It was now the season to plough the reapen fields, and he had always
taken pleasure in his straight furrows; as straight as though
measured by a rule on the level lands; and of the skill with which on
the hilly ground Orlando and Rinaldo moved so skillfully, turning in
so small a space, answering to every inflection of his voice, taking
such care not to break a twig of the fruit trees, or bend a shoot of
the vines, or graze a stem of the olives.
"Good hearts, dear hearts, faithful friends and trusty servants!" he
murmured to the oxen. He leaned his bare arms on the great
fawn-coloured flanks of Orlando, and his forehead on his arms, which
grew wet with hidden tears.
The cattle stood motionless, breathing loudly through their distended
nostrils, the yokes on their shoulders crinking, their hides
twitching under the torment of the flies. Nerina, who had been
washing linen in the Edera, approached through the olives; she
hesitated a few minutes, then put the linen down off her head on to
the grass, gathered some plumes of featherfew and ferns, and brushed
the flies off the necks of the oxen. Adone started, looked up in
displeasure at being thus surprised, then, seeing the intruder was
only the little girl, he sat down on the side of the plough, and made
believe to break his noon-day bread.
"You have no wine," said the child. "Shall I run to the house for a
flask?"
"No, my dear, no. If I am athirst there is water -- as yet there is
water!" he murmured bitterly, for the menace of this impending horror
began to grow on him with the fixity and obsession of a mania.
Nerina continued to fan the cattle and drive off the flies from their
necks. She looked at him wistfully from behind the figures of the
stately animals. She was afraid of the sorrow which was in the air.
No one had told her what the evil was which hung over the Terra
Vergine; and she never asked questions. The two elder women never
took her into their confidence on any subject, and she had no
communication with the few people in Ruscino. She had seen that
something was wrong, but she could not guess what: something which
made Madonna Clelia's brows dark, and Gianna's temper bad, and Adone
himself weary and ill at ease.
Seeing him sitting there, not eating, throwing his bread to some wild
pigeons which followed the plough, she plucked up courage to speak;
he was always kind to her, though he noticed her little.
"What is it that ails you all?" she asked. "Tell me, Adone, I am not
a foolish thing to babble."
He did not answer. What use were words? Deeds were wanted.
"Adone, tell me," she said in a whisper; "what is this that seems to
lie like a stone on you all? Tell me why Don Silverio has gone away.
I will never tell again."
There was a pathetic entreaty in the words which touched and roused
him; there was in it the sympathy which would not criticise or doubt,
and which is to the sore heart as balm and soothes it by its very
lack of reason.
He told her; told her the little that he knew, the much that he
feared; he spent all the force of his emotion in the narrative.
The child leaned against the great form of the ox and listened, not
interrupting by a word or cry.
She did not rebuke him as Don Silverio had done, or reproach him as
did his mother; she only listened with a world of comprehension in
her eyes more eloquent than speech, not attempting to arrest the fury
of imprecation or the prophecies of vengeance which poured from his
lips. Hers was that undoubting, undivided, implicit faith which is so
dear to the wounded pride and impotent strength of a man in trouble
who is conscious that what he longs to do would not be approved by
law or sanctioned by religion. That faith spoke in her eyes, in her
absorbed attention, in the few breathless sentences which escaped
her; there was also on her youthful face a set, stern anger akin to
his own.
"Could we not slay these men?" she said in a low, firm voice; she
came of a mountain race by whom life was esteemed little and revenge
honour.
"We must not even say such a thing," said Adone bitterly, in whose
ears the rebuke of Don Silverio still rang. "In these days everything
is denied us, even speech. If we take our rights we are caged in
their prisons."
"But what will you do, then?"
"For the moment I wait to learn more. These things are done in the
dark, or at least in no light that we can see. To kill these men as
you wish, little one, would do nothing. Others of their kind would
fill their places. The seekers of gold are like ants. Slay thousands,
tens of thousands come on; if once the scent of gain be on the wind
it brings men in crowds from all parts, as the smell of carrion
brings meat-flies. If they think of seizing the Edera it is because
men of business will turn it into gold. The Edera gives us our grain,
our fruits, our health, our life; but if it will give money to the
foreigner, the foreigner will take it as he would take the stars and
coin them if he could. The brigand of the hills is caged or shot; the
brigand of the banks is allowed to fatten and die in the odour of
success. There are two measures."
