“It is better as it is,” said the corporal. “It is better to pay the money to soldiers, who are earning an honest living, than to pay it to poor people and encourage them in their idleness.”
“But soldiers are receiving money for making war possible and that is not earning an honest living. There must be no more war. Soldiers must be abolished—obliterated.”
“Obliterated” woke the corporal up thoroughly. It was all very well to talk about annihilating the House of Lords, which he had understood to mean demolishing some palace, but the army was a body of men, and if we were to begin obliterating them—why, he had friends in the army and it would never do, because—and so on, with interruptions by Ivanhoe, until Filomena began to grow restless about washing up and I began to take my leave. I thanked her for her charming hospitality and the corporal and Ivanhoe accompanied me back to the Albergo della Madonna. On the way I said:
“Please tell me, Corporal, you say that Filomena is your fidanzata, but it seems to me you are as good as—”
“We are not married,” he interrupted, “but she has consented to become the mother of my children.”
“Do I understand that you have already taken steps to ensure the attainment of that happy result?”
He said he had, and that she was coming home with him in order that the baby might be born there. His people, who understood the sincerity of his nature and the purity of his motives—
“Ah yes, indeed,” interrupted Ivanhoe, “my brother has a heart of gold and we are all satisfied with his conduct.”
“But Filomena’s family,” continued the corporal, “are suspicious and unfriendly and dissatisfied. Her adorata mamma and all her aunts and female cousins wept when she left home, and they are still weeping. But what else could we do? She was getting ill after waiting so long and could not—”
“Yes,” interrupted Ivanhoe, “she was becoming like Ettorina, and my poor brother also was unhappy.”