"Signor Fabio!" exclaimed Father Rocco, with a sarcastic smile, "who would ever have imagined that you were superstitious?"
"My nurse was," returned the young man, reddening, and laughing rather uneasily. "She taught me some bad habits that I have not got over yet." With those words he nodded and hastily went out.
"Superstitious," said Father Rocco softly to himself. He smiled again, reflected for a moment, and then, going to the window, looked into the street. The way to the left led to Fabio's palace, and the way to the right to the Campo Santo, in the neighborhood of which Nanina lived. The priest was just in time to see the young sculptor take the way to the right.
After another half-hour had elapsed, the two workmen quitted the studio to go to dinner, and Luca and his brother were left alone.
"We may return now," said Father Rocco, "to that conversation which was suspended between us earlier in the day."
"I have nothing more to say," rejoined Luca, sulkily.
"Then you can listen to me, brother, with the greater attention," pursued the priest. "I objected to the coarseness of your tone in talking of our young pupil and your daughter; I object still more strongly to your insinuation that my desire to see them married (provided always that they are sincerely attached to each other) springs from a mercenary motive."
"You are trying to snare me, Rocco, in a mesh of fine phrases; but I am not to be caught. I know what my own motive is for hoping that Maddalena may get an offer of marriage from this wealthy young gentleman--she will have his money, and we shall all profit by it. That is coarse and mercenary, if you please; but it is the true reason why I want to see Maddalena married to Fabio. You want to see it, too--and for what reason, I should like to know, if not for mine?"
"Of what use would wealthy relations be to me? What are people with money--what is money itself--to a man who follows my calling?"
"Money is something to everybody."
"Is it? When have you found that I have taken any account of it? Give me money enough to buy my daily bread, and to pay for my lodging and my coarse cassock, and though I may want much for the poor, for myself I want no more. Then have you found me mercenary? Do I not help you in this studio, for love of you and of the art, without exacting so much as journeyman's wages? Have I ever asked you for more than a few crowns to give away on feast-days among my parishioners? Money! money for a man who may be summoned to Rome to-morrow, who may be told to go at half an hour's notice on a foreign mission that may take him to the ends of the earth, and who would be ready to go the moment when he was called on! Money to a man who has no wife, no children, no interests outside the sacred circle of the Church! Brother, do you see the dust and dirt and shapeless marble chips lying around your statue there? Cover that floor instead with gold, and, though the litter may have changed in color and form, in my eyes it would be litter still."
"A very noble sentiment, I dare say, Rocco, but I can't echo it. Granting that you care nothing for money, will you explain to me why you are so anxious that Maddalena should marry Fabio? She has had offers from poorer men--you knew of them--but you have never taken the least interest in her accepting or rejecting a proposal before."
"I hinted the reason to you, months ago, when Fabio first entered the studio."
"It was rather a vague hint, brother; can't you be plainer to-day?"
"I think I can. In the first place, let me begin by assuring you that I have no objection to the young man himself. He may be a little capricious and undecided, but he has no incorrigible faults that I have discovered."
"That is rather a cool way of praising him, Rocco."
"I should speak of him warmly enough, if he were not the representative of an intolerable corruption, and a monstrous wrong. Whenever I think of him I think of an injury which his present existence perpetuates; and if I do speak of him coldly, it is only for that reason."
Luca looked away quickly from his brother, and began kicking absently at the marble chips which were scattered over the floor around him.
"I now remember," he said, "what that hint of yours pointed at. I know what you mean."
"Then you know," answered the priest, "that while part of the wealth which Fabio d'Ascoli possesses is honestly and incontestably his own; part, also, has been inherited by him from the spoilers and robbers of the Church--"
"Blame his ancestors for that; don't blame him."
"I blame him as long as the spoil is not restored."
"How do you know that it was spoil, after all?"
"I have examined more carefully than most men the records of the civil wars in Italy; and I know that the ancestors of Fabio d'Ascoli wrung from the Church, in her hour of weakness, property which they dared to claim as their right. I know of titles to lands signed away, in those stormy times, under the influence of fear, or through false representations of which the law takes no account. I call the money thus obtained spoil, and I say that it ought to be restored, and shall be restored, to the Church from which it was taken."
"And what does Fabio answer to that, brother?"
"I have not spoken to him on the subject."
"Why not?"
"Because I have, as yet, no influence over him. When he is married, his wife will have influence over him, and she shall speak."
"Maddalena, I suppose? How do you know that she will speak?"
"Have I not educated her? Does she not understand what her duties are toward the Church, in whose bosom she has been reared?"
Luca hesitated uneasily, and walked away a step or two before he spoke again.
"Does this spoil, as you call it, amount to a large sum of money?" he asked, in an anxious whisper.
"I may answer that question, Luca, at some future time," said the priest. "For the present, let it be enough that you are acquainted with all I undertook to inform you of when we began our conversation. You now know that if I am anxious for this marriage to take place, it is from motives entirely unconnected with self-interest. If all the property which Fabio's ancestors wrongfully obtained from the Church were restored to the Church to-morrow, not one paulo of it would go into my pocket. I am a poor priest now, and to the end of my days shall remain so. You soldiers of the world, brother, fight for your pay; I am a soldier of the Church, and I fight for my cause."
Saying these words, he returned abruptly to the statuette; and refused to speak, or leave his employment again, until he had taken the mold off, and had carefully put away the various fragments of which it consisted. This done, he drew a writing-desk from the drawer of his working-table, and taking out a slip of paper wrote these lines:
"Come down to the studio to-morrow. Fabio will be with us, but Nanina will return no more."
Without signing what he had written, he sealed it up, and directed it to "Donna Maddalena"; then took his hat, and handed the note to his brother.
"Oblige me by giving that to my niece," he said.
"Tell me, Rocco," said Luca, turning the note round and round perplexedly between his finger and thumb; "do you think Maddalena will be lucky enough to get married to Fabio?"
"Still coarse in your expressions, brother!"
"Never mind my expressions. Is it likely?"
"Yes, Luca, I think it is likely."
With those words he waved his hand pleasantly to his brother, and went out.
CHAPTER