Nerina failed to understand, but her own mind was busy with what
seemed to her this monstrous injustice.
"But why do they let them do it? They take and chain the men who rob
a traveller or a house."
Adone cast his last atom of bread to the birds.
"There are two measures," he answered. "Kill one, you go to the
galleys for life. Kill half a million, you are a hero in history, and
get in your own generation titles, and money, and applause."
"Baruffo was a good man and my father's friend," Nerina said,
following her own thoughts. "Baruffo was in the oak woods always, far
below us, but he often brought us wine and game at night, and
sometimes money too. Baruffo was a good man. He was so kind. Twice my
father aided him to escape. But one night they seized him; there was
a whole troop of carabineers against him, they took him in a trap,
they could never have got him else, and I saw him brought down the
mountain road and I ran and kissed him before they could stop me; and
he never came back -- they kept him."
"No doubt they kept him," said Adone bitterly. "Baruffo was a peasant
outlawed; if he had been a banker, or a minister, or a railway
contractor, he might have gone on thieving all his life, and met only
praise. They keep poor Baruffo safe in their accursed prisons, but
they will take care never to keep, or take even for a day,
law-breakers whose sins are far blacker than his, and whose victims
are multitudes."
"If Baruffo were here he would help you," said Nerina. "He was such a
fine strong man and had no fear."
Adone rose and put his hands on the handles of the plough.
"Take up your linen, little one," he said to the girl, "and go home,
or my mother will be angry with you for wasting time."
Nerina came close to him and her brown dog-like eyes looked up like a
dog's into his face.
"Tell me what you do, Adone," she said beseechingly, "I will tell no
one. I was very little when Baruffo came and went to and fro in our
hut; but I had sense; I never spoke. Only when the guards had him I
kissed him, because then it did not matter what they knew; there was
no hope."
"Yes, I will tell you," said Adone. "Maybe I shall end like Baruffo."
Then he called on Orlando and Rinaldo by their names, and they
lowered their heads and strained at their collars, and with a mighty
wrench of their loins and shoulders they forced the share through the
heavy earth.
Nerina stood still and looked after him as he passed along under the
vine-hung trees.
"Baruffo may have done some wrong," she thought, "but Adone, he has
done none, he is as good as if he were a saint of God, and if he
should be obliged to do evil it will be no fault of his, but because
other men are wicked."
Then she put the load of linen on her head, and went along the grassy
path homeward, and she saw the rosy gladioli, and the golden tansy,
by which she passed through tears. Yet she was glad because Adone had
trusted her; and because she now knew as much as the elder women in
his house, who had put no confidence in her.
X
"I SHALL not write," Don Silverio had said to Adone. "As soon as I
know anything for certain I shall return. Of that you may be sure."
For he knew that letters took a week or more to find their slow way
to Ruscino, and he hoped to return in less than that time; having no
experience of "what hell it is in waiting to abide," and of the
endless doublings and goings to earth of that fox-like thing, a
modern speculation; he innocently believed that he would only have to
ask a question to have it answered.
Day after day Adone mounted to the bell-tower roof, and gazed over
the country in vain. Day after day the little dog escaped from the
custody of Nerina, trotted over the bridge, pattered up the street,
and ran whining into his master's study. Every night the people of
Ruscino hung up a lantern on a loophole of the belfry, and another on
the parapet of the bridge, that their pastor might not miss his way
if he were coming on foot beside the river; and every night Adone
himself watched on the river bank or by the town wall, sleepless,
longing for, yet dreading that which he should hear. But more than a
week passed, and the priest did not return. The anxiety of Adone
consumed him like fire. He strove to dull his anxiety by incessant
work, but it was too acute to be soothed by physical fatigue. He
counted the days and the hours, and he could not sleep. The women
watched him in fear and silence; they dared ask nothing, lest they
should wound him. Only Nerina whispered to him once or twice in the
fields, "Where is he gone? When will he come back?"
