the fountain below.  No poem had been left on the statue.  Cesare sighed and turned to leave, only to find a man shyly watching him with soft dark eyes.

"Thank you, Signor, for distracting them and warning me," the man said.  "Were you looking for this?"

He held out a slip of paper to Cesare, who carefully took it and smiled at the verse it carried.

"Will you walk with me?" he asked the man.

And so Cesare and the nameless writer of doggerel wandered the streets of Roma together for the night, trading thoughts about the nascent democracies in France and America, lamenting the power of the Church over Roman society, laughing in quiet voices that tangled with the wind and were lost to the night sky.  Upon parting, Cesare told the man that he often walked from the Piazza Venezia onto via del Corso around midnight, and three days later, the man silently appeared at Cesare's side once more and pressed a new verse into Cesare's hand as their paces fell into step.  This time, Cesare was prepared, and in return, he handed the man one of his little booklets of forbidden poems.

"You've included some of mine in here," laughed the man, delighted, and Cesare's heart fluttered just a bit at the sound.

He never learned the man's name.  By tacit mutual agreement, they addressed each other by pseudonyms only: the poet, an admirer of Molière, ironically took the name Tartuffo; Cesare, the soldier turned observer and documenter, called himself Plinio.  Their meetings followed no set pattern, no identifiable rhythm, but the darkness always seemed to lift slightly around Cesare when Tartuffo appeared.  The additional copies of Cesare's illicit anthology were distributed in short order to Tartuffo's poet friends; a second clandestine printing was necessary; then a revised and expanded volume, printed in even greater quantities.  Tartuffo began to charge his friends on Cesare's behalf, but Cesare would have done it all without any pay whatsoever.  At long last, he was involved in something larger than himself, something that he could help shape in ways that the military never would have permitted.  He spent hours seated with Giulia by her fireplace, long after her husband had gone to his bed, sharing with her what gossip he could from his new contacts, muttering in hushed tones about the Republic that one day might be.  After a time, he whispered the same hopes to Tartuffo, in the early hours of the morning as they lay tangled in Cesare's sheets.

And then Tartuffo abruptly ended their relationship in every sense.

"Why?" Cesare asked, stunned.

"Because."  Tartuffo bowed his head, ashamed.  "Because I saw you in public the other day—I won't say where.  And I prayed you would not notice me, so I would not have to pretend not to know you."

"Is that all?" Cesare laughed.  "If we met unexpectedly, I would pretend not to know you, too.  You wouldn't have to worry about being caught out because of me."

"I know," Tartuffo replied.  "I trust you.  But I can't go on living like this, Plinio.  The truth is, you know nothing about me, and I know nothing about you other than that you have access to a printing press and you sleep here."

"I know your mind, and you know mine," Cesare argued.  "Surely that counts for more than anything else possibly could—profession, rank, wealth?"

"You do know my mind," Tartuffo agreed softly.  "And that counts for more than I can say.  But I want a life in which I can walk with my lover in the sunshine, without living in constant fear of being found out for who I really am.  I can't continue meeting with you in the shadows like this.  I'm sorry."

And so Tartuffo left him.  After tracing and retracing his own steps, Cesare gave up on trying to determine where he had failed, and simply rerouted his nightly walks through the city, avoiding the talking statues and the inevitable pang they brought.  Thankfully, though, it was not loneliness or lack of fulfillment that now drove Cesare's wandering.  Even as his sorrows over his absent friend and lover faded, Cesare found himself at the center of an intricate web of philosophers and idealists and orators, all anxious for Plinio to print their pamphlets and their treatises, all igniting time and time again Cesare's determination to spark reform with their thoughts and words.  Perhaps he was as restless as he had been, in the days before the pasquinades and his brief infatuation with a soft-eyed writer of doggerel.  But now, the discontent that drove Cesare Angelotti from hour to hour was his yearning for liberty, his desire to break his society free of the stifling grip of the Vatican.  The moment would come, he was sure.  The question was whether he would be prepared to meet it, when it did.

Giulia's passions had always leaned towards intellectual pursuits, not towards romance or pleasure.  Once several years had passed since his short-lived affair with Tartuffo, Cesare began to wonder if perhaps the trait ran in the family.  He was happier than he had ever been, the hub of the quietly turning Roman revolution, always inspired, always busy to the point of exhaustion.  He could not recall the last time his pulse had quickened at the charms of any woman or man, but his breath caught easily upon reading a finely wrought phrase or a particularly bold indictment of the tyranny of organized religion.

"Do you think I should be concerned?" he asked Giulia one evening, only half in jest.

"I never have been," she replied.  "But does it matter, so long as you're happy?  Or do you feel something is missing, if you don't even yearn for a lover?"

"I don't know," Cesare admitted.  "Truth be told, I don't know that I leave much time to worry about it."

"Hmm."  Giulia regarded her brother shrewdly.  "Well, perhaps you should create time to examine what else you want in life.  If you feel your heart is beginning to close itself off in ways that may bring you pain, then you really should focus on how to let it open back up.  My commentary on your translation of Wollstonecraft will still be there, after all, whenever you get around to publishing it."

Cesare knew she was right, but his hours no longer seemed to be his own.  His printing business continued to turn a good trade by day, and his nocturnal ramblings had given way to even longer hours at his press, printing more and more literature for the cause, the written hopes and dreams of men and women whose faces he knew from their brief interactions, whose public names he never dared ask, whose passions and ideals were well worth the risks of discovery and imprisonment.  As seriously as Cesare always took Giulia's advice, he ignored her suggestion here, for what personal interests could possibly be more important than the struggle for truth and freedom?

Perhaps Fate was on Cesare's side, though, on the morning the door to his shop opened, and a handsome young man wandered in, hastily closing the door against the autumnal chill.

"Can I help you?" Cesare asked.

The young man did not answer immediately, for his attention had been caught by the shelves that lined Cesare's shop.  The cold had tinged his cheeks a delicate pink, and between this and the sparkle that had entered his eyes upon seeing the literature around him, he looked as excited as a small boy before a display of sweets.

"I'll let you know, as soon as I've been able to peruse some of these!" he told Cesare, striding quickly to a shelf of novels offered in either Italian or their original French.  "I was told this was the best bookshop to find translations of contemporary works, and clearly no sounder advice has ever been given."

"Are you looking for anything in particular?"  Cesare found himself trying not to smile too obviously at the young man's unbridled enthusiasm.

"A dictionary, actually," the young man responded, pulling several books off the shelf.  "But, if it's not too rude of me, Signor, will you permit me to lose myself in some of your offerings for a few minutes?"

"Certainly."  Cesare bowed, then retreated back to his printing room to finish inking and pressing a page, still smiling.

When he reemerged into the shop some fifteen minutes later, wiping his blackened fingertips clean with a rag, the young man's attention was still wholly focused on the novels he had pulled from the shelves, his expression eager and delighted as he skimmed through their pages.  Cesare's own existence had been wrung dry of wonder at too tender an age, his young adulthood filled with nothing but prickly and brittle irony, until becoming the printer of the Roman republicans had finally restored enough hope to his world that dreams could once more take root and flourish.  He admired and envied this young man for having kept hold of whatever inner spring of inspiration could make his eyes light up so easily.

"I'll take all of these," the young man announced, closing the book in his hands and adding it to the top of a teetering stack that he somehow managed to carry to the counter in one go.

"I hope you have a library somewhere large enough to store all of them," Cesare laughed as he began to note the prices in his ledger.

"A library, indeed," the young man confirmed.  "But a long-neglected family library with absolutely nothing recent to read, and one can only live on classics for so long.  Which reminds me!  As I mentioned, I'm looking for a translation dictionary, Italian-English.  The only one in my family's library is hopelessly outdated—from the era of Shakespeare, with sonnets aplenty after the title page to illustrate the point."

"I can certainly help you with that."  Cesare quickly ducked into his study and returned with two volumes.  "Baretti, second edition, printed 1778.  A few years outdated, but two decades is better than nearly two centuries, no?"

"Undoubtedly," laughed the young man, turning over the volumes in his hands.  "Oh, this is perfect.  I'm embarking on a somewhat foolhardy translation project, with only the faintest grasp of English at my disposal, and tools like these would make my task far easier..."

"What are you translating?" Cesare asked.  "I may already have a translation in stock, if it's a published work.  Or, having lived in London for a period of my life, perhaps I could offer my services?"

"Oh, no," blushed the young man.  "I wouldn't want to trouble you, and it's really something of a fairly personal nature.  But thank you very much, Signor.  How much for the dictionaries?"

"Ah."  Cesare smiled sheepishly.  "A slight complication.  These are my personal copies, and I unfortunately can't lend them out because I need them for my own work.  It may take several months for me to procure a copy that I can sell to you.  But," he added hastily, noting the disappointment in the young man's face, "if you'd like, you're welcome to come back and make use of them in my study, whenever is convenient."

"You are too kind," grinned the young man, placing a few coins on the counter for the novels.  "I'll certainly take you up on your offer, Signor.  I assume you are the Angelotti whose name is on the shop, yes?  I'm Mario Cavaradossi."

"Cavaradossi?"  Cesare frowned slightly as he wrapped Cavaradossi's new books in paper and tied them with twine.  "Not the old Roman family?  I thought the line had died out."

"Not so much died out as lain dormant elsewhere," Cavaradossi smiled.  "Many thanks again for your generosity, Signor Angelotti.  And for the books!  I'm sure I'll be back soon."

"I hope you will be," Cesare replied, for while he had only known Mario Cavaradossi for a quarter of an hour, he could easily forgive himself for having fallen a bit in love with him.

Cesare was elated when, true to his word, Cavaradossi reappeared a few days later, toting a leather satchel, dabs of paint smudging his wrists and the cuffs of his sleeves.

"Ah, forgive how messy my appearance is," he grinned, embarrassed.  "I'm just coming from a sitting."

"You're a painter?" asked Cesare, who would not have called Cavaradossi's appearance messy in the slightest.

"A much more competent one than I am a translator," laughed Cavaradossi.

"That's extraordinary," smiled Cesare.  "If it's not too intrusive, could I see some of your work?"

Cavaradossi shrugged bashfully, then pulled a small medallion from around his neck.  Cesare opened it to a small and skillfully wrought painting of two people who could only be Cavaradossi's parents.  His mother smiled directly at the viewer, but his father turned a tender gaze on his wife, his hand clasping hers at the bottom of the little painting.

"Beautiful," he said candidly, handing the medallion back to Cavaradossi.  "They must be very proud of you."

The young man's mouth twisted into a rueful smile.

"I like to imagine they would be," he said quietly.  "My mother died when I was sixteen, of scarlet fever.  My father died not long afterwards, of a broken heart."

Cesare bowed his head sympathetically.

"My mother died when I was twelve," he told Cavaradossi.  "I don't let myself think about her very often, because the pain is still too great, even all these years later.  I'm sorry for your losses."

"Thank you, Signor."  Cavaradossi smiled bravely.  "And I am sorry for yours.  But I'm wasting your time with all of this.  If your offer to let me make use of your study still stands..."

"Of course," said Cesare, who had carefully swept his study over the past days for any signs of his underground publications, just in case Cavaradossi should reappear.  "If you'll come this way..."

And so things fell into an irregular pattern, with Cavaradossi appearing every few days to sit in Cesare's study for an hour or so with his translations and Cesare's dictionaries.  The time they spent conversing before and after these sessions only lengthened, however, with Cesare recommending books to Cavaradossi, and Cavaradossi avidly describing to Cesare his thoughts about allegory and composition in modern painting.

"Perhaps you would paint my portrait, one day," Cesare offered.

"I'd love to!"  Cavaradossi tilted his head pensively, considering Cesare's face.  "A portrait of Cesare Angelotti—let's say, as a statesman out of antiquity."

