“You call it strength to make a woman’s soul your stepping-stone to heaven?”
“Her soul is in my care, not yours, my son. She is safe with me.”
“She? But I? I go out to meet death, and leave a worse death behind me!” He leaned over and clutched my arm. “It is not for myself I plead but for her—for her, Egidio! Don’t you see to what a hell you condemn her if I don’t come back? What chance has she against that slow unsleeping hate? Their lies will fasten themselves to her and suck out her life. You and Marianna are powerless against such enemies.”
“You leave her in God’s hands, my son.”
“Easily said—but, ah, priest, if you were a man! What if their poison works in me and I go to battle thinking that every Austrian bullet may be sent by her lover’s hand? What if I die not only to free Italy but to free my wife as well?”
I laid my hand on his shoulder. “My son, I answer for her. Leave your faith in her in my hands and I will keep it whole.”
He stared at me strangely. “And what if your own fail you?”
“In her? Never. I call every saint to witness!”
“And yet—and yet—ah, this is a blind,” he shouted; “you know all and perjure yourself to spare me!”
At that, my son, I felt a knife in my breast. I looked at him in anguish and his gaze was a wall of metal. Mine seemed to slip away from it, like a clawless thing struggling up the sheer side of a precipice.