Franco understood, and did not answer at once, but presently, when they were leaving the room to go to the boat, he said to his wife, forgetting one of his grandmother's threats, "It will not always be thus."
This allusion to the old Marchesa's wealth displeased Luisa. "Do not speak of it to me," she said. "I would not soil my fingers by touching that money."
"I was thinking of Maria," Franco observed.
"Maria has us. We can work."
Franco was silent. Work! That was one of the words that chilled his heart. He knew he was leading a life of indolence, for were not music, books, flowers, and a few verses now and then, merely vanities and a waste of time? And he was leading this life almost entirely at the expense of others, for how could he possibly have managed with only his one thousand Austrian lire a year? How could he have maintained his family? He had taken his collegiate degree, but without deriving the slightest profit from it. He doubted his own ability, felt himself too much of an artist, too foreign to forensic wiles, and he was well aware that the blood of earnest labourers did not flow in his veins. His only hope was in a revolution, a war, in the freedom of his country. Ah! When Italy should be free, how well he would serve her, with what great strength, what joy! This poetry he had indeed in his heart, but he lacked the energy, the constancy to prepare himself by study for such a future.
While he was rowing away from the shore in silence, Luisa was wondering how it was that her husband could pity the child because she was poor. Did not this sentiment stand in contradiction to Franco's faith, to his Christian piety? She recalled Professor Gilardoni's categories. Franco believed firmly in a future life, but in practice he clung passionately to all that is beautiful and good in this earthly life, clung to all its lawful pleasures, including cards and dainty dinners. One who obeyed the precepts of the Church so scrupulously, who was so careful to abstain from flesh on Fridays and Saturdays, to listen to a sermon every Sunday, should conform his daily life far more strictly to the evangelical ideal. He should rather fear than desire riches.
"A pleasant sail to you!" Uncle Piero called out from the terrace, catching sight of the boat and Luisa seated in the prow in the moonlight. Opposite black Bisgnago all Valsolda, from Niscioree to Caravina lay spread out in the glory of the moon; all the windows of Oria and of Albogasio, the arches of Villa Pasotti, the tiny white houses of the most distant villages, Castello, Casarico, S. Mamette, Drano, seemed to be gazing as if hypnotised, at the great, motionless eye of the dead orb in the heavens.
Franco drew the oars into the boat. "Sing," said he.
Luisa had never studied singing, but she possessed a sweet mezzo-soprano voice and a perfect ear, and had learned many operatic airs from her mother, who had heard Grisi, Pasta, and Malibran, during the golden days of Italian opera.
She began the air from Anne Boleyn: