And it came to her mind, as she noted how Balsàbo knew all languages, and spoke of things which took place ages before as if he had lived in them, and of men long dead as if he had known them, that he who was her father aforetime was ignorant of all this as he was of gentleness or kindness or good nature, all which Balsàbo carried to a fault, not caring to take the pains to injure his worst enemy or to do a good turn to his best friend, unless it amused him, in which case he would kill the one with as little sorrow as if he were a fly, and give the other a castle or a thousand crowns, and think no more of it than if he had fed a hawk or a hound. And all such good deeds he played off in some droll fashion, like tricks, as if thinking that sport, and nothing else, was the end and aim of all benevolence. However, as regarded Bianca and her brothers and sisters, he seemed to have other ideas, and to her he appeared to be as another being, in love and awe obeying her as a child and striving to understand her lessons.
So this went on for years, till at last one day Bianca, full of strange suspicions, which had become well nigh certainties, went to Virgilio and said:
“Tell me in truth who is this being whom thou didst send us as my father, for that he is not the Di Tribaldo of earlier days, I am sure. Good and kind he hath been, but too strange to be human; wild hart is he, not to be measured as a man.”
Virgil replied:
“Thou hast guessed the riddle, and yet not all; for he is a spirit of the elements, and his appointed time is drawing near to an end, and, being neither good nor evil, he would have passed away in peace into the nothing which is the end of all his kind. But thou hast awakened in him a knowledge of love and duty, so that he will die in sorrow, for he has learned from thee what he has lost.”
Then Bianca asked:
“Can he not be saved?”
And Virgil replied:
“If anyone would give his or her life, then by virtue of that sacrifice, when the thousand years of his existence shall be at an end, the two lives shall be as one in the world where all are one in love for ever.”
Bianca replied: