“They are not overworked,” he explained. “They have only themselves and their families to provide for.”
“I see nothing unusual in that,” observed Donna Beatrice.
“I mean,” Mario went on, “that there are no ladies and gentlemen to be fed and clothed out of the profits of their work. That makes it possible for them to earn in seven hours a day enough for their needs and a little to spare for the bank—the bank that gives them an interest in the earnings of their deposits.”
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Don Riccardo. “I don’t profess to understand it at all. But tell me, Honourable, how it is possible that you, the busiest man in Rome, can find time from your Parliamentary work for—this sort of thing?”
“I like the country,” Mario answered, “and this is the part of my work that is recreation.”
Going back to Viadetta they rode beside the pasture lands, where herds of cattle browsed. In one field Mario pointed out a black heifer that was frisking alone.
“That is the wayward youngster I started after with