She coloured at her own quickness, but Odo took the thrust tranquilly.
"Yes," he said, "your father had the Promethean spirit: I have not. The flesh that is daily torn from me does not grow again."
"Your courage is as great as his," she exclaimed, her tenderness in arms.
"No," he answered, "for his was hopeful." There was a pause, and then he began to speak of the day's work.
All the afternoon he had been in consultation with Crescenti, whose vast historical knowledge was of service in determining many disputed points in the tenure of land. The librarian was in sympathy with any measures tending to relieve the condition of the peasantry; yet he was almost as strongly opposed as Trescorre to any reproduction of the Tuscan constitution.
"He is afraid!" broke from Fulvia. She admired and respected Crescenti, yet she had never fully trusted him. The taint of ecclesiasticism was on him.
Odo smiled. "He has never been afraid of facing the charge of Jansenism," he replied. "All his life he has stood in open opposition to the Church party."
"It is one thing to criticise their dogmas, another to attack their privileges. At such a time he is bound to remember that he is a priest—that he is one of them."
"Yet, as you have often pointed out, it is to the clergy that France in great measure owes her release from feudalism."
She smiled coldly. "France would have won her cause without the clergy!"