"A statesman?"  Cesare laughed.  "That's a vision far too noble for the likes of me, Cavaradossi.  I'm only a printer, the son of a once-prosperous but by no means aristocratic merchant."

"You have the right profile for it," Cavaradossi argued.  "And a sight more dignity than most of the actual nobles I encounter.  Besides, Cesare, I fervently believe that art is where we can allow ourselves to live as our best and truest selves, beyond the roles that society has prescribed for us."

Cavaradossi stopped, his face flushing slightly with embarrassment.

"Forgive me for speaking with such familiarity, Angelotti," he corrected himself.  "I let myself get carried away."

"Not at all."  Cesare hesitated, then put his hand on the younger man's shoulder.  "You spoke with passion and honesty.  And I would be honored if you considered me enough of a friend to permit such familiarity, Mario."

His infatuation with the painter was utter foolishness, Cesare knew this.  Mario Cavaradossi may have considered him a friend, may have eagerly appeared at Cesare's shop once or twice a week and graced the printer with his soaring thoughts about art.  But Mario was no doubt a favorite of the beautiful young noblewomen of Roma, not to mention a full decade younger than Cesare.  Despite their omnipresence in the Eternal City, the days of antiquity were long past; the statues that Emperor Hadrian once commissioned of his young and beautiful lover Antinous lay half-buried in dreaming ruins, all but forgotten by the epicenter of Catholicism.  Besides, much as Cesare yearned to let the young man into his fullest confidences, he could not risk letting anyone too near, not when the secret compartments behind the cabinets of his study were so filled with forbidden literature.  He hovered about Mario like a moth entranced by an open flame, all too aware of how fatally scorched he might become at too close a proximity.

And then, one day, shortly after Mario had left the shop, Cesare discovered on the floor of his study a page scribbled over with Mario's half-formed translations, and his heart stammered within his chest.  Mario Cavaradossi had already accepted him publicly as a friend, unafraid to enter Cesare's shop in the brightness of day.  Perhaps this discovery meant that Cesare could trust Mario with yet more of the secrets he stowed in the shadows of his life, with just short of everything that he yearned to share with the young man.

Mario's face, when he returned to Cesare's shop the next day, was pale with anxiety.

"I seem to have left something here, when last I visited," he explained, his hands nervously twisting the strap of his satchel.  "I don't know if you happened to see it... it would have been on the floor under your desk..."

Cesare silently opened the door to his study for Mario, who stared in bewilderment at Cesare's desk, where the page Mario had lost rested beneath an unbound volume.

"I believe this could have saved you a lot of trouble, Cavaradossi," Cesare teased, his voice warm with fond amusement.  "Not that I have regretted for a moment having had a chance to get to know you through your frequent visits to my shop.  But eighty-five articles is an ambitious load for even a seasoned translator, and Madison and Hamilton are anything but brief in their arguments."

"This..."  Mario stared at the volume in wonder, then at Cesare.  "How is this possible?  I counted myself impossibly lucky to come into possession of The Federalist Papers in English, once I arrived in Roma and realized I'd lost my French translation en route.  I didn't imagine another copy could be found anywhere in the Papal States, let alone one already translated into Italian!"

"Ah," smiled Cesare.  "Then it might shock you to learn, Mario, that you are far from the only Roman who dreams of a republic, perhaps even one that extends across a unified Italian peninsula."

Mario's face suddenly broke into a wild, joyful smile.

"Of course!" he exclaimed.  "How could I not have guessed it before?  You are Plinio, the beloved publisher of the revolutionaries' writings.  Fortune herself must have misplaced my book on my journey from Paris, so that I would have reason to unwittingly seek you out!  I recently read that excellent commentary on Wollstonecraft by the author who goes by Portia, and I longed to shake the hand of the man who had dared to publish it."

"And so you may."  Cesare offered a hand, and Mario clasped it, firmly yet tenderly, before briefly bringing Cesare's fingers to his lips.

"I already admired you as a man of profound thoughts and incredible kindness," he told Cesare.  "Now I must admire you as well as a man of great bravery and the highest principles.  Cesare, you asked once why the name 'Cavaradossi' had become unfamiliar on the tongues of today's Romans.  My father, Nicola Cavaradossi, was born a Roman but spent most of his life in France, where he married my mother, a great-niece of Helvétius.  I remember my parents entertaining Voltaire when I was a small child, and the Marquis de Lafayette when I was older; our library was filled with the writings of Locke and Jefferson, well before the storming of the Bastille, which my parents did not live to see.  I somehow have inherited the title of Cavalier, but republicanism runs in my veins.  And while I already loved you as a friend, I love you all the more now for carrying the torch of liberty as you have."

Cesare knew not to read too much into Mario's declarations, reminded himself over and over that Mario loved him as a friend.  But in unguarded moments, he found himself smiling over the fact that Mario had been willing to say he loved Cesare at all.  He was not an artist like Mario was, for all Mario insisted that translation and editing were literary arts unto themselves.  He was not a nobleman or a hero, but rather just a simple individual doing what he could for his unorthodox community, publishing what he did to bring a rare smile to his beloved sister's face.  Still, when Mario invited him to dinner at his family's palazzo and earnestly asked Cesare's opinions on a dozen different subjects—ranging from English military history, to contemporary opera, to the best shops in the rione Sant'Angelo for deep-fried artichokes—Cesare dared to believe that Mario looked at him and saw with his artist's eyes some worthiness that Cesare himself could not see.  He would not hope, though, not when such hope could so easily be cupped between two hands and gently crushed with the kindest of gestures.  Admiration was one thing; admiration was strong and deep and true, and ran easily from a younger man to an older friend and mentor.  But the likelihood of Mario wanting someone like Cesare was as remote and insubstantial as the clouds above, even if Mario himself had once mentioned the male lover of a painter in his atelier, then glanced at Cesare and added, "I hope you're not too scandalized?"

"I was a soldier, Mario," Cesare scoffed, as if that explained everything.

Which it didn't, of course.  Cesare himself had had his moments of rough, impersonal need with his fellow soldiers, the sort of wordless fumbling and thrusting that occurs in the darkness and is never acknowledged once the sun has breached the horizon.  His affair with Tartuffo had been far more passionate, a tumult of heady ideals mixed with the intoxicating suspense of living encounter to encounter, the gaps between filled with the unknowable realities of each other's lives.  But when Cesare allowed himself to imagine how it might look to be loved by Mario Cavaradossi, he imagined not only the breathless thrills of pleasure they might share, but also the slower moments of intimacy in between, open and understated as the devotion captured in Mario's portrait of his own parents.  Cesare could not help desiring the sweet curve of Mario's lips, the way his expressive hands seemed to caress the air when he spoke, the delicate tapering of Mario's beautiful wrists.  But his sweetest daydreams were of sitting quietly with Mario in the afternoon sunlight of the same window, surprising each other with new books or other tokens of affection, simply strolling along the Tevere together in the evenings and gazing across the water at St. Peter's Basilica and the Castel Sant'Angelo silhouetted against the sunset.  Cesare had never made space before to imagine a life fully lived alongside one of his lovers—not the women with whom he'd caroused for a few weeks at a time on his travels, certainly not with Tartuffo.  It was madness to allow himself such thoughts when it came to Mario; but Mario too dreamt of a Repubblica Romana, and so Cesare allowed Mario to seep into his purest imaginings of how true freedom would look and feel.

"The dictionaries!" Mario exclaimed, tearing off the rest of the paper covering the package Cesare had brought him.  "Still greatly appreciated, even several months later.  How much do I owe you for them?"

"Nothing," replied Cesare.  "It's my fault for forgetting to cancel the order, once you no longer had any immediate need for them."

"Nonsense," insisted Mario in return, flipping delightedly through the books.  "There's always a need for knowledge, especially knowledge that helps spread ideas.  Besides, I can't even begin to imagine the trouble and expense you went through to procure these..."

"Even so.  Consider them a belated Christmas gift."

Mario closed the volume he had been perusing and frowned, a battle of emotions clearly playing out behind his furrowed brow.  Cesare smiled back fondly at the young man, wishing he could gently smooth away the furrow between Mario's eyebrows with his thumb.

"Very well," Mario sighed at last.  "The dusty old library of the Palazzo Cavaradossi is greatly enriched by your extreme generosity, Cesare.  But you must let me thank you in some other way."

"Mario," Cesare chuckled, "you've invited me to dinner enough times over the past months that I'll consider myself in your debt thrice over for the next several years..."

"I would never want any of my dear friends to feel indebted to me for that," Mario said seriously.  "It's the absolute least I can provide, in exchange for the pleasure of your company."

His words hung in the air over the crackling of the fire, and Cesare turned his gaze towards the flames, fleetingly imagining how it would feel to ask Mario for what he most wanted in thanks, brushing the thought away just as quickly.

"Well, perhaps you could paint my portrait at a discount, then," he said finally.

"Gratis," Mario argued, his expression so earnestly stubborn that Cesare laughed.

"Very well, then; and with that, I'll leave you," he said, but Mario rose to his feet.

"I'll come with you," he said, seizing his coat.  "I was thinking of going for a walk, anyway."

Cesare followed Mario out into the chilly evening air, watching how the younger man's eyes flickered across the Piazza di Spagna, towards the top of the Spanish Steps.

"I heard about the uproar at the Villa Medici last night," Cesare muttered.  "You weren't involved, were you?"

"Only in the aftermath," replied Mario quietly.  "I didn't know what was happening until I heard gunfire.  When the protestors began fleeing down the steps and into the piazza, I opened my door to as many of them as I could, until the Papal troops came into view.  I regret I couldn't have spared more of them arrest."

"What you did was noble beyond words," Cesare reassured him.  "But be careful, Mario.  Harboring republicans who have fired on the Pope's dragoons could earn you far more trouble than you can imagine."

"But it's the right thing to do," Mario insisted.  "Wouldn't you do the same, if you had the opportunity?"

Cesare liked to believe he would have that kind of reckless courage, so he simply smiled and continued along the darkened streets alongside Mario, down via di Campo Marzo, past the soaring dome of the Pantheon beneath the evening sky.  Finally, just outside the shadowy façade of Sant'Andrea della Valle, he stopped Mario with a hand to his shoulder.

"Mario, really, where are you going?" he asked.  "I know it's none of my business, but I'll still feel vaguely responsible if I leave you and continue towards my home now, and some harm comes to you in the coming hours."

The night neatly concealed Mario's face in shadow, but Cesare could tell the young man was blushing.

"I may have heard of another assembly tonight, at the French ambassador's residence in Trastevere," he admitted.

"Don't go," Cesare heard himself say, even as his mind whirled with images of Mario falling to the ground, the life punched out of his vibrant body by a flurry of bullets.

"Can't a French citizen pay a visit to his own embassy?" Mario asked innocently.

"You know the Vatican will have sent spies to infiltrate the assembly," Cesare pointed out.  "You'd be risking your liberty, possibly even your life..."

"As did all the brave republicans who gathered at the Villa Medici last night," Mario argued.  "I assume my actions in harboring them were only noble because their cause was just?"

"Yes, but..."

"But what?  But they were not your friends, just as I am?"  Mario smiled grimly.  "Cesare, you may not know their legal names, but I assure you, the protestors routed by the Papal troops last night certainly included those whose works you have published countless times."

But they are not you, Mario, Cesare thought.  Since he could not say this aloud, however, he instead sighed and said, "I'm coming with you, then."

Mario raised an eyebrow.

"To keep me out of trouble?"

"Yes," grumbled Cesare.  "Or to charge straight into trouble with you, if it comes to it."

Mario grinned and clapped Cesare on the shoulder, and together they continued to the edge of the Tevere and across the Ponte Sisto.  As they neared the Porta Settimiana, Mario's footsteps quickened, and he called out to a man a few steps ahead, "Palmieri?  Is that you?"