"God knows!" he answered. Every evening that he saw the sun set
beyond the purple line of the mountains which were heaped in their
masses of marble and snow between him and the Patrimonium Petrus, he
felt as if he could never bear another night. He could hear the
clear, fresh sound of the running river, and it seemed to him like
the voice of some friend crying aloud to him in peril. Whilst these
summer days and nights sped away what was being done to save it? He
felt like a coward; like one who stands by and sees a comrade
murdered. In his solitude and apprehension he began to lose all
self-control; he imagined impossible things; he began to see in his
waking dreams, as in a nightmare, the dead body of Don Silverio lying
with a knife in its breast in some cut-throat alley of Rome. For two
weeks passed, and there was no sign of his return, and no message
from him.
The poor people of Ruscino also were troubled. Their vicar had never
left them before. They did not love him; he was too unlike them; but
they honoured him, they believed in him; he was always there in their
sickness and sorrow; they leaned on his greater strength in all their
penury and need; and he was poor like them, and stripped himself
still barer for their sakes.
Through the young friar who had replaced him they had heard something
of the calamity which threatened to befall them through the Edera. It
was all dark to them; they could understand nothing. Why others
should want their river and why they should lose it, or in what
manner a stream could be turned from its natural course -- all these
things were to them incomprehensible. In the beginning of the world
it had been set running there. Who would be impious enough to meddle
with it?
Whoever tried to do so would be smitten with the vengeance of Heaven.
Of that they were sure. Nevertheless, to hear the mention of such a
thing tormented them; and when they opened their doors at dawn they
looked out in terror lest the water should have been taken away in
the night.
Their stupidity irritated Adone so greatly that he ceased altogether
to speak to them of the impending calamity. "They are stocks and
stones. They have not the sense of sheep nor the courage of goats,"
he said, with the old scorn which his forefathers had felt for their
rustic vassals stirring in him.
"I believe that they would dig sand and carry wood for the engineers
and the craftsmen who would build the dykes!" he said to his mother.
Clelia Alba sighed. "My son, hunger is a hard master; it makes the
soul faint, the heart hard, the belly ravenous. We have never known
it. We cannot judge those who know nothing else."
"Even hunger need not make one vile," he answered.
But he did not disclose all his thoughts to his mother.
He was so intolerant of these poor people of Ruscino because he
foresaw the hopelessness of forging their weak tempers into the metal
necessary for resistance. As well might he hope to change a
sword-rush of the river into a steel sabre for combat. Masaniello,
Rienzi, Garibaldi, had roused the peasantry and led them against
their foes; but the people they dealt with must, he thought, have
been made of different stuff than these timorous villagers, who could
not even be make to comprehend the magnitude of the wrong which was
plotted against them.
"Tell them," he said to old Trizio: "tell them their wells will run
dry; their fish will rot on the dry bed of what was once the river;
their canes, their reeds and rushes, their osiers, will all fail
them; when they shall go out into their fields nothing which they sow
or plant will grow, because the land will be cracked and parched;
there will be no longer the runlets and rivulets to water the soil;
birds will die of thirst, and thousands of little river creatures
will be putrid carcasses in the sun; for the Edera, which is life and
joy and health to this part of the country, will be carried far away,
imprisoned in brick walls, drawn under ground, forced to labour like
a slave, put to vile uses, soiled and degraded. Cannot you tell them
this, and make them see?"
The old man shook his white head. "They would never believe. It is
too hard for them. Where the river runs, there it will always be. So
they think."
"They are dolts, they are mules, they are swine!" said Adone. "Nay,
may the poor beasts forgive me! The beasts cannot help themselves,
but men can if they choose."
"Humph!" said Trizio doubtfully. "My lad, you have not seen men shot
down by the hundred. I have -- long ago, long ago."
