But Valdarno had never manifested enough wisdom, nor enough folly, to make him a cause of anxiety to the Prime Minister.

Nevertheless he actually left Rome and spent a long time in Paris before he was induced to believe that he might safely return to his home.
Roman society was shaken to its foundations by the news of the attempted arrest, and Donna Tullia found some slight compensation in becoming for a time the centre of interest.

She felt, indeed, great anxiety for the man she was engaged to marry; but for the first time in her life she felt also that she was living in an element of real romance, of which she had long dreamed, but of which she had never found the smallest realisation.
Society saw, and speculated, and gossiped, after its fashion; but its gossip was more subdued than of yore, for men began to ask who was safe, since the harmless Del Ferice had been proscribed.

Old Saracinesca said little.

He would have gone to see the Cardinal and to offer him his congratulations, since it would not be decent to offer his thanks; but the Cardinal was not in a position to be congratulated.