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I pray hat you may not be forced to believe; but I know that I pray in vain. Tell me, you are certain that Adone will not answer that summons?" "I am certain." "He is mad." "No, sir he is not mad. No more than I, his mother. We have faith in Heaven." Don Silverio was silent. It was not for him to tell them that such faith was a feeble staff. "I must not tarry," he said, and rose.
Whilst Don Silverio was still hesitating as to what seemed to him this momentous and painful journey to Rome his mind was made up by a second letter received from the Superior of the Certosa at San Beda, the friend to whom he had confided the task of inquiring as to the project for the Edera. This letter was long, and in Latin.
"Let me go to my flock," said Don Silverio; and some tone in his voice, some gesture of his hand, had an authority in them which compelled the carabineer to let him pass unopposed. He went down the stone passage to the archway of the open door. A soldier stood sentinel there. The street was crowded with armed men.
He expressed himself in courteous terms as flattered by the visit of the Vicar Ruscino, and inquired if in any way he could be of the slightest service. "Of the very greatest, your Excellency," said Don Silverio.
"I have always offered to do so," said Don Silverio. Adone was again silent, swinging his slender brown feet in the water, and looking always upward at the evening sky beyond the great round shape of the dismantled fortress.
The people were absent, but their ordure, their urine, their lice, their saliva were left there after them, and the stench of all was concentrated on this bed where the old man wrestled with death. Don Silverio stayed on in the sultry and pestilent steam which rose up from the floor. Gnats and flies of all kinds buzzed in the heavy air, or settled in black knots on the walls and the rafters.
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.
Silverio Lanza was a man of great originality, endowed with an enormous fund of thwarted ambition and pride, which was only natural, as he was a notably fine writer who had not yet met with success, nor even with the recognition which other younger writers enjoyed. The first time that I saw Lanza, I remember how his eyes sparkled when I told him that I liked his books.
"Most worshipful, what I said is matter well known to the whole countryside; all the valley can bear witness to its truth," replied Don Silverio, and he proceeded to set forth all that he knew of Adone and Clelia Alba, and of their great love for their lands; he only did not mention what he believed to be Adone's descent, because he feared that it might sound fantastical or presumptuous.
"They are bringing the lads in from the moors." And Gianna shrieked, "Adone! They have got Adone!" Don Silverio sprang to his feet. "Adone! Have you taken Adone Alba?" "The ringleader! By Bacchus! Yes," cried the brigadier, with a laugh. "He will get thirty years at the galleys. Your flock does you honour, Reverendissimo!"
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