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Updated: June 17, 2025
"Oh no; quite true. The matter is the sale of the land known under the title of the Terra Vergine." "Thank Heaven I am here, and not Adone," thought Don Silverio. Aloud he answered, "What sale? The proprietor has heard of none." "He must have heard. It can be no news to you that the works about to be made upon the river Edera will necessitate the purchase of the land known as the Terra Vergine."
Yes; undoubtedly, the lords of Ruscino were also lords of the Edera, from its mouth to its source; and their river formed at once their strongest defence and their weakest point.
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.
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.
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."
It is a great, a heinous wrong which will be done to you; that no one can feel more strongly than I. But there are wrongs to which we must submit when we are weak; and, my good Clelia, against this we poor folks in the Vale of Edera are as weak as the teal in the marshes against the swivel guns of the sportsmen's punts."
Such nets as this had been washed by the clear green waters of the pools and torrents of the Edera ever since the days of Etruscan gods and Latin augurs; religions had changed, but the river, and the ways of the men of the river, had not altered.
Out of fear of them she did not descend at once to the river, but pushed her way through the sweet-smelling, bee-haunted, cross-leaved heaths; she could hear the sound of the water on her right all the time as she went. She knew little of this country, but she had seen the Edera, and had crossed it farther up its course on one of its rough tree-bridges.
She was so lithe, so swift, so agile; so strong without effort, so buoyant and content, that she carried with her the sense of her own perfect health and happiness, as the east wind blowing up the Edera water bore with it the scent of the sea. But of any physical charm in her Adone saw nothing.
How could any thieves conspire to take it from the country in which it was born? How could any dare to catch it, and imprison it, and put it to vile uses? It was a living thing, a free thing, a precious thing, more precious than jewel or gold. Both jewels and gold the law protected. Could it not protect the Edera? "Something must be done," he said to himself. "But what?"
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