“But why, my God!” cried Lory, impatiently, “why have you done it?”
“Why?” echoed the count, in his calm and suppressed way. “Why? Because I am a Corsican, and am not to be frightened into leaving the country by a parcel of Peruccas. They are no better than the Luccans you see working in the road, and the miserable Pisans who come in the winter to build the terraces. They are no Corsicans, but come from Pisa.”
“But if they thought you were dead, what satisfaction could there be in living on here?”
But the count only looked at his son in silence. He did not seem to follow the hasty argument. He had the placid air of a child or a very old man, who will not argue.
“Besides, Mattei Perucca is dead.”
“So they say. So Jean tells me. I have not seen the abbé lately. He does not dare to come more often than once in three months—four times a year. Mattei Perucca dead!” He shook his head with the odd, upward jerk and the weary smile. “I should like to see his carcass,” he said.
Then, after a pause, he went back to his original train of thought.
“We are different,” he said. “We are Corsicans. It was only when the Bonapartes changed their name to a French one that your great-grandfather Gallicized ours. We are not to be frightened away by the Peruccas.”
“But since he is dead—” said Lory, with an effort to be patient.
He was beginning to realize now that it was all real and not a dream, that this was the Château de Vasselot, and this was his father—this little, vague, quiet man, who seemed to exist and speak as if he were only half alive.