"It is a different thing!" Franco repeated, but he was unable to demonstrate this. He felt he was wrong according to superficial ratiocination, and right according to a profound truth which he was unable to grasp. He said no more but was thoughtful all day, and was evidently seeking for an answer. He thought about it in the night also, and finally, believing he had found an answer, called to his wife, who was asleep.
"Luisa!" said he. "Luisa, that is a different thing."
"What is the matter?" Luisa exclaimed, waking with a start.
He had reflected that the offence of a foreign dominion was not personal like a private offence, and was always the result of a violation of a principle of universal justice. But while he was explaining this to his wife it struck him that in private offences also there was always the violation of a principle of universal justice, and he fancied he must have blundered.
"Nothing," said he.
His wife thought he was dreaming, and placing her head upon his shoulder, she went to sleep again. If any argument could convert Franco to his wife's ideas it was this sweet contact, this gentle breathing upon his breast, in which he had so often and so deliciously felt the blending of their two souls. But now it was not so. Through his brain the thought flashed suddenly like a quick and cold blade, that this latent antagonism between his wife's views and his own might one day burst forth in some painful form, and, terrified, he pressed her in his arms, as if to defend both himself and her against the phantoms of his own brain.
After breakfast, on the sixth of November Franco took his great gardening-shears and proceeded as usual, to the extermination of all dry leaves and branches on the terrace and in the little garden. The great beauty and deep peace of the hour went to the heart. Not a leaf stirred; the air from the west was most pure and crystalline; on the east the hills between Osteno and Porlezza were fading against a background of light mist; the house was glorious with the sun and the tremulous reflections from the lake; but though the sun was still very hot, the chrysanthemums in the little garden, the olives and laurels along the coast—more plainly visible now among the reddening, falling leaves—a certain secret freshness in the air, scented with olea fragrans, the absence of all wind, the vaporous mountains of the Lake of Como, white with snow, all said, with one melancholy accord, that the sweet season was dying. When he had exterminated the withered brushwood Franco proposed to his wife that they should go to Casarico in their boat, and return the two first volumes of the Mystères du Peuple which they had eagerly devoured in a few days, to their friend Gilardoni, and borrow the next volume from him. They decided to start after lunch, when Maria should have gone to bed. But before Maria had been put to bed Barborin Pasotti appeared, all out of breath, her bonnet and mantle askew. She had come up from the garden-gate, and now stopped on the threshold of the hall. It was the first time she had been to see them since the search. Upon catching sight of her friends she clasped her hands, and kept repeating in a low tone: "Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" Then she flung herself upon Luisa and covered her with kisses.
"My dear girl! My dear girl!" she exclaimed. She would have liked to treat Franco in the same way, but Franco was not favourable to this sort of emotion, and his expression was not encouraging, so the poor woman had to be satisfied with taking both his hands and shaking them heartily. "My dear Don Franco! My dear Don Franco!" Finally she gathered Maria into her arms, but the child planted her two little hands upon Barborin's chest, her face wearing an expression similar to her father's. "I am old, am I not? And ugly? You don't like me? Well, never mind, never mind!" And she fell to kissing the child's arms and shoulders humbly, not daring to brave the sour little face. Then she told her friends she had brought them a piece of good news, and her eyes sparkled at the pleasant mystery. The Marchesa had written to Pasotti, and one passage in the letter Barborin had committed to memory. "It was with the deepest regret (deepest regret, those were the very words) that I learned of the sad affair at Oria ... at Oria ... (wait a moment) the sad affair at Oria ... (ah!) and although my grandson is most undeserving (wait! ... have patience!) I trust that it may have no unpleasant consequences." The passage did not produce any great effect. Luisa frowned and said nothing. Franco glanced at his wife, and did not dare to utter the favourable comment he had on his lips, but not in his heart. Poor Barborin, who had taken advantage of her husband's absence at Lugano to run to her friends with this sugar-plum, was deeply mortified, and after gazing ruefully from Luisa to Franco, ended by pulling a real sugar-plum from her pocket, and offering it to Maria. Then, having made out that the Maironis wanted to go away in the boat, and longing to be allowed to stay with Maria a little while, she begged and entreated so hard that they finally started, leaving orders with Veronica to put the child to bed a little later.
Maria did not seem any too well pleased with the company of her elderly friend. She remained silent, obstinately silent, and before long she opened her mouth and burst into tears. Poor Barborin did not know which Saint to appeal to, so she appealed to Veronica, but Veronica was discoursing with a customs-guard, and either did not or would not hear. Barborin showed her rings, her watch, even the big bonnet, â la vice-reine Beauharnais, but nothing would do, and Maria continued to weep. Then she bethought her of going to the piano, where she strummed eight or ten bars of an antediluvian jig over and over again. Then little Princess Maria became more amiable, and allowed her old court-pianist to lift her as carefully as if her little arms had been a butterfly's wings, and place her on her lap as softly as if there had been danger of the old legs crumbling to dust.