The man turned, and Cesare stopped in his tracks.

"Cavaradossi!" exclaimed Palmieri to the painter; but when he turned his soft eyes on Cesare, he too immediately froze.  "Ah.  I see you have a friend with you."

"My dear friend Cesare Angelotti," smiled Mario.  "And this is Conte Giancarlo Palmieri, one of the staunchest republicans in the city!  I'm frankly surprised you two haven't met already."

"As am I," replied Cesare swiftly, extending a hand.  "A pleasure to meet you, Conte."

"Likewise, Angelotti."  Palmieri glanced at Mario.  "Perhaps the Cavalier would forgive me for spending the next few minutes learning from the man himself why it's surprising we haven't yet met?"

"Of course," nodded Mario.  "Come find me, Cesare?  And, if I don't see you again before the evening is over, Palmieri, my best to your lovely wife, as always."

Cesare waited until Mario had raced forward through the arch to greet another friend before he quietly repeated, "Your wife?"

"One of Cavaradossi's old family friends," Palmieri explained.  "She really is a lovely woman.  I'm very fond of her."

"I'm glad."  Cesare cracked a lopsided smile.  "You got what you wanted, after all."

"Plinio, don't," Palmieri sighed.

"I don't blame you," Cesare insisted.  "You wanted life to be easier, and don't we all?  It was the way you handled things that hurt me, more than anything else."

"Well, what else was I supposed to do?" Palmieri burst out in a violent, anguished hiss.  "You've never wanted to know the real names or identities of the people you publish, and I certainly could never blame you for being so sensible.  But how then was I supposed to explain to you that my father and older brother had just died, one after the other, and as the only living son in the Palmieri family, I was suddenly expected to marry and bear children to carry on the family name?  Never mind that I was infinitely happier when I had no real responsibilities, and could spend my time writing god-awful poetry and daydreaming about one day seeing a modern Roman Republic come to fruition.  Never mind that, after my lovely wife has fallen asleep, I still stare out the window night after night, and wonder if you're out there wandering amongst the talking statues in the moonlight, tugging scraps of revolution from their stone plinths.  Whenever one of your pamphlets or books crosses my path, I seethe with envy to think that someone else is probably living the carefree life I wish I still had, filled with starlight and your low laughter and the softness of your touch.  I just never expected it to be Cavaradossi."

"Cavaradossi?"  Cesare laughed, perhaps a bit too forcefully.  "We're just friends."

"Right," huffed Palmieri.  "Because 'just friends' look at each other the way we once did, inspired by each other's passion and intellect, wandering the streets of Roma for hours on end just for the excuse of being together, calling each other by familiar names..."

"For god's sake," Cesare scoffed, but then he caught himself.  "Conte, my apologies."

"Ah, and see?"  The furious blaze had gone out of Palmieri's eyes, and now they were once more soft and sad.  "This is why I never wanted you to know who I was.  When I was just Tartuffo, we could never be anything but equals to one another.  Is that why you haven't told Cavaradossi your feelings yet?  Or is it simply because you're afraid he'll let you down as shabbily as I did?"

Cesare wasn't even sure how to respond, but was spared the need when a volley of shots rent the night air.

"Mario," he gasped, and forgetting Palmieri completely, he turned and dashed through the Porta Settimiana.

The Vatican's troops had flooded into via della Lungara outside the Palazzo Corsini and were firing through the central arches of its front façade at the assembled republicans.  Screams pierced the air as shrilly as bullets; gunpowder slowly drifted off through the gaps between buildings and out over the surface of the Tevere.  Cesare had never been invited into this particular palazzo as a guest, but he had once delivered a bundle of French-language books to a surly footman at a servants' entrance; so when he raced round the corner to the back gardens, and saw that the wrought-iron gate closing off the palazzo's back façade was locked, he cursed loudly, then rushed back around the side of the palazzo in search of the door he vaguely remembered, hoping no one would take him for an errant dragoon and shoot him.  When he finally located the servants' entrance, he shoved it open with his shoulder and stumbled along the palazzo's long lateral corridor, pushing his way through panicking servants in the lavishly decorated drawing rooms and dining halls, shouting Mario's name over and over above the din of gunfire.  Dazed republicans with French tricolores pinned to their lapels shoved past Cesare as he neared the central hall, pressing his way against the tide, his eyes scanning the scattered crowd fleeing for the archway into the gardens.  Finally he found Mario pressed paralyzed behind a pilaster, his face pale and smeared with blood, and Cesare seized his elbow.

"What are you doing here?" asked Mario, disoriented, as Cesare tugged him from his hiding place.

"Charging straight into trouble with you, as promised," Cesare informed him.

Mario laughed wildly, then fell silent and remained tight-lipped as they raced through the throng of fleeing republicans, made their way back through the long corridor of the palazzo and out the servants' entrance, then crept through the shadows back towards the Ponte Sisto.  He did not speak until they were back across the river, once their pace had slowed and they were catching their breath as they turned from via Giulia onto via dei Farnesi.

"Why did you do that, Cesare?" he asked shakily as they emerged from the shadow of the Palazzo Farnese, out into the tepid moonlight on the piazza beyond.  "You could have gotten yourself killed."

"So could you," Cesare replied, "and of the two of us, I'm the one trained to act calmly under fire."

He stopped by one of the fountains in the Piazza Farnese and dipped his handkerchief into its freezing waters, then gestured to Mario to sit down on the edge of the granite basin next to him so he could figure out the source of the blood on the young man's face.  After pushing aside enough of Mario's unruly hair, Cesare determined that a bullet must have just grazed his scalp—enough to make a mess, but shallow enough that the wound had already stopped bleeding.  With a sigh of relief, he carefully dabbed away the dried blood from Mario's forehead.

"Still," Mario insisted.  "You're under no obligation to come to my rescue if I'm in peril."

"I know I'm not," laughed Cesare as he stood and set off across the piazza.  "But that's what people do, when they care for each other."

He fell silent as they crossed the Campo de' Fiori, as if speaking his heart any further would reawaken the reek of burning flesh in this square that had seen the executions of heretics burnt to death for challenging the Church's notion of right and wrong.  Mario kept pace a step behind Cesare as he trudged past the horse market, its stalls eerily empty and quiet at this time of night.

"I would do the same for you," Mario promised gravely.

"Luckily for you, I never intend to put myself quite so blatantly in harm's way that I need rescuing," Cesare smiled, turning to Mario.  "And I hope you've learned something from the events of tonight.  You'll get home safely, I hope?"

"Thanks to you, I will," said Mario.  The next moment his arms were around Cesare, who let out a puff of laughter, then wrapped his own arms around the painter.  "It has been an evening to remember, Cesare.  I feel I'll wake up tomorrow and think it was all just a strange dream."

As he set off for his own lodgings through the cold night air, rats scurrying through the shadows and church bells tolling the hour, Cesare could still feel the weight of Mario's body against his own, the firm press of his arms around Cesare's shoulders.  Perhaps Mario was right that by the morning, the events of the night would all feel as unreal as a strange dream.  But if that were the case, Cesare chose to believe that, despite its strangeness and abstract horror, the dream would somehow be a wonderful one, nonetheless.

No one was more shocked than Cesare when that winter evening proved to be not the climax of a strange and wonderful dream, but merely its unstable beginning.  Rumors skittered through the streets in the following days, like a crumpled piece of paper rattling along the gutter in the wind: that the French general Duphot had been one of two dozen people shot and killed by Papal troops at the Palazzo Corsini, on the eve of Duphot's wedding to the sister-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte, the French ambassador to Roma; that His Holiness had written a letter of apology to Paris for the entire regrettable incident, but the French ambassador's notorious brother was not mollified.  Despite the Vatican's attempts to lighten the mood with a festive procession of holy relics, the new year dawned fretfully on the Eternal City, soldiers from the Castel Sant'Angelo now eyeing the horses at the market in the Campo de' Fiori with an eye towards battle, patrols along the Passetto di Borgo scanning the route from the fortress to the Holy See in the feeble winter sun.

The French arrived early the following month.  Cesare felt a chill run down his spine as men ran through the narrow passages of the city, shouting that the French army was encamped on Monte Mario outside the Porta del Popolo, that the Swiss Guards were retreating.  When the French declared victory, Mario wept for joy, insisting that now liberty would come to Roma at last.  Cesare, who knew all too well the pettiness of soldiers of all nationalities, was far more circumspect.  Mario, after all, was as French as he was Roman; he could not view this as an invasion the way Cesare could, the way the rest of the city could.  While he genuinely toasted General Berthier's declaration of a Roman Republic amidst the broken columns of the Forum, and the planting of a tree of liberty on the Capitoline Hill, and the quiet exile of the Pope to Toscana and then across the Alps to Valence, Cesare held his breath in those first few tense days along with the rest of Roma.

The atmosphere was far from placid.  Despite Berthier's issuance of an edict reassuring the Pope that no looting would occur, inventories were taken in the Vatican, and the soldiers began removing priceless statues and paintings and jewels from Roma to France, as swiftly and impudently as they had removed His Holiness himself.  The pedestals of the talking statues once more filled with scathing poems, most directed towards the French—until Berthier's first proclamation for the new Repubblica Romana stated that conviction for the posting of false writings would be punishable by execution by firing squad.  Old women wearing lace veils muttered in the streets that the godless French would force the people of Roma at gunpoint to choose between their current lives on Earth and their eternal lives in Heaven.  Catholic merchants and property owners spat at potential new Jewish customers and lodgers who, freed from the Papal law that dictated their confinement in the squalor of the rione Sant'Angelo, tentatively sought new opportunities beyond the stifling walls of the ancient ghetto.

"Intolerant fools," muttered Mario, shaking his head.  "They'll all see how much better things become without the stranglehold of the Vatican dictating every aspect of their lives."

And Cesare wanted to agree; but prejudices ran deep, and the Romans were a proud people.  Young men glowered at soldiers in French uniforms, their shovels and spades clenched in their calloused palms.  Priests delivered sermons cursing the French occupiers and calling on their congregations to pray for the restoration of His Holiness.  Like leading a horse to water, a republic could be offered to the Romans, but whether they chose to accept the offering was another question entirely—especially if the gift was imposed courtesy of the French.

Still, some things changed for the better.  As the weeks passed and the slow reality of the situation set in, all of Plinio's affiliates slowly began appearing at the door of Cesare Angelotti's shop.  At long last, through countless tentative introductions, Cesare began to be able to put names to the faces he knew so well only by their pseudonyms.  As February plodded towards March, the sun emerged in full force, and it was as if a shade had been lifted from the dim world of Cesare's existence.  He could now greet his friends in the open, unafraid to know them and be known by them; they began inviting him to dine with them, with each other, the ideas they had once voiced only in whispers now subjects of fervent, raucous debate around crowded tables.  Returning to his shop after witnessing the lavish pageantry of Duphot's funeral at the Piazza San Pietro, whistling a half-remembered tune played by the orchestra as the still-firing cannons boomed in the distance, Cesare cleared a shelf in the front room of his shop, then opened up the secret compartments behind the cabinets of his study and took out an armful of books.

"I'm surprised you didn't think to do this sooner."  Cesare could not see Mario's face, but the painter's voice contained the smile that greeted Cesare when he turned.  "Let me help you?"

And so Mario helped Cesare move his formerly illicit publications into the light of his shop, juggling copies of Kant and Montesquieu, asking if he could set aside a copy of Hume for himself.  Of course, said Cesare, for when had he ever been able to deny Mario anything, especially now when young men like his beloved would set the world on fire with their ideals?  He returned to his study for a final armful of books, and when he stood, he found Mario standing behind him, arms akimbo, frowning pensively at the open book cabinet.