"There is no chance of their being shot," he said with contempt,
almost with regret. "All that is wanted of them are common sense,
union, protestation, comprehension of their rights."
"Aye, you all begin with that," said the old Garabaldino. "But, my
lad, you do not end there, for it is just those things which are your
right which those above you will never hear of; and then up come the
cannon thundering, and when the smoke clears away there are your dead
-- and that is all you get."
The voice of the old soldier was thin and cracked and feeble, but it
had a sound in it which chilled the hot blood of his hearer.
Yet surely this was no revolutionary question, no socialistic theory,
no new alarming demand; it was only a claim old as the hills, only a
resolve to keep what the formation of the earth had given to this
province.
As well blame a father for claiming his own child as blame him and
his neighbours for claiming their own river!
They were tranquil and docile people, poor and patient, paying what
they were told to pay, letting the fiscal wolf gnaw and glut as it
chose unopposed, not loving their rulers indeed, but never moving or
speaking against them, accepting the snarl, the worry, the theft, the
greed, the malice of the State without questioning.
Were they to stand by and see their river ruined, and do nothing, as
the helpless fishermen of Fuscino have accepted the ruin of their
lake?
To all young men of courage and sensibility and enthusiasm the
vindication of a clear right seems an act so simple that it is only
through long and painful experience that they realize that there is
nothing under the sun which is so hard to compass, or which is met by
such strong antagonism. To Adone, whose nature was unspoilt by modern
influences, and whose world was comprised in the fields and moors
around Ruscino, it seemed incredible that such a title as that of his
native soil to the water of Edera could be made clear to those in
power without instant ratification of it.
"Whether you do aught or naught it comes to the same thing," said the
old Garibaldino, who was wiser. "We did much; we spent our blood like
water, and what good has it been? For one devil we drove out before
our muskets, a thousand worse devils have entered since."
"It is different," said Adone, impatient. "All we have to do is to
keep out the stranger. You had to drive him out. No politics or
doctrines come into our cause; all we mean, all we want, is to be
left alone, to remain as we are. That is all. It is simple and just."
"Aye, it is simple; aye, it is just," said the old man; but he sucked
his pipe-stem grimly: he had never seen these arguments prosper; and
in his own youth he had cherished such mistakes himself, to his own
hindrance.
Had he not sung in those glorious days of hope and faith,
"Fratelli d'Italia!
L'Italia s'e desta!"
In the night which followed on the fourteenth day of the Vicar's
absence, Adone, unable either to rest or to labour, went into his
cattle-stalls and fed and watered all the animals, then he crossed
the river and went along its north bank by the same path which he had
followed with Don Silverio two weeks earlier. He had passed to and
fro that path often since his friend's departure, for by it the
priest must return; there was no other way to and from the west.
Rain had fallen in the night, and the river was buoyant, and the
grass sparkled, the mountains were of sapphire blue, and above the
shallows clouds of flies and gnats were fluttering, waterlilies were
blossoming where the water was still, and in the marshes buffaloes
pushed their dark forms amongst the nymphoea and the nuphar.
He had no longer any eyes to see these things; he only strained his
sight to catch the first glimpse of a tired traveler. The landscape
here was level for many miles of moor and pasture and a human form
approaching could be seen from a great distance. It was such a dawn
as he had used to love beyond all other blessings of nature; but now
the buffaloes in the pools and swamps were not more blind to its
charm than he.
The sun rose behind him out of the unseen Adrian waves, and a rosy
light spread itself over the earth; and at that moment he saw afar
off a dark form moving slowly. With a loud cry he sprang forward and
ran with the fleetness of a colt the hundred yards which were between
him and that familiar figure.
"My son! my dear son!" cried Don Silverio, as Adone reached him and
fell on his knees on the scorched turf.
"At last!" he murmured, choked with joy and fear. "Oh, where have you
been? We are half dead, your people and I. What tidings do you bring?
What comfort?"
"Rise up, and remember that you are a man," said Don Silverio; and
the youth, gazing upwards keenly into his face, suddenly lost all
hope, seeing no ray of hope on that weary countenance.
