Tasso must go away!—that was all they understood. For three long years they must go without the sight of his face, the aid of his strength, the pleasure of his smile: Tasso must go! When Lolo understood the calamity that had befallen them, he gathered Moufflou up against his breast, and sat down too on the floor beside him and cried as if he would never stop crying.
There was no help for it; it was one of those misfortunes which are, as we say in Italian, like a tile tumbled on the head. The tile drops from a height, and the poor head bows under the unseen blow. That is all.
"What is the use of that?" said the mother, passionately, when Lolo showed her his five francs. "It will not buy Tasso's discharge."
Lolo felt that his mother was cruel and unjust, and crept to bed with Moufflou. Moufflou always slept on Lolo's feet.
The next morning Lolo got up before sunrise, and he and Moufflou accompanied Tasso to his work in the Cascine.
Lolo loved his brother, and clung to every moment whilst they could still be together.
"Can nothing keep you, Tasso?" he said, despairingly, as they went down the leafy aisles, whilst the Arno water was growing golden as the sun rose.
Tasso sighed.
"Nothing, dear. Unless Gesu would send me a thousand francs to buy a substitute."
And he knew he might as well have said, "If one could coin gold ducats out of the sunbeams on Arno water."