"What will you store in here now, then?" he asked.

"I don't know," chuckled Cesare.  "Nothing, probably.  I might burn the entire shelf.  It's a new era of freedom, Mario.  And I'm so, so tired of hiding away the most essential parts of myself."

When he replayed the moment in his memories later, over and over and over again, Cesare never could determine who had moved first.  All he could recall was the fact that one moment he was holding a stack of Descartes and Beccaria, smiling at Mario; and the next, the books were scattered about his feet, and Mario's arms were around his neck, and his own hands were tangled in Mario's hair as his lips pressed desperately into the young painter's, moans of longing issuing from his throat.

"Oh, Mario," he gasped, one hand caressing Mario's blushing cheek as he pulled away.  "I didn't think... I didn't dare to think..."

"You didn't?"  Mario laughed bashfully.  "And here I had thought I'd been mortifyingly obvious for months!  I'd just assumed you wouldn't have been interested, until I saw the glance you and Palmieri traded upon meeting one another, ostensibly for the first time..."

"Were we that lacking in subtlety?" Cesare grinned, embarrassed.  "And yet you somehow couldn't see that I have only had eyes for you, since the first day you walked into my shop."

"Perhaps I could," admitted Mario, "but I didn't dare hope too much.  Cesare, you are a hero, a man who has quietly led the struggle for liberty in Roma for the past decade.  I have been in absolute awe of you, ever since I realized who you really were.  Even if you'd taken a liking to me, even if you'd wanted to make me a protégé of sorts, I could never count myself worthy of someone of your stature, not without proving myself first."

"You are ridiculous," chuckled Cesare, kissing Mario again, their noses brushing each other lightly.  "If anything, I could never dare to believe that a beautiful and brilliant young man like yourself would waste his affections on someone as old and musty as I."

Mario's mouth sought his again, and Cesare had just found himself pinned with his back to the empty cabinets and Mario's hands warm on the waistline of his trousers, when the bell on the door of his shop tinkled and a voice called his name.  Mario whispered a short, sharp curse in French, and Cesare laughed softly and gently kissed the word from his lips.

"Probably best not to begin things so inelegantly, anyway," he murmured to Mario.

"Will you dine with me tonight?" Mario asked.

"I dine with my sister tonight," Cesare replied, disappointed for the first time in his life at the prospect of seeing Giulia.  "But tomorrow...?"

"Tomorrow, then," nodded Mario, and he pressed his smiling mouth to Cesare's once more, before Cesare gently pushed Mario away, towards the back door of the shop.  Cesare shouted his apologies for the delay to the front of the shop, then spent a moment before he emerged waiting for his breaths to even and attempting to smooth his hair back into some semblance of order, praying he didn't look too obviously ruffled.

To his surprise, Palmieri was waiting there, accompanied by two other men.  Cesare had not seen him since their conversation by the Porta Settimiana, the night of the Duphot affair, and given what a bewildering turn that evening had taken, it took him a moment to remember the man's correct title.

"Conte," he said finally.

"Signor Angelotti."  Palmieri quirked a small smile at his erstwhile lover.  "It's been a few months.  You look well."

"As do you."  Cesare shot a politely confused glance at the other men with Palmieri.  "Can I help you with anything?"

Palmieri exchanged a look with the man to his right.

"Actually, we were wondering if you could help us," he said quietly.  "You know as well as the rest of us that a new constitution is being drafted.  When it is promulgated, the current seven provisional Consuls will lose their positions.  Some may be re-elected to permanent positions, of course, but the point is that new voices will have a chance to enter the fray.  Will you be one of them?"

Cesare was silent for a long moment, thinking of the plundering that was occurring in every palazzo and villa of the Papal States, thinking of the harsh edicts passed by the French since their arrival, weighing these considerations against the steadfast hope that Mario had for the prospect of the nascent Republic.

"I'm very honored, gentlemen," he replied finally.  "May I have an evening to think about it, before I give you my answer?"

The men who had arrived with Palmieri nodded and began to leave the shop, but Palmieri lingered a moment longer.

"Is this an apology of sorts?" asked Cesare dryly.

"Perhaps too little, and perhaps too late," Palmieri admitted.  "But I wouldn't have put your name forward for consideration if I didn't think you were the best man imaginable for the job, Angelotti.  No republican in the city could help but rejoice, if they heard that Plinio himself had stepped forward to help steer the ship.  You have always been our anchor in the most turbulent waters."

Giulia, to Cesare's alarm, supported the idea of Cesare as Consul even more fervently than had Palmieri.

"You hesitated to accept their offer?" she laughed disbelievingly.

"You've seen how despicably the French have behaved since entering the city," Cesare said bitterly.  "How they abuse our citizens and flagrantly rob us of our artistic heritage and wealth.  Who would wish to be associated with such a régime?"

"But it will not be their government," Giulia insisted.  "Cesare, even if Paris will hold some degree of sway over the new constitution, they will not have the time or attention to govern things, what with all of their wars elsewhere.  In most practical matters, this will be a Roman government for the Romans, led by Romans—and who better to help guide the way than you?"

"Because my name will go down in history as a collaborator?"  Cesare had always known that his sister lived for her dream of a Roman Republic, as much as she lived for her love for her brother; but it frightened him to look into Giulia's intense blue eyes and see there a gleam of sheer fanaticism that he had never seen there before.  "Because the average Roman is not yet ready to engage with a form of democracy that they did not ask for?"

"And not all Americans fought against the British, and France executed her own for the sake of liberty, yet their republics survive," Giulia argued.  "The average Roman has lived under the sway of the Papacy for a millennium, Cesare.  They must be given time to acclimate to their new freedoms, to realize their own potential for self-governance.  Culture cannot be overturned by a single edict; that will take patience and education and trust.  Don't lose hope in the people before they've even had a chance to prove themselves."

Cesare bowed his head, uncertain but increasingly convinced.  Giulia gently took his hand and squeezed it.

"My brother, someone will have to lead this government," she reminded him.  "I'd rather it be you, with all of your best hopes and intentions, than the countless others out there who will only use this opportunity to seize power and abuse it.  It would be the greatest honor of my life to support you and advise you, for as long as this privilege is yours to hold."

And so the next morning, after a night of fitful sleep, Cesare sought out the men who had appeared in his shop with Palmieri.  In the mid-afternoon, the bell on the door of his shop jingled, and when Cesare looked up, Mario was standing at the threshold.

"I thought we would not see each other until this evening," Cesare smiled, but his excitement at seeing the painter faltered when he saw the stricken expression on Mario's face.

"Are the rumors true?" he asked quietly.  "You've agreed to stand for Consul?"

"I have," replied Cesare, uncertainly, a bit defensively.  "You think it's a bad idea?"

"I can think of no man I'd rather see in the position."  Mario attempted to smile, but his eyes were glossy with tears.  "Congratulations."

"Mario..."  Cesare stepped from around his counter to take Mario's hands, but Mario backed away, still staring tearfully at Cesare.  "What's wrong?"

"Mere selfishness on my part," sighed Mario.  "When I should feel nothing but joy for your sake."

"What do you mean, selfishness?"  Cesare frowned slightly.  "They say the new constitution will create five Consuls, if you're thinking of putting your own name in..."

"Oh, Cesare!"  Mario laughed through a choked sob.  "I have no desire to be a Consul, and they wouldn't want a patrician like me for the role, anyway.  My selfishness lies in how bitterly I resent that, in gaining a leader the Republic so desperately needs, I must give up the lover I have desired for months."

"What?"  Cesare took another step forward, although it felt as if the floorboards were falling away beneath his feet.  "I don't understand."

"You know we can't let this go any further now," said Mario.

"What should I know or not know?" laughed Cesare, almost wildly.  He had thought he had known rationality, had thought he had known reason; and yet everything he had ever learned from a book evaporated the second he was within sight of Mario Cavaradossi.  "The world turns so rapidly these days that I barely trust the laws of gravity to still keep us all fixed to its surface.  The only certainty in my life right now is that I need you, Mario, like air, like water."

"And I will always be here for you," Mario insisted, no longer attempting to stem the flow of his tears.  "But I cannot risk becoming your lover.  The Church would do anything to undermine members of the republican government, and, as you yourself have pointed out, so many in our state are still so close-minded and fearful.  This government balances on the edge of a blade; it cannot survive being rocked by scandal of any sort.  And so you must be above reproach."

"As if it were a crime to love and be loved," scoffed Cesare.  "And we can be discreet, Mario.  We can meet at the villa you've told me about, rather than at your family's palazzo..."

But Mario was shaking his head.

"I can't let you take the risk, Cesare," he said softly.  "If you were to lose credibility because of me—if the Republic were to lose credibility because of me—I don't know how I could live with myself.  I think you would grow to hate me, as well, no matter what you believe at the moment."

"Never," Cesare insisted.

"And you yourself said just yesterday that you were tired of hiding," Mario continued through his tears.  "We are entering a moment where truth will be more important than anything, for the sake of winning over the people's hearts and minds.  Why would you burden yourself with yet another secret?  Better to forget that anything ever happened between us, so you can govern freely, without any fear of blackmail or public disgrace..."

"Oh, to hell with being Consul," Cesare burst out.  "To hell with tying myself to this occupation and the disgrace it's already bringing to our city.  I'll withdraw my name..."

"Don't," Mario said stubbornly.  "Roma needs you, Cesare.  You will have the power to change the world, and I would not have you be anything other than what you were meant to be, even if it means I cannot have you for myself.  You would no longer be the man I have admired all these months, if you chose me over the Republic."

Cesare ran his hand across his eyes, breathing hard.

"So this is goodbye, then."

"Not goodbye."  Mario smiled ruefully.  "We'll still see each other, of course."

"You know what I mean," Cesare said quietly.

Mario bowed his head.

"Good luck, Angelotti," he said, and then he was gone.

Cesare could not say how long he stood in his shop, listening to carriages clatter by outside, watching streams of dust drift through a beam of sunlight until the sky clouded.  Finally, he retreated to his printing room and seized a composing stick, then walked into his study and swung the iron bar into his book cabinets, over and over, until the wood had splintered across the false back panels and the secret compartments were all too visible.  Breathing heavily, Cesare let the composing stick fall from his hand with a loud thud, then sank down next to his destroyed shelves and wept.

The unrest continued.  A mob arose in Trastevere and was subdued by the French troops, edicts passed in its aftermath that threatened death without any hope of pardon for Trasteverini found in possession of weapons or guilty of conspiracy.  Masséna proved even less concerned with disciplining his soldiers than had Berthier, and the rampant looting of property continued, vessels torn from the hands of clerics mid-Mass, fixtures hacked off the walls of palazzi and bourgeois homes alike.  Resentment rose as the French enforced their new laws with far more vigor than their Papal predecessors had.

"As well they should," Giulia argued.  "What's the point of a government that doesn't uphold the rule of law?"

And Cesare said nothing, for His Holiness had not been fond of capital punishment, which the French were all too willing to implement.  Giulia was quick to note that their fellow Romans themselves had more than compensated for this deficit over the years, exacting personal vengeance with the quick flash of a blade in the shadows of the city's narrow streets, and that at least this provided some due process for the exacting of punishment by death; and Cesare did not recognize her as the same woman who had breathlessly recited Beccaria to him in years past.

