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Updated: June 25, 2025
Even his people had turned against him; suspicious, thankless, hostile. The old sacristan, standing doubtful and timid at the entrance of the chamber, drew near and reverently touched his arm. "Sir here is a letter it came three days ago." Don Silverio stretched out his hand over the little dog's head, and took it. He changed colour as he saw its seal and superscription.
Knowing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing to protect the water that is as dear to me as a brother, and the land which is my own? What will the land be without the river? You forget, sir, you forget!" "No, I do not forget," said Don Silverio without offence. "But I ask you to hear reason. What can you possibly do? Think you no man has been wronged before you?
The water-birds came back from their upward flight and settled again on the swamp. Underneath it all was still, save for the loud croaking of the frogs. Don Silverio rose with the dawn of day, and entered his church at five of the clock. There were but a few women gathered in the gaunt, dark vastness of the nave.
I threatened to drive my cattle over them. Then they went. But can you guess, sir, why they come?" Don Silverio still hesitated. Adone repeated his question with more insistence; he came up to the table and leaned his hands upon it, and looked down on the face of his friend. "Why do they come?" he repeated a fourth time. "They must have some reason. Surely you know?"
It was now perishing, surely though slowly, but in peace, with the grass growing on its temple stairs and the woodbine winding round its broken columns. The trained and stored intellect of Don Silverio could set each period of its story apart, and read all the vestiges remaining of each.
Don Silverio cleansed himself from the dust of travel, entered his church for his orisons, then broke his fast with bread and a plate of lentils, and whilst the day was still young took the long familiar way to the Terra Vergine. Whatever the interview might cost in pain and estrangement he felt that he dared not lose an hour in informing Adone of what was so dangerously known at the Prefecture.
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?
As he went out of the priest's house in that dazzling light, a hand caught his sleeve and that young flutelike voice of which he had thought murmured to him "Adone! what tidings? What has he told you?" Nerina, having run across the bridge and up the street after the little dog, had seen him and Don Silverio enter, and had waited for Adone to come out of the house. Adone pushed her away.
From his study there was no view upon the street; he could hear the wailing of women and screaming of children from the now closed houses: that was all. "What is it your men do to my people?" he said sternly. The brigadier did not reply; he went on throwing papers into a trunk. "Where is your warrant for this search? We are not in a state of siege?" asked Don Silverio.
"I know, I know," said Don Silverio wearily. "The whole land is overrun by affaristi, like red ants." "Do not slander the ants!" replied his host; "I would not offend the name of any honest, hard-working little insect by giving it to the men through whom this country is eaten up by selfish avarice and unscrupulous speculation! But tell me, what do you hope for from our revered Prefect?"
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