"Believe me," said Susanna, "my painting is pale beside the reality."
"And, apparently, a hopeless state," he added.
"Some day the Kingdom of Italy must end in a tremendous smash-up. Afterwards, perhaps, there will be a readjustment. Our hope is in that," said she.
"Meanwhile, you make it clear, I am afraid," he argued, "that we should gain only our labour for our pains in plotting a restoration."
"We should have the excitement of plotting," laughingly argued she.
"A plotter's best reward, like an artist's, you suggest, is the pleasure he takes in his work. But now you are inciting me to look at it again from the selfish point of view, for which a moment ago you were upbraiding me," he reminded her.
"Do look at it from the selfish point of view," inconsistent and unashamed, she urged. "Think of your lands, your houses, your palaces and gardens, Castel San Guido, Isola Nobile, think of your pictures, your jewels, the thousand precious heirlooms that are rightly yours, think of your mere crude money. How can you bear the thought that these are in the possession of a stranger—these, your inheritance, the inheritance of nearly eight hundred years? Oh, if I were in your place, the wrong of it would fill the universe for me. I could not endure it."
"One has no choice but to endure it," said he. "One benumbs resentment with a fatalistic 'needs must.'"
"One would do better to inflame resentment with a defiant 'where there 's a will there 's a way,'" Susanna answered.
"The way is not plain to see."