A republican constitution in the model of its French counterpart was finalized, and the newly established Senato and Tribunato convened and cast their votes for the new Consuls.  Cesare passed through these days at an emotional distance, as if playing a part in a farce, swearing loyalty to the Federation with his hand held over a burning flame in the Piazza San Pietro, passing through the triumphal arch erected across the river from the Castel Sant'Angelo, dining and dancing in the Palazzo Quirinale under the watchful eyes of nobles both enthusiastic and seething.  The reality of the situation only finally set in when he arrived at the Villa Attavanti the evening of his first formal day in office, and his buffoon of a brother-in-law nodded to him respectfully, for the Marchese disdained the republicans but never turned a scowl on power.  When Giulia sat Cesare down after dinner and insisted that he report all the legislative happenings of the day, asking him what good he had been able to do, the corner of Cesare's mouth finally turned up in a genuine smile.  Perhaps his current reality did not encompass all of the dreams he had had for a world free of the Vatican.  But, for all its imperfections, perhaps it was a tentative start towards the best of all possible worlds.

His optimism was cut short only days later.

"Really, Cesare?"  Giulia looked as exhausted as Cesare felt.  "Did you think the people would fall for such an easy bribe?  An annulment in custom-house duties on imported wine and provisions, and reductions in the prices of oil and soap, and they would turn a blind eye to the devaluation of paper currency to one-fourth of its nominal value?"

"What other option did we have?"  Cesare rolled his neck, cramped from dozing fitfully in a chair in the Palazzo Montecitorio all night, trying to ignore the occasional snores of his fellow Consuls, none of whom thought it safe to venture into the streets with the city in such an uproar.  "The treasury is nearly empty because the Papal government rarely enforced taxation, and we've been overprinting cedole for years.  Tell me there was a better way to curb inflation, and I'll apologize."

His sister sighed and looked away as Cesare massaged his neck angrily with one hand.

"I'm just glad you're safe," she said quietly.

"It doesn't matter, anyway," Cesare grumbled.  "Masséna's already repealed the Cedola Act.  We'll just have to figure out a way to handle things more tactfully next time, as everything settles a bit more."

Yet the disquiet that ran taut through the streets of the city never eased.  Perhaps that was only to be expected, in a city as devout and slow to release its past as Roma.  Cesare accepted that he could only do his best, and spent long nights squinting in the candlelight at proposed bills and counterarguments, and gradually the practice of statecraft became as familiar as had its theory.  The Consuls granted themselves unlimited power to tax money, and imposed new taxes on personal and religious property, sparking outrage amongst those affected.  Military conscription was instituted, as unpopular as ever, although nobles were permitted to pay high taxes in lieu of service.  Bronze statues of past Popes were melted down to mint new currency, baiocchi and scudi proudly impressed with the name of the Repubblica Romana, coins destined to outlast their issuing government, as had always been the case throughout history.  Some small victories were accomplished, such as the issuance of passports to the Neapolitan woodcutters who had fled upon the arrival of the French, allowing them to move freely between the Repubblica Romana and their hostile homeland, and guaranteeing them fair pay for their services.  But the French never granted their sister republic the autonomy that Giulia had trusted they ultimately would, all nominations, laws, and acts of government continuing to require approval and undersigning by the general-in-chief of the French army.

To make matters worse, Cesare's opinions of his fellow Consuls soured with every conversation in which they revealed their own hypocrisy and self-interest, ornamenting their theater boxes in gold and silver embroidery even as they requisitioned silverware from Roman citizens to fill the coffers, encouraging the new Jacobin Club's recruitment and indoctrination of young men so blindly dedicated to the Republic that they did not hesitate to kiss a statue of Brutus in the Palazzo Altemps before commencing each debate.  Each day spent grappling with these obstacles and fools left Cesare as weary as though he had spent hours fruitlessly attempting to push a stuck carriage out of a muddy rut, and each night he retired wondering if any progress was being made at all.  La Repubblica per ridere, its critics called it—the Ridiculous Republic.  Nonetheless, whenever Cesare encountered a fellow republican in the streets, they invariably smiled at him with cautious encouragement.  Against his better judgement, when new consular elections were held in September, he put his name in to maintain his position, and upon his reappointment (which took no one by surprise), his friends toasted him and insisted that the dream of the Republic was only holding steady because of the sweat and tears Cesare put into its realization, the one honest man left in the government when so many others had been pushed out or had quit in disgust.

The one republican who did not cheer him on this way was Mario Cavaradossi.  Not that Cesare had time these days to dine often with his friends, and most of his few free evenings now were spent seriously discussing matters of state by Giulia's fireside.  But although the young painter smiled whenever he encountered Cesare, his smile was polite, and he always bowed respectfully and called Cesare by his surname (or, worse, by the title of Consul).  Mario never deliberately avoided Cesare, but it was as if an almost imperceptible barrier now existed between them, a pane of polished glass unnoticeable except at certain angles.  It might have been less painful to have been ignored altogether than choked by the stifling air of formality that now dictated Cesare's every interaction with Mario, even as the young painter continued to voice his opinions as openly and fervently as ever within their circle of friends—for, like the light of the sun on a cold day, Mario continued to provide to Cesare's life all the clarity he once had, without any of the warmth that Cesare had learned to expect.  After such interactions, pacing alone in his bedroom, Cesare often cursed himself for having made his desires clear, for having done anything to mar the easy familiarity that he and Mario had once shared as friends.  If he had simply kept ahold of his stack of books, and never let the space close between Mario's lips and his own, wasn't it possible that Mario would never have gone to such lengths to put this sort of distance between them?

When Mario stopped appearing altogether at their friends' dinners, Cesare assumed he was simply being rebuked in one more small manner, but Giulia thought otherwise.

"I've somehow still never met this dashing Cavalier of yours, by the way," she chided Cesare gently.  "But word on the street is that he's courting the new soprano at the Teatro Argentina."

"What?!"

"Floria Tosca, she's called.  From Verona, in La Serenissima."  Giulia smiled wistfully.  "We saw her sing the other evening.  She's just lovely.  Like Mamma's little perfume bottle of a shepherdess, come to life and given a voice beyond all description."

She paused as her brother turned away, pretending to have spotted something of interest out the window.  Dogs barked; servants called to each other across the courtyard; a bucket of water splashed across paving stones; and Cesare perceived none of it, stunned, his ears still ringing from Giulia's news.

"I see," she said quietly.  "It may be nothing more than a dalliance, Cesare.  Goodness knows you've had your fair share of those."

This was true, but Mario Cavaradossi was not the type to flaunt any of his dalliances publicly.  At first, Cesare told himself that this was merely one more precaution Mario was taking to avoid any potential rumors of their involvement, and he prepared himself to forgive Mario for it, annoyed as he was.  But when he attended the opera, eyes turned away from the drama and towards the audience, Cesare could not miss the soft infatuation in Mario's expression as he followed his lover's progress across the stage.

"It might have been inevitable," Giulia reminded him.  "We all have our parts to play publicly, Cesare.  You cannot be surprised if Cavaradossi understands this, and has moved on accordingly."

"It wouldn't matter to me so much if it weren't so clear that he truly adores her," Cesare groaned miserably.

"Ah."  Giulia smiled sympathetically.  "Well, turn your attentions to the things you can control, then.  Perhaps you cannot govern the person you desire, and I would think your love was not true if that was what you wanted, in the first place.  But you can still govern our fledgling state, my dear brother.  Tell me, how fares the latest tax on landowners within the Tribunato?"

Cesare Angelotti was accustomed to sensing danger in the air, the thin promise of violence that shivered within a breeze and set the hairs on the back of his neck on end.  Discontent had been stirring beneath the surface of Roma's heat-washed roofs for weeks, restless, searching for an outlet to vent its rage, a spring wound too tightly and seeking release.  The French were abandoning the city, as they had almost a year earlier in November, when the Neapolitan army had invaded and spent their few weeks in power conducting executions and threatening to shoot French soldiers in the hospitals for every shot fired by the residual French force garrisoned within the Castel Sant'Angelo.  Cesare had kept his head down throughout those days, stayed out of sight until the French army had regrouped and routed the Neapolitans beyond their own borders.  Luck had been on his side then, as the Repubblica Romana was restored, as the immense cross that had replaced the tree of liberty was torn down in turn.  He could not believe that his fortunes would hold as true now when the re-enforced Neapolitan army marched once more on the Eternal City, fresh from a purge of its own society in the wake of Admiral Nelson's victory over the French occupiers of Napoli, less tolerant of republicanism than ever.  Cesare briefly considered fleeing when word reached him of the flights of his fellow Consuls; but perhaps the hour had come too late for action of that sort, or perhaps Cesare had simply become too weary of hiding.

"Don't try to play the hero," Giulia insisted, her fair face pale and anxious, "Cesare, I would rather never see you again and have you alive in France, than holding fast for your nation here in Roma, awaiting a terrible fate."

"And yet I cannot find it within me to leave," Cesare laughed bitterly.  "No, Giulia.  I will stay here, bound to the government that I have fought to uphold, and that you have believed in beyond any faith I have known.  If it is my fate to die at the hands of these invaders, then let them say that Cesare Angelotti died with honor."

When the blow fell, it was swift and heartless.  The banners of the Neapolitan army fluttered in the autumnal breeze as it made its easy way through the twisting streets and broad piazze of Roma, and within days, the other Consuls who had dared to remain had been apprehended and executed.  For all his brave words, Cesare trembled when the door of his home was forced open to admit the self-assured, sneering face of a powerful man whose demeanor betrayed his utter ruthlessness.  His men quickly and efficiently clapped Cesare's wrists in irons and hauled him roughly to the Castel Sant'Angelo.  Cesare was almost too stunned to register his fate, feeling all the while as though he were drifting through some nightmare from which he must surely awaken.  But when they lowered him into the depths of the dreaded Sammalò, that deep, lightless shaft whose name was synonymous with despair, the peril of his situation struck at his very soul, his mind reeling with panic as the darkened closeness of the space pressed in upon him, stifling the air in his lungs, palpable as a gloved hand over his nose and mouth.  Days melded into nights, and nights into days; all were the same within the taut, seething suspension of the lightless gloom.  Death would be better than this lightless existence, he thought; and death he sought, only the cruelty of his captors extended to their nursing him back to health, slowly, heartlessly, whenever he tried to starve himself to death or beat himself into a pulp against the invisible walls of his pitch-black cell.  (He saw a grim but delicious irony in the notion of leaving his own bones to moulder within Hadrian's Mausoleum, a Consul rudely intruding upon the eternal rest of an Emperor, but clearly his captors did not share his bleak sense of humor.)

He only believed life might still be worth living for those he had left behind in the outer world.  In the unending darkness, their faces swam before him, radiant in their clarity against the ceaseless black: Giulia's intense blue gaze silently urging him to hold fast; Mario's steady smile, softly sympathetic.  His memories of them were always sunlit and brilliant, even when he knew that such weather ran counter to historical fact.  Would they remember him, rotting away as he was in this manmade Tartarus, practically fare for the rats that brushed his limbs whenever he sought an hour's restless sleep?  And what would they think of him, filthy and pathetic as he was, a disgraceful shadow of the man he had once been?

(He did not dream of the fallen Republic.  Fate had handed him that flickering torch to bear for a while, and he had carried it as well as he could, before it was wrenched from his grasp and violently extinguished.  Perhaps, in the future, some cadre of young idealists would reignite it, and democracy would once more return to Roma, stronger and truer than it had ever existed under the French.  But idealism was easy for the young and innocent, as Cesare once had been.  Now, drifting between life and death in this unhallowed sepulchre, ground down to the basest human needs, his hopes were only for survival, not for resurrection of any sort.)