"You cannot save us?" he cried, with a scream like a wounded hare's.
"I cannot, my dear son," answered Don Silverio.
Adone dropped backward as if a bullet had struck him; his head smote
the dry ground; he had lost consciousness, his face was livid.
Don Silverio raised him and dragged him into the shade of a bay-tree
and dashed water on him from the river. In a few minutes he was
roused and again conscious, but on his features there was a dazed,
stunned look.
"You cannot save us?" he repeated.
"Neither you nor I have millions," said Don Silverio with bitterness.
"It is with no other weapon that men can fight successfully now."
Adone had risen to his feet; he was pale as a corpse, only the blood
was set in his forehead.
"Is it true, then?" he muttered. "Do they mean to come here?"
"Yes."
"Who are they? Jews?"
"Jews and Gentiles. There is no difference between those races now;
they have a common Credo -- greed; they adore one Jehovah -- gold. My
boy, I am very tired, and you are ill. Let us get home as quickly as
we can."
"I am not ill. It was nothing. It is passed. Tell me the worst."
"The worst, in a work, is that a foreign company, already established
for several years in this country, has obtained a faculty to turn
this water out if its course and use it as the motive power of an
electric railway and of an acetylene manufactory, and of other
enterprises."
"And this cannot be undone?"
"I fear not; they are rich and powerful. What are we? Let me get
home. There you shall hear all, and judge."
Adone asked and said no more. He turned and went backward. His steps
were slow and unsteady, his head was hung down. The dry, hot air was
like fire around them; the sun, though still low, darted fierce rays
upon them, like spears thrown with a sure aim. He had not known how
much and how strongly he had hoped until now that he heard that there
was no hope left.
Don Silverio, though he did not speak of himself, was faint with
fatigue; the return journey had tried him more cruelly than the
first, since on his way to Rome he had been sustained by the hope to
find the project abandoned, or at the least uncertain. He had spent
all his scanty earnings, so hardly and tediously collected through a
score of years, and he had brought back to his poor people, and to
the youth he loved, nothing except the confirmation of their worst
fears. It was with difficulty that he could drag his aching feet over
the burn grass back to his parish.
When they reached the bridge they were on the village side of the
stream. Adone, with an effort, raised himself from the trance into
which he had fallen.
"Forgive me, sir; you are overtired, you must rest. I will come to
you later."
"No, no," said Don Silverio quickly, for he thought the youth in no
state to be alone. "I will wash and take a cup of coffee, then I will
tell you all. Wait in my book-room."
They went together to his house. There was no one in the street or on
the walls except some children gathering dandelion leaves in the
ditch. They reached the priest's house unobserved; only the little
dog, who was making his diurnal search there, rushed out of the
entrance in a frenzy of rapture.
"Poor little man! Dear Signorino!" murmured Don Silverio, and he took
the little creature in his arms. Then he opened the door of his
study. "Wait there," he said to Adone. "I will soon come downstairs.
I will only wash off the dust of this journey."
Adone obeyed.
The room was dusky, cool, silent; he sat down in it and waited; he
could hear the loud, uneven beating of his own heart in the
stillness.
As he felt now, so, he thought, must feel men who have heard their
own death-sentence, and are thrust alone into a cell.
If Don Silverio could do nothing, to whom could he turn?
Could he induce the people to rise? It would be their ruin as well as
his, this rape of the river. Would they bear it as they bore
taxation, neglect, conscription, hunger?
It was not half an hour, although it seemed to him half a day, which
passed before Don Silverio came down the stone stair, his little dog
running and leaping about him. He seated himself before Adone, by the
shuttered window, through which, by chinks and holes in the wood,
there came rays of light and tendrils of vine.
Then detail by detail, with lucidity and brevity, he narrated all he
had heard and done in Rome, and which it was exceeding hard to bring
home to the comprehension of a mind wholly ignorant of such things.
"When I reached Rome," he explained, "I was for some days in despair.
