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Updated: June 17, 2025
He could not wholly cheat himself, as these unlettered men could do; he knew that if the commerce which has succeeded the Caesars as ruler of the world coveted the waters of Edera, the river was lost to the home of its birth and to him. "How shall I tell my mother?" he asked himself as he walked back through the fragrant and solitary country. He felt ashamed at his own helplessness and ignorance.
Why should the interests of the foreigners be upheld by you to the injury of those of your own people? Speaking for my own parish, I can affirm to you that, simple souls as they are, poor in the extreme, and resigned to poverty, you will have trouble with them all if you take it on you to enforce the usurpation of the Edera water."
The words were clear and indisputable in their meaning; they could not be misconstrued. There was but one river Edera in the whole province, in the whole country; there could be no doubt as to what river was meant; yet it seemed to him utterly impossible that any such project could be conceived by any creature. Divert the course of the Edera? He felt stupefied.
A great rage filled his soul, and a black cloud seemed to float between him and all else which was not the wrong done to him and his and the water of Edera. Until he should have lifted off the land and the stream this coming curse which threatened them, life held nothing for him which could tempt or touch him.
To dispute what Don Silverio said was like blasphemy to her; she honoured him with all her soul, but she loved Adone. She loved the Edera water too; that fair green rippling water, on whose bank she had sat naked under the dock leaves the day the two rams had fought. That which was threatened was an unholy, wicked, cruel robbery. Was it indeed necessary to yield to it in submission?
It said that the Most Honourable the Syndic of San Beda had enjoyed a conference with the Prefect of the province, and it had therein transpired that the project for the works upon the river Edera had been long well known to the Prefect, and that such project was approved by the existing Government, and therefore by all the Government officials, as was but natural.
"How know you that, reverend? You are a priest, not a man." A faint red colour came over Don Silverio's colourless face. "One may be both," he said simply. "You are distraught, my son, by a great calamity. Try and see yourself as other see you, and do not lead the poor and ignorant into peril. Will the Edera waters be freer because your neighbours and you are at the galleys?
But the younger men listened to him more readily, being less bent and broken by long labour, and poor food, and many years of unanswered prayers. Of these some had served their time in regiments, and aided him to give some knowledge of drill and of the use of weapons to those who agreed with him to dispute by force the claim of strangers to the Edera water.
"What sort of men were they?" he asked with more attention, for there were still those who lived by violence up in the forests which overhung the valley of the Edera. "How do I know? They were clothed in long woollen bed-gowns, and they had boots on their feet, and on their heads hats shaped like kitchen-pans." Adone smiled.
The name of the stream running underneath the walls of Ruscino caught his regard; a few lines were headed with it, and these lines said curtly: "The project to divert the course of the Edera river will be brought before the Chamber shortly; the Minister of Agriculture is considered to favour the project." He held the sheet nearer to the light and read the paragraph again, and yet again.
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