How long he had been hidden away from the wind and the sun, Cesare could not have said.  An eternity might have passed since his arrest, and his name long forgotten in the world beyond the impenetrable brick walls of the Castel Sant'Angelo.  But an evening came when, to his surprise, a guard lowered himself down into the cramped cell with a pistol trained on Cesare.  A lantern was hooked to his belt, and though Cesare squinted in pain at the unfamiliar brightness of the light, he could still see how the guard wrinkled his nose in disgust at the stench of Cesare's unwashed body.  At the guard's bidding, Cesare let himself be handcuffed and trussed into a harness on a second rope, securely enough that he had no hope of wriggling free and letting himself fall to his death on the ascent.  Slowly, the guards at the top of the airshaft cell hauled him upwards into the dim twilight.  Cesare's footsteps stumbled along the herringbone bricks paving the inner courtyard of the fortress; he had not walked so far in so many months, and his legs seemed to have forgotten how to carry out this most basic of functions, forcing him to focus on putting one foot in front of the other instead of savoring the almost-forgotten sensation of the night breeze on his face.  And so it was that he, feeling more like a beast than a human, was dragged up a flight of stairs and into a chamber in the former Papal apartments at the center of the citadel, then tossed roughly to the richly marbled floor.  Glancing upwards into a face he had hoped never to see again, Cesare suddenly felt as if he were only a boy once more, sprawled at the feet of a remorseless tyrant who knew nothing of reason or mercy.

"Consul," leered Scarpia, his voice pleasant but his eyes gleaming maliciously.

Cesare's breaths were labored, and his mouth was dry, but he still managed to spit contemptuously at the Barone's polished shoes.  An almost imperceptible gesture from Scarpia, and a swift kick was administered to Cesare's stomach, leaving him choking for air.

"Or, should I say, cur?" Scarpia amended.  "How very far you've fallen, Angelotti.  A man who once claimed a fifth of the power of Roma, now grovelling like the reeking animal he is."

"You're wrong," gasped Cesare.  "The Consulate was no modern triumvirate.  The people held the power, and we strove to execute their will.  That is what a man like you will never understand about the Repubblica Romana, Scarpia."

"Silence," snapped the Barone.  "I did not have you brought here to recite your political delusions, you traitorous French puppet."  Scarpia regarded Cesare impassively for a moment, then that unnerving smile returned to his face.  "I dined with your sister this evening.  An exceptionally clever woman, as clever as she is beautiful.  A pity she left Roma for Venezia so soon after my arrival.  I would have wished to acquaint myself with her far sooner."

"Leave my sister out of this," Cesare said quietly.  On the wall just behind Scarpia's shoulder, a fresco of the Archangel Michael with particolored wings brandished a sword, as if mockingly offering to strike off the Barone's head.

"If only I could," replied Scarpia, almost jovially.  "But when I make a bargain with a gentlewoman, I prefer to keep my end of it."

It was a trap.  It had to be.  Giulia would never stoop to bargaining with a man like Scarpia, and Cesare shuddered as he considered what his sister had to offer a man like the Barone.  He suddenly found himself hauled to his feet and dropped unceremoniously into the chair at Scarpia's desk, the handcuffs unlocked and yanked roughly from his wrists.

"Write," Scarpia ordered.  "My end of the bargain is to prove to your sister that you still live—or that you still draw breath, at any rate."

"No," replied Cesare softly.  He would rather die than do anything that might lead Giulia further into Scarpia's snares.

"No?"  Scarpia smiled cruelly.  "A brave word for a filthy beast.  Would you prefer, then, that the Marchesa join you in your little cell?  They always said you were as close as siblings could be, after all... perhaps too close, although the other rumors about your predilections temper such speculation..."

"Don't hurt her."  Cesare hated how pitifully his voice trembled, how brokenly his pleas hung in the air.  "Do what you want to me, but I beg you, don't hurt my sister."

"Well, then."  Scarpia gestured carelessly towards the pen and inkwell and parchment set out on the desk.  "Write."

Cesare's hands trembled from weakness and fear, and he nearly upset the inkwell twice.  His own script was foreign to him, sprawling and jagged where it had once been even and precise.  My beloved sister, do not grieve for me, and do not under any circumstances go against your conscience for my sake.  Scarpia snorted softly when he read Cesare's short missive, but he seemed satisfied enough, for he folded it crisply and tucked it into a pocket.  With a flick of his wrist, the guards seized Cesare once more and dragged him back to the familiar horror of his prison, left with nothing other than his own reeling thoughts and fears.  Giulia would make sacrifices for his sake that she could only live to regret, and he would remain here forever, rotting silently away in the darkness.  He had thought his emotions deadened to the closeness of his cell, but now the walls more than ever seemed to collapse in upon him, a tomb for a prematurely buried man.

Five days later, another soldier descended on a rope and hauled Cesare back out of his prison.  When his feet stumbled once more on solid ground, he glanced warily at the three men surrounding him, waiting for them to drag him once more before Scarpia.  Instead, one thrust a cloak at him, and another a letter.  Without a word, they coiled the rope and closed the trapdoor of the Sammalò, then left Cesare leaning against the wall of the armory.  After a bewildered moment, he tugged the cloak over his shoulders and flipped the hood over his head, which hopefully would make his long, matted hair less noticeable.  Then, glancing nervously about, he stumbled quickly from the armory through the courtyard, and darted down the ramp that led to the fortress's base, hugging the shadows between torches ensconced on the walls, hating that the familiarity of darkness provided such unexpected comfort.  The sun hovered high in the morning sky, flinging shallow shadows down from the battlements of the Castel Sant'Angelo into the lower courtyards.  Cesare loitered in one of these pools of darkness, behind a teetering stack of wooden crates, until the guards by the front gate had momentarily wandered away to help control a startled horse; then, holding his breath, he slipped through into freedom.

He had forgotten how beautiful the day could be.  Cesare had relived sunrises in his mind more times than he could count, during his long months of captivity.  Now, he felt tears prick his eyes as he gazed once more at his beloved city, domes and façades softly faded in the placid morning light, overwhelmed, unsure if he still only dreamt of such wonders within the endless darkness of his cell.  As if in a trance, he clambered carefully down the embankment and sat for a long moment by the shadowy banks of the Tevere, just under the Ponte Sant'Angelo, where he was hidden from the view of any guards patrolling the fortress, slowly reacquainting himself with the droning burble of the river, with the buzz of insects in the grasses, with the clatter of cartwheels over the cobblestones of the bridge above him.  Finally, when he had reabsorbed enough of the world to seek further information, Cesare reached into his pocket, unfolded the letter, and squinted fondly at the message written there in a tidy, familiar hand.

Cesare, if gold still is a currency held dear by most men, you will be reading this letter somewhere outside your prison cell.  Disguise yourself as best you can in the cloak they will have given you, and make your way to the Basilica di Sant'Andrea della Valle.  I have hidden a spare key to the Cappella degli Attavanti at the feet of the Madonna, and under the chapel altar, a further disguise.  Stay there until tonight, then make your way to Frascati, where I pray we will see each other once more by the fountain in Piazza San Pietro on the stroke of four.

Cesare brought the page to his lips briefly, then read the missive again before tearing it into pieces and letting the current of the river carry Giulia's words away.  Feeling suddenly reckless, he tugged off the cloak and let it fall to the riverbank, then waded as far into the Tevere as he dared, relishing the flow of the cool water on his flea-bitten calves.  After a moment, he lowered himself up to his neck in the water, then ducked his head under to let his tears mingle with the river.  He did not dare spend too much time scrubbing his skin clean with handfuls of coarse sand scooped from the bank, hoping to be mistaken for some errant shepherd if spotted, but by the time he pulled his dripping stained shirt back on, he was grateful to feel even this much more human.

The morning air was already hot as Cesare crept back up the embankment, and he suspected that his damp clothes would dry quickly enough.  Pulling the hooded cloak tighter around himself, he ducked his head and crossed the Ponte Sant'Angelo, all too aware of the fortress looming at his back.  He did not allow himself to exhale until he had reached the far side of the bridge and could slip between the sheltering buildings that framed the narrow streets of his beloved city, which seemed to welcome him back to the realm of the living, enfolding him once more in its familiar endless twists and turns of stuccoed houses, fountains, churches, palazzi, obelisks.  Cesare found himself once more close to tears as he observed the Romans around him going about their quotidian lives, hauling buckets of metallic-tasting well water, pushing carts unsteady with their burdens of artichokes and onions, shouting after children racing through the streets, hanging washing out to dry on ropes strung from windows with their shutters thrown open to the day.  Every now and then, a breeze cut the stifling air, stirring the scents of dust, of freshly baked bread, of horse manure.  Before his imprisonment, Cesare had taken such simple things for granted.  Now, they seemed to him as profound and beautiful as the most refined art.

And yet, moved as he was to once more exist out in the world, the peril of his situation stayed close to Cesare as he navigated the darkened edges of streets he had wandered so often by moonlight, slowly, reluctantly stopping every now and again to catch his breath, hoping any passersby would assume he was just another unkempt beggar dragging himself through another long day of impoverished hopelessness.  In a Roma controlled by Scarpia, police and spies would be lurking anywhere and everywhere, and if his escape had already been discovered, they would be on his scent.  Although Cesare suspected he would be far more noticeable for his stench had he not stopped to wash himself by the river, he still berated himself for daring to stop.  He could not move too quickly; that would arouse suspicion, and Cesare's legs would not support him for long at too brisk a gait.  Still, his heart was pounding by the time he reached the familiar façade of Sant'Andrea and effortfully pulled open the door at last.

The interior of the church yawned above him, majestic and vast, whiffs of dusty robes and crinkled prayerbooks and incense lingering in the space.  Cesare quieted his breathing as much as possible to match the stillness of the hour, then made his way quickly to the statue of the Madonna.  The key was there, just as Giulia's letter had said it would be; a quick glance at the chapels made clear that of the Attavanti family, which was the only one enclosed by a grille.  He staggered towards it and fitted the key in the lock, then sighed with relief when it opened.  A noise set his heart racing again, and as silently as possible, he slipped inside the chapel and closed the grille.

The disguise Giulia had promised him was in place, hidden under the altar.  Cesare sorted through the items she had left, all but ignoring the Sacristan as he bustled through the church, grumbling to himself, then kneeling to pray.  But he could not ignore the voice that soon interrupted the Sacristan's.  Cesare had given up hope of ever encountering Mario again, and now tears of gratitude and longing and pain pricked at his eyes to hear the painter describe Giulia's fair face in contrast to that of his own lover, overwhelmed by the hand that Fate had dealt him this morning.  Finally, the Sacristan's footsteps and muttering shuffled off, and Cesare crept to the grille of the chapel, desperate to catch even just a glimpse of the painter.

"Who's there?" called Mario, and Cesare, knowing he had been caught, pulled open the grille.

Mario had not changed at all.  He stood backlit by sunlight, halfway down the steps of the scaffolding on which he was working, a palette in one hand, sleeves rolled up and a painter's smock shielding his clothes from the smudges of paint that flecked the smock and his forearms alike.  He was more beautiful than in the flesh than in even Cesare's imagination, and Cesare's breath caught at the sight of him.

"You!  Cavaradossi!" he exclaimed, at a loss for words, remembering at the last moment to instate Mario's own rules of formality, when all he wanted was to throw himself into Mario's arms and whisper his given name over and over in relief.  "God has sent you to me," he laughed after a moment, casting his eyes upwards at the vaulted ceiling of the church, thinking that even an atheist like Mario would see the humor in the situation.

But Mario was eyeing him warily, and Cesare was seized with sudden shame as he recalled how stained and ragged his clothes were, how wild and matted his hair and beard had become.  (He suddenly was intensely relieved he had taken the time to bathe.)

"You don't recognize me?" he asked softly, taking a step or two closer.  "Prison clearly has altered me."

He quirked a shy, hesitant smile at Mario, who suddenly gasped.

"Angelotti!" he exclaimed.  "The Consul of our lost Repubblica Romana!"

In an instant, he had rushed forward and was clutching Cesare's shoulders, his smile almost too broad for his face.  Cesare felt his knees weaken slightly, although he was less sure whether this was from Mario's touch or from sheer exhaustion.