The deputy of San Beda was not at the Chamber. He was in Sicily.
Another deputy, a friend of the Prior at San Beda, to whom I had a
letter, was very ill with typhoid fever. I knew not where to turn. I
could not knock at the doors of strangers without credentials. Then I
remembered that one with whom I had been friends, great friends, when
we were both seminarists, had become a great man at the Vaticano. It
was scarcely possible that he, in his great elevation, would
recollect one unseen for a quarter of a century. But I took courage
and sent in my name. Imagine my surprise and emotion when I was
admitted at once to his presence, and was received by him with the
uttermost kindness. He assisted me in every way. He could not of
course move ostensibly in a matter of the government, himself, but he
gave me letters to those who could obtain me the information and the
interviews which I desired. He was goodness itself, and through him I
was even received by his Holiness. But from all those political and
financial people whom I saw I learned but the same thing. The matter
is far advanced, is beyond any alteration. The company is formed. The
concurrence of parliament is not to be, but has long been, given. The
ministry favours the project. They all repeated to me the same
formula: public works are to the public interest. They babbled
commonplaces. They spoke of great advantages to the province. I
pleaded as forcibly as I could in the interests of this valley, and I
opposed fact to formula. But my facts were not those which they
wanted; and they told me, politely but unmistakably, that a churchman
should not seek to interfere with civil matters. The promoters are
masters of the position. They are all of accord: the foreign bankers,
the Italian bankers; the foreign engineers, the Italian engineers;
the Technical office, the President of Council, the dicastero of
Hygiene, of Agriculture, of Public Works, all of them. Our poor
little valley seems to them a desirable prey; they have seized it,
they will keep it. They were all courteous enough. They are polite,
and even unwilling to cause what they call unnecessary friction. But
they will not give an inch. Their talons are in our flesh as an
eagle's in a lamb's. One thinks fondly that what a man possesses is
his own, be it land, house, stream--what not! But we mistake. There
is a thing stronger, higher, more powerful than any poor title of
property acquired by heritage, by purchase, or by labour. It is what
they call expropriation. You think the Edera cannot be touched: it
can be expropriated. You think the Terra Vergine cannot be touched:
it can be expropriated. Against expropriation no rights can stand. It
is the concentration and crystallisation of Theft legitamised by
Government; that is by Force. A vagrant may not take a sheaf of your
wheat, a fowl from your hen-house: if he do so, the law protects you
and punishes him. A syndicate of rich men, of powerful men, may take
the whole of your land, and the State will compel you to accept any
arbitrary price which it may choose to put upon your loss. According
as you are rich or poor yourself, so great or so small will be the
amount awarded to you. All the sub-prefects, all the syndics, all the
officials in this province, will be richly rewarded; the people
defrauded of the soil and the river will get what may be given them
by an enforced valuation. I have conversed with all kinds and
conditions of men; and I have heard only one statement in the mouths
of all: the matter is beyond all alteration. There is money in it;
the men whose trade is money will not let it go. My son, my dearest
son, be calm, be prudent. Violence can only injure yourself, and it
can save nothing."
He had for the moment spoken as he had been speaking for the last two
weeks to men of education and of the world.
He was recalled to the fact that his present auditor did not reason,
did not comprehend, only felt, and was drunk with his own force of
feeling. The look on Adone's face appalled him.
The youth seemed almost to have no intelligence left, almost as if
all which had been said to him had reached neither his ear nor his
brain.
Don Silverio had been in the world of men, and unconsciously he had
adopted their phraseology and their manner. To Adone, who had
expected some miracle, some rescue almost archangelic, some promise
of immediate and divine interposition, these calm and rational
statements conveyed scarcely any sense, so terrible was the
destruction of his hopes. All the trust and candour and sweetness of
his nature turned to gall.
He listened, a sullen, savage darkness stealing over his countenance.
"And our rights? Theirs? -- mine?" he said as Don Silverio paused.
"For all rights taken away they will give legal compensation."
"You dare repeat that, sir?"
Don Silverio controlled his indignation with difficulty.
