Answered so promptly young Barucabà!
Who may this Barucabà have been, and what had they been asking him? "Toa Bà! Toa Bà! Barucabà again! Barucabà again!" and once more the uncle would recite the poetic tale to the child, but there is no one now to repeat it to me.
This is what Professor Gilardoni was discussing in his timid, gentle voice with Luisa; the Professor, grown just a little older, just a little more bald, just a little more sallow. "Who knows," Luisa had said, "if Maria will resemble her grandmother in soul as she does in face." The Professor replied that it would indeed be a miracle to find two such souls in the same family, and separated by so short an interval of time. Then wishing to explain to how rare a species he conceived the grandmother's soul to have belonged, he gave voice to the following tangle: "There are souls," said he, "that openly deny a future life, and live according to their opinions, solely for the present life. Such are few in number. Then there are souls that pretend to believe in a future life, and live entirely for the present. These are far more numerous. There are souls that do not think about the future life, but live so that they may not run too great a risk of losing it if, after all, it should be found to exist. These are more numerous still. Then there are souls that really do believe in the future life, and divide their thoughts and actions into two categories, which are generally at war with each other; one is for heaven, the other for earth. There are very many such. And then there are souls that live entirely for the future life, in which they believe. These are very few, and Signora Teresa was one of them."
Franco, who hated psychological disquisitions, passed frowning, with his empty watering-pot, on his way to the little garden, and thought: "Then there are those souls that are bores!" Uncle Piero who, by the way, was slightly deaf, was laughing with Maria. When her husband had passed, Luisa said softly: "Then there are souls that live as if there were only the future life, in which they do not believe. And of such there is one." The Professor started, and looked at her in silence. She was hunting in the tangle of the line for a double thread with a ring that must be drawn through, and though she did not see his glance, still she felt it, and quickly nodded towards her uncle. Had she really been thinking of him when speaking those words? Or had there been in her some occult complication? Had she alluded to her uncle without conviction, simply because she dare not name, even in thought, another person to whom her words might more justly apply? The Professor's silence, his searching glance which she had felt without meeting, revealed to her that he suspected her. It was for that reason she had hastily nodded towards Uncle Piero.
"Does he not believe in a future life?" the Professor asked.
"I should say not," Luisa answered, and then at once her heart was filled with remorse, for she felt that her reasons for affirming this were not sufficient, that she had no right to answer thus. In fact her uncle had never taken the trouble to meditate on religion. In his conception of honesty were included the continuation of the ancient, family practices and the profession of the inherited faith, accepted carelessly, as it stood. His was a good-natured God like himself, who, again like himself, cared little for genuflections and rosaries; a God well pleased to have honest, hearty men for His ministers, as Uncle Piero was well pleased to have such for his friends, even though they might be merry eaters and drinkers, life-long devotees of tarocchi, open tellers of spicy but not filthy stories, as a lawful outlet for that prurient hilarity which is in all of us. Certain joking remarks of his, certain aphorisms uttered thoughtlessly upon the relative importance of religious practices and the absolute importance of honest living, had struck her, even as a child, especially as they greatly vexed Signora Teresa, who would entreat her brother not to "talk nonsense." She suspected that he went to church simply because it was fitting to do so. Perhaps this was not true; one must overlook the aphorisms of a man who had grown old in self-sacrifice and self-abnegation, and who was wont to say: Charitas incipit a me. Besides, even if her uncle did hold religious practices in slight esteem, there was a vast difference between that and denying a future life. Indeed, as soon as Luisa had uttered her opinion and had heard how it sounded, she felt it was false, saw more clearly within herself and realised that she had been seeking in her uncle's example, a prop and a comfort for herself.
The Professor was greatly moved by this unexpected revelation.
"This one soul," said he, "that lives as if thinking only of a future life in which it does not believe, is indeed in error, but nevertheless, we are bound to admire it as the most noble, the greatest of all. It is something sublime!"
"But are you then sure that this soul is in error?"
"Oh, yes, yes!"