"I've just escaped from the Castel Sant'Angelo," he said.

"Let me help you," Mario insisted; and Cesare was about to refuse, to tell Mario that he should not risk stepping onto the dangerous path that Cesare had to walk; but the next moment, a voice called Mario's name, and a small smile tugged at the corner of the painter's mouth.  "Hide yourself," he added to Cesare.  "She's a jealous woman.  Give me just a moment, and I'll send her away."

He released his gentle grip on Cesare's shoulders and made for the door of the church, but started back towards Cesare when he staggered.

"I'm exhausted," Cesare admitted grimly, embarrassed to be in such a state when Mario was as full of life and vigor as ever.

"There's food and wine in this basket," said Mario, seizing a basket from the platform of the scaffolding where he had been working and thrusting it into Cesare's hands.

"Thank you," whispered Cesare, hoping that Mario really was as disinterested in eating his lunch as he had insisted to the Sacristan, and he retreated back into the chapel.

He tried not to listen to the conversation that ensued between Mario and Tosca.  The nearly forgotten tastes of fresh cheese and soft bread that blossomed across his tongue with each bite were almost enough to distract him, but it still sent a pang through his heart to hear Mario's laughter as he teased his beloved, to note the pet names he called her and casual familiarities they shared, to hear the singer speak of Mario's villa as if it were her own, unaware that she existed in the paradise that Cesare had come so close to entering.  How ungrateful Floria Tosca was, to have won the love of someone like Mario Cavaradossi, and not recognize him for being the truest and most honest man to have ever walked the earth!  When he heard Tosca bring Giulia into the conversation, however, Cesare had to stifle a laugh, despite his grief and indignation.  Giulia would adore Mario, no doubt, but Cesare would bet his life that his sister would be infinitely more interested in hearing the Cavalier's thoughts on universal suffrage than in beginning a flirtation with him, let alone an affair.

Finally, though, Tosca was mollified and could be quietly sent away.  Mario apologized for his lover's behavior, somewhat embarrassed, although the pink tinge of his cheeks was just as likely a remnant of the kisses Tosca had pressed upon him before her departure.  His attention soon focused entirely back on Cesare as the pieces fell into place—Giulia's frequent appearances in the church, the disguise she had left for the brother to whom she was eternally devoted, for whom she would risk everything to keep him from Scarpia's grasp.

"Scarpia," shuddered Mario.  "That bigoted satyr who exploits religious piety for his libertine behavior, and who makes the confessor and the hangman instruments of his lusts!"  He seized Cesare's shoulders once more, his eyes blazing with passion.  "If it costs me my life, I will save you."

Don't, Mario, Cesare wanted to say.  But it had been too long since anyone had spoken of him as if he meant anything, and Mario's jaw was set with the same stubborn determination as when he was preparing to defend the right to freedom of expression against a particularly obstinate adversary.  Once, on a dreamlike December evening, Mario had vowed to Cesare on the Campo de' Fiori that he would come to Cesare's rescue if needed.  Selfishly, longingly, he now let Mario's renewed promise linger in the air, wrapped himself in the sweetness of Mario's attention and care; and the moment for ordering the young man to take back his passionate declaration quickly passed into a more mundane discussion of logistics—keys, directions, disguises, wells.  You are too good to me, Cesare thought as Mario divulged one of the greatest secrets of his home, one hand pressed to Cesare's shoulder as he muttered in his ear.  He granted the painter a soft smile that was instantly broken by the blast of a cannon.

"They've discovered your escape!"  Mario sprang into action, leaping from Cesare, seizing his own jacket, whose hem came away smudged colorfully by the paintbrushes lying scattered across the scaffolding.  "Now Scarpia will release his spies."

"Farewell," Cesare told him, but Mario shook his head, a smile playing about his lips.

"I'll come with you," he insisted.  "Let's be on guard.  If we're attacked, we'll fight!"

And with that, he seized Cesare's hand and dashed with him out of Sant'Andrea, through the chapel door and into the dazzling dappled light of the garden.  Their footsteps pounded along the dusty path, deserted except for the occasional stray cat licking a grimy paw, and Cesare suddenly felt he could laugh for joy.  Even with Scarpia and all his men at their heels, nothing could completely stamp out the sheer exhilaration of running hand in hand with Mario Cavaradossi through the unblemished sunshine of a summer afternoon, charging straight into trouble together once more.

Cesare had only ever dined with Mario at the Palazzo Cavaradossi on the Piazza di Spagna, never at this secret villa hidden in the woods outside the city's walls.  By the time they had ducked through the reedy fields and reached its garden gate, Cesare was once more faint with fatigue, and he leaned heavily on Mario's arm, too light-headed to even feel embarrassed.  Mario immediately bustled Cesare up to his own bedroom and called for a servant to draw a bath, then waited patiently outside the room while Cesare slowly and carefully scrubbed himself clean.  Cesare's skin sagged loosely from his thin limbs, and a set of Mario's clean clothes billowed about his emaciated frame, although Mario was far slimmer than Cesare himself.  His imprisonment had cost him so much, so very much; but he could not take stock of his regrets until his current peril was past, a distant shadow beyond the borders of France.  When Cesare finally opened the door, Mario stood there with a pair of scissors and a comb and a razor, his lips pursed pensively.

"I had thought to call a barber for you, especially since you should be clean-shaven if you'll be masquerading in your sister's clothes, but I don't think we can take the risk," he explained.  "Hair is not my typical artistic medium, I should warn you, but if you trust me..."

"Yes," smiled Cesare.  "Yes, absolutely."

And so Cesare sat back and closed his eyes, feeling Mario's hands gently caress his neck and head as he snipped away at the matted mess that was Cesare's hair.  As he worked, Mario quietly told Cesare of what had befallen the state over the past months, of the edicts and the royal proclamations, of the approaching French forces and the resulting raids and arrests.  His voice sometimes strained with sorrow as he recalled friends who had faced execution or, worse, disappeared without a trace; and Cesare too tensed with grief over the decimation of his community, over hearing of Palmieri's harsh fate.  But whenever he asked Cesare to turn his head this way or that, Mario's voice was soft and kind, and he fell silent when he reached the task of shaving Cesare's unruly beard, his lips pursed in concentration and his breathing steady.  Cesare would not have thought it possible to feel so calm with a razor blade at his neck, given the half-delirious state of anxiety in which he had existed for months on end, but he still did not open his eyes as Mario slowly and deliberately trimmed and scraped away the growth of so many months of imprisonment.  This was the sole, crystallized moment that Cesare would ever possess of how it would have felt if Mario had been able to accept Cesare as his lover, if they had grown old caring for one another in such simple and intimate ways, manifesting the utmost devotion in even the most mundane of tasks, day after day after day.  He knew that his time with the young painter was drawing to an end, and so he gave himself to the moment, to this portrait in miniature of what a life at the side of Mario Cavaradossi might have been, longing for the moment to become an eternity, grateful to have tasted its bittersweetness even once.

"There," said Mario's voice at last, fond and comforting and touched with just a hint of pride.  "Now you look once more like yourself."

Cesare had been too afraid to look in the oval mirror hanging on the wall of Mario's room, but now he stared at his own face within its frame.  His piercing blue eyes had sunk deeper into their sockets than he was accustomed to seeing them, his face was lean and sallow with malnourishment, and a patch of his sandy hair had gone shockingly white.  But Mario had made him look once more respectable, like something more than the animal that Scarpia had claimed he was.  Mario's reflection smiled at Cesare from the edge of the mirror, and Cesare's vision blurred at the sight of this miraculous man, who had calmly and graciously handed Cesare back his stolen dignity.

"You never did paint my portrait, Cavalier, as you once said you would," Cesare teased, even as he wiped the tears from his eyes.  "I suppose this will have to do, in its stead."

"One day," Mario argued softly.  "In Paris, perhaps.  I intend to take Floria there, once we are wed."

Cesare bowed his head in acknowledgement, wanting to share Mario's dream without any bitterness.  When he raised his head again to his reflection, he saw that Mario now stood behind him, biting his lip uncertainly.

"Cesare," he murmured.

At the sound of his given name, the former Consul turned and gently placed a hand on Mario's cheek, knowing the moment for any such feelings was long past, but needing to live in its memory regardless.  Mario closed his own eyes for a moment, then shook himself.

"I will not be untrue to Floria," he said softly.

"Oh, Mario."  Cesare swiftly withdrew his hand.  "You have already sacrificed far too much for my sake today.  I certainly would not have you sacrifice your honor as well."

"I know you wouldn't."  Mario smiled sadly.  "I love Floria wholly and absolutely, but that has never meant that there was not always a place in my heart reserved for you, Cesare.  I wish I had had the courage to tell you that directly, before you were taken prisoner, rather than distancing myself in shame for denying you the happiness we could have had."

Cesare choked out a sob, his hand clutching Mario's shoulder, and the Cavalier pressed his forehead to the fallen Consul's.

"I tried, Mario," Cesare wept.  "Even though it was doomed to fail from the start, I tried to make the Republic succeed.  I could bear sacrificing what we might have shared, so long as I believed the sacrifice might lead to true freedom.  But was any of it worth it?"

"Of course," Mario replied without hesitation.  "And no doubt future generations will be inspired by the man I have always admired and loved."

"Thank you," Cesare whispered, and Mario nodded slightly, sniffing back his own tears.

The sudden sound of footsteps on the stairs made Mario leap to his feet, and with a worried glance at Cesare, he slipped out the door.

"Floria, what are you doing here?" Cesare heard Mario say.

"Mario, how could you?!" the diva sobbed in response.  "I believed you when you said you loved me.  I never thought you would betray me like this!"

Guilt and fear suddenly gripped Cesare's stomach as he wondered how much Floria had somehow heard of their quiet conversation.

"Betray you?"  Mario's voice sounded incredulous, although Cesare could only imagine that he had just felt an identical twinge of guilt.  "How have I betrayed you?"

"Don't deny it!  I know who you met in Sant'Andrea today.  How long has it been going on?"

"Tosca... please, my love, if you'll let me explain..."

"Just since my rehearsal schedule became so busy?  Or long before that?  Have you been slowly comparing me to her, waiting until you were certain you wanted her more than me before you dealt the final blow?"

"Floria."  Mario's voice suddenly contained a gentle note of humor.  "I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about."

"I let you have everything!" she raged.  "I only gave you my heart, and agreed to be your lover in a state of absolute sin, because you promised that you would give yourself to me in return, and that we would be wed someday!"

"And so we will be," Mario reassured her, still bemused.  "Who is this mystery woman you're going on about?"

"Oh, don't try to play innocent with me," scoffed the soprano.  "The Marchesa Attavanti, of course—that reported republican who no doubt would agree with every single one of your insane political ideas, who could keep up easily with your constant literary allusions and classical references, who would never humiliate you by forgetting the correct way to hold a dinner knife in polite company..."

"Is there a correct way to hold a dinner knife in polite company?" Mario asked.  "If so, I've certainly never been concerned about it.  And I already told you, I've never even met the Marchesa Attavanti, Floria.  I had no idea it was she I'd painted, until you mentioned her name and I suddenly realized that I should have instantly recognized her brother's eyes in her face."

"I want to believe you," she replied tearfully.  "But her fan was on your scaffolding in the church, Mario.  What other explanation could exist?  Please, God, let there be some way to make me believe you..."

Cesare had thought it best to let Mario deal with this onslaught of emotion on his own, but he finally seized the small satchel of belongings he had prepared for himself, and pushed open the door.  Floria, startled, leapt backwards at his sudden appearance.

"It's all my fault, Signora," Cesare said.  "My sister furnished me with her fan as part of a disguise for my escape from the Castel Sant'Angelo, and I must have dropped it in my flight from the church earlier today.  I can assure you that the Cavalier Cavaradossi is absolutely true to you."

