'I see,' answered Orsino, feeling the weight, and raising the rifle to his shoulder as though to try the length of the stock.
'Most people prefer them in Sicily,' observed San Giacinto, who had signed his name and was folding his note carefully.
'What do you want them for?' asked the younger man, still incredulous.
'It is the custom of the country to carry them down there,' said the other. 'Besides, there are brigands about. I told you so just now.'
San Giacinto did not like to repeat explanations.
'I thought you were joking,' remarked Orsino.
'I never did that. I suppose we shall not have the luck to fall in with any of those fellows, but there has been a good deal of trouble lately, and we shall not be particularly popular as Romans going to take possession of Sicilian lands. We should be worth a ransom too, and by this time the whole country knows that we are coming.'
'Then we may really have some excitement,' said Orsino, more surprised than he would show at his cousin's confirmation of much that Vittoria had said. 'How about the mafia?' he asked by way of leading San Giacinto into conversation. 'How will it look at us?'
'The mafia is not a man,' answered San Giacinto, bluntly. 'The mafia is the Sicilian character—Sicilian honour, Sicilian principles. It is an idea, not an institution. It is what makes it impossible to govern Sicily.'
'Or to live there,' suggested Orsino.