"I dare do whatever I deem right to do. You should know that by this
time."
"You think this right?"
"I think it right to repeat exactly what has been said to me. I do
not of necessity approve because I repeat."
"You know no compensation is possible!"
"Morally, none. I speak of but what the law allows."
"The law of pirates, of cut-throats!"
"The law of the State, alas!"
Adone laughed. His hearer had heard such laughter as that in
madhouses.
"The State kills a soldier, and gives his family a hundred francs!
That is the compensation of the State. If they emptied their
treasuries, could they give the soldier back his life? If they
emptied their treasuries, could they give us back what they will take
from us?"
"My dear son, do not doubt my sympathy. All my heart is with you. But
what can be done? Can a poor village, a poor commune, struggle with
any chance of success against a rich company and a government? Can a
stalk of wheat resist the sickle? Can an ear of wheat resist the
threshing-flail? I have told you the story of Don Quixote della
Mancha. Would you fight the empty air like him?"
Adone did not reply.
His beautiful face grew moody, dark, fierce; in his eyes flamed
passions which had no voice upon his lips; his white teeth ground
against one another.
"Believe me, Adone," said his friend, "we are in evil days, when men
babble of liberty, and are so intent on the mere empty sound of their
lips that they perceive not the fetters on their wrists and feet.
There was never any time when there was so little freedom and so
little justice as in ours. Two gigantic dominions now rule the human
race; they are the armies and the moneymakers. Science serves them
turn by turn, and receives from each its wage. The historian Mommsen
has written that we are probably inferior both in intelligence and in
humanity, in prosperity and in civilisation, at the close of this
century to what the human race was under Severus Antonius; and it is
true."
Adone did not seem to hear. What were these abstract reasonings to
him? All he cared for were his river and his fields.
"I sought for an old friend of mine in Rome," said Don Silverio,
endeavouring to gain his attention and divert his thought, "one
Pamfilio Scoria. He was a learned scholar; he had possessed a small
competence and a house of his own, small too, but of admirable
architecture, a Quattrocentisto house. I could not find this house in
Rome. After long search I learned that it had been pulled down to
make a new street. Pamfilio Scoria had in vain tried to preserve his
rights. The city had turned him out and taken his property, paying
what it chose. His grief was so great to see it destroyed, and to be
turned adrift with his books and manuscripts, that he fell ill and
died not long afterwards. On the site of the house there is a
drinking-place kept by Germans; a street railway runs before it. This
kind of theft, of pillage, takes place every week. It is masked as
public utility. We are not alone sufferers from such a crime."
Adone was still silent.
His thoughts were not such as he could utter aloud in the priest's
presence; and he heard nothing that was said; he heard only little
Nerina's voice saying: "Could we not kill these men?" That flutelike
whisper seemed to him to sigh with the very voice of the river
itself.
Don Silverio rose, his patience, great as it was, exhausted.
"My son, as you do not give ear to me it is useless for me to speak.
I must go to my office. The friar from San Beda desires to return
this evening. I have done all I can. I have told you the facts as
they stand. Take courage, Be peaceable for your mother's sake and
restrain yourself for your own. It is a frightful calamity which
hangs over us all. But it is our duty to meet it like men."
"Like men!" muttered Adone as he rose to his feet; had not the child
from the Abruzzo rocks a better sense of men's duty than this priest
so calm and wise?
"Men resist," he said very low.
"Men resist," repeated Don Silverio. "They resist when their
resistance serves any purpose, but when it can only serve to crush
them uselessly under a mass of iron they are not men if they resist,
but madmen."
"Farewell, sir," said Adone.
And with an obeisance he went out of the chamber.
"Poor boy! Poor, passionate, dear youth!" thought Don Silverio as the
door closed. "He thinks me cold and without emotion; how little he
knows! He cannot suffer as I suffer for him and for my poor wretched
people. What will they do when they shall know? They will mourn like
starved sheep bleating in a field of stones, and I, their shepherd,
shall not have a blade of grass wherewith to comfort them!"