"Floria, Cesare Angelotti, former Consul of the Repubblica Romana; Angelotti, my fiancée, Floria Tosca."  Mario spoke as casually as if this were a completely normal introduction and Floria were not still gaping at the former Consul.  "And thank you for the ringing endorsement.  Although how on earth did the fan end up on my scaffolding?  You certainly never climbed up there with it in hand, and neither did I.  Are you sure that's where you found it, Tosca?"

"I didn't exactly find it myself," she admitted, clearly embarrassed.  "That was what the Barone told me, when I came back looking for you..."

As soon as she saw the two men exchange an alarmed glance, the weight of her own words hit Floria, and she clapped her hand over her mouth in horror.

"Stay here for a moment," Mario said quietly, placing a hand on her shoulder.  "We have to assume you were followed.  I'll be right back..."

Floria continued to stare wide-eyed at Cesare as her lover disappeared down the stairs.  Cesare watched her in return, less angry than curious.  Tosca was a small woman with fierce, dark features, but she carried herself with the poise and grace of an empress; her clear anguish over her actions managed to be both impossibly dignified and completely genuine.  Cesare found he was impressed, in spite of himself.  He could not blame Mario for losing his heart to a woman who radiated such command and yet humility.  If anything, he suddenly wished that he and Floria had had enough time to become genuine friends.

"How could I have been so blind?" she said at last.  "I heard the cannon as I returned to the Palazzo Farnese from Sant'Andrea, I should have realized..."

"Scarpia is a master at playing off of fears and insecurities," replied Cesare bitterly.  "You would not be the first whose innocent intentions he's twisted to his own foul purposes."

"Even so, I am so ashamed that he has played me like this, as easily as a shepherd boy plays a pipe."  She choked back a sob.  "Signor... Consul.  Please, forgive my foolishness."

"It is I who should be apologizing to you," Cesare insisted.  "I never wished to place Mario or any of his loved ones in such danger.  Will you promise me something, Signora?"

"If it is in my power," she replied quietly.

"He has sworn to save me, even if it costs him his life," Cesare said in a low voice.  "I cannot allow him to do such a thing.  Promise me, if it comes down to a choice between his life and mine, you will ensure that he does not sacrifice himself for my sake."

"But..."

"He has a future with you to look forward to," Cesare insisted.  "He has the rest of his life, and the chance to see his hopes and dreams realized.  Until this morning, I had assumed my life was over, Signora, even if I still drew breath.  One more day out in the sunlight, one more afternoon spent in his company, has been a greater blessing than I could ever have imagined.  And I would be glad to die if it means that Mario will live."

Sorrow filled Floria's dark eyes as she regarded Cesare.

"You love him," she said quietly.

Cesare hesitated, on the verge of insisting that Mario was no more than a sworn brother to him, but he felt he owed this poor woman the truth.  He nodded.

"But he is entirely yours, Signora," he added.  "He has been since the day he met you, and he always will be."

"Perhaps," she smiled sadly.  "But he used to speak of you, so often that I'll admit I was jealous of how much you occupied his thoughts.  And when he stopped, it was only because he could not bear to reflect on the loss of someone he had held so dearly."

"Please," Cesare interrupted, for Floria's kind words pierced him more keenly than a knife.  "Please.  Help me save him."

"I promise," Floria said softly, taking his hand.  "I pray to God that things will not come to that, but I promise."

"Floria."  Mario had returned, and Floria quickly dropped Cesare's hand.  "Will you help me bring him down to the garden?  We must move quickly, before they arrive."

The garden behind the Villa Cavaradossi was beautifully maintained, and Cesare regretted not having the leisure to admire its lush flowers and elegant cypresses, swaying gently in the breeze of the early evening.  Mario and Floria each supported him under an arm as they hurried down the gravel walk.

"Go, my love," Mario murmured to Floria, stopping for a moment to press a kiss to her lips as Cesare collapsed on the side of the well.  "You've lingered here long enough.  I'm afraid it will seem even more suspicious if you stay too long."

"Yes," she agreed, her expression worried.  "Besides, I shouldn't be late for the cantata, that would only arouse more suspicion.  You'll be all right?"

Mario nodded, and she leaned her forehead to his for a moment, just as Cesare had done only minutes earlier.

"I'm so sorry for ever doubting you," she whispered.

"Go, Tosca," he urged her, gently pushing her away.  "All may yet be well."

"Godspeed," the singer said to Cesare with a grave nod.  Then she turned on the path and made her way swiftly back to the villa.

"Mario," Cesare whispered, watching the painter impatiently test the secureness of the knot tying the well's bucket to the rope.  He seized Mario's hands, feeling there was too much to say, that no words could begin to scratch the surface of the tumult of emotions he felt at this moment.  Then, with a silent apology to Floria Tosca, he leaned forward and kissed Mario once more—a quick, chaste kiss of farewell.  It would never be enough for Cesare.  It would have to be enough for Cesare.

"One day, in Paris," Mario promised him, and then Cesare climbed onto the bucket and clung to the rope as Mario slowly and carefully lowered him into a seemingly endless shaft of darkness.  When he swung himself into the crevice halfway down the well, the bucket clacking hollowly against the stone walls, Cesare shivered, the cold made all the more acute by Mario's sudden absence.  Soon, Cesare heard raised voices and shouts, and he wrapped his cloak about himself and turned his face to the wall and held as still as possible within the hollow.  A flaming torch, reeking of sizzling oil, dropped past his hiding spot down into the depths of the well, where it fizzled out with a prolonged sputter as it hit the water pooled far below.  Then all was silence and darkness.

He waited for Mario to return, for his voice to quietly call out to Cesare that the danger was past and the coast was clear.  But Cesare somehow knew that he was now alone, that Scarpia's thugs had arrested Mario, seized his delicate wrists and bound them, shoved him roughly into a carriage.  Although he did not often pray, Cesare closed his eyes and entreated the saints with all his heart to protect his beloved.

He could have hauled himself out of his hiding place, if it had come to it, handful after handful of rope clutched in his weakened fingers.  But Cesare was exhausted and still unsteady from hunger and ill treatment.  Instead, he embraced the closeness of his current hideaway, for although it was even more cramped and claustrophobic than his prison cell had been, it offered the possibility of freedom, shielding Cesare as the secret compartments of the bookcase in his study had once safeguarded thoughts still too dangerous to expose to the light.  The night air was chilled this deep into the ground, and echoes shivered down the shaft of the well, gusts of wind through the surrounding pines and the cries of nightbirds.  Cesare lay curled at the stratum of antiquity, surrounded by the long-buried marble columns and blank-staring statues and flasks and spoons and bones of his ancient forefathers, cradled by the embrace of a history that might or might not remember the name of an erstwhile Consul of the failed Repubblica Romana, long after the last scion of the Angelotti family had crumbled to dust.  Ashes to ashes.  Giulia surely would chastise him for falling into such a maudlin mood, if she heard him musing this way about what a shabby legacy he was leaving behind him in Roma...

Cesare sat up so quickly he hit his head hard on the rock.  Scarpia had found Giulia's fan, and if she had told her husband that she was bound for Frascati, then the Barone's dogs would surely be on her scent by now.  He would have to warn her—but how?  He shuddered in the damp cold, staring upwards, as if some celestial intervention might somehow speed him to Frascati.  Giulia, dearest Giulia, who surely had sacrificed something of her own soul to Scarpia for Cesare's sake, who had risked everything to give him a chance at liberty.  The walls of the well seemed to bow in around him as he mourned the fates of the two people he loved most in this world, the two people who had been willing to trade their lives for his sake.

And then the shouting returned, closer and closer to the mouth of the well.  Lit torches appeared, their light flickering deliriously off the water so far below Cesare.  So this is how it ends, he thought, dazed.  He wondered how they had learned, and whether the disclosure had been enough to spare Mario whatever horrors his captors had had in store.

"Quick, don't let him jump," ordered a familiar sneering voice.  "Scarpia wants him alive, if possible."

The torchlight dimmed as a figure on a rope began to swing himself down into the well.  Suddenly spurred to action, Cesare seized the satchel he had brought with him, the one in which he had stowed the other items that Giulia had left for him beneath the altar in her husband's chapel.  He withdrew a pistol and aimed it with the steady hand of an experienced soldier.  The shot reverberated piercingly against the stone walls as the man's grip loosened on the rope and he fell to the bottom of the well with a mighty splash.  When another spy leaned forward to see what had happened, Cesare's second shot hit him square in the forehead, and he slumped halfway over the well's rim.

"Jesus, he's armed!"  Spoletta's silhouette peered cautiously over the edge of the well, then leapt backwards as Cesare's third shot grazed his ear.  "Return fire, but carefully."

Cesare grit his teeth as gunfire began to ricochet off the walls of the well around him, the noise deafening in the close, echoing confines.  He only had two shots left, and he was hopelessly outnumbered.  A bullet suddenly struck his upper arm, and his hand opened in shock, the pistol clattering away into the depths of the well.  Breaths heavy with pain, Cesare reached back into the satchel and pulled out a knife, glaring upwards at the torchlight as another man clambered downwards on the rope.  Cesare clumsily swung outwards with his left hand, and the man cried out as the knife pierced his thigh, then sent the knife spiralling out of Cesare's hand with a fortuitously aimed kick.

That left only one remaining item in the satchel, and Cesare caressed it gently in the few seconds he had before the assailant would be upon him.  The torchlight glinted weirdly off the shepherdess's delicate features, and Cesare was once more seized with grief as he considered what fate might befall his beloved sister.  Don't ever let anyone bully you out of something you value so highly, he had told her, an eternity ago, when the greatest tyranny they knew lurked within the confines of their own home.  Giulia understood him better than anyone had, knew that Cesare would prefer a swift death to having his freedom torn from his grasp once more.  Without hesitation, he tugged out the stopper of the perfume bottle and downed its contents, the porcelain cool and unyielding on his lips, a sharp contrast to the warm pliancy of the fleeting kiss he had shared with Mario.  The little figurine fell from his hand to shatter against the water far below.

Cesare's limbs had ceased to respond to his will by the time they hauled him from the depths of the well, but his mind still dimly perceived the glittering stars above, the warm fragrance of the honeysuckle clinging to the walls of Mario's villa, the roughness of the gravel walk beneath his back, the labored sound of his own wheezing breaths.

"Poisoned himself," muttered Spoletta with an impatient sigh.  "Damn it.  He won't be pleased, and no doubt he'll have heard the news about Marengo by the time we get back, which will have put him in a foul mood to begin with..."

All was fading around the fallen Consul, but if he had still been able to smile, he would have.  Perhaps Mario was lost; perhaps Giulia was lost; perhaps they would all see each other once more in Heaven, or perhaps not.  But the world continued to turn, regardless.  Bonaparte had been victorious at Marengo.  The promise of the Republic would live on, somehow, through the will and effort of others.  Comforted, Cesare Angelotti exhaled softly and slipped into oblivion.

Spoletta spat onto the gravel, his insides churning.  If Scarpia had been so quick to violence earlier in the evening, then returning to the Palazzo Farnese with a corpse rather than a prisoner was a risky endeavor.  But at least he could argue that the last of the Consuls had been accounted for.  He peered down at Angelotti's vacant gaze, eyes grotesquely half-open, then gave the body a contemptuous kick.  Dead as a doornail.

"Take up the body," he said to his men at last.  "At the very least, he'll want us to hang it on the gallows for the crows to pick clean."

The men obeyed, tying the body to the back of the carriage.  With a flick of a riding crop, the horses began to trot, and the carriage disappeared into the darkness, back towards the center of Roma, the body trailing behind it through the dust with no witnesses but the stars overhead.