The rigid adherent of the old order met his own son in the
street, arrayed in the garb of an Italian officer. The two friends who
had stood side by side in good and evil case for a score of years saw
themselves suddenly divided by the gulf which lies between a Roman
cardinal and a Senator of the Italian Kingdom. The breach was sudden and
great, but it was bridged for many by the invention of a fourth,
proportional. The points of contact between White and Black became Grey,
and a social power, politically neutral and constitutionally
indifferent, arose as a mediator between the Contents and the
Malcontents. There were families that had never loved the old order but
which distinctly disliked the new, and who opened their doors to the
adherents of both. There is a house which has become Grey out of a sort
of superstition inspired by the unfortunate circumstances which oddly
coincided with each movement of its members to join the new order. There
is another, and one of the greatest, in which a very high hereditary
dignity in the one party, still exercised by force of circumstances,
effectually forbids the expression of a sincere sympathy with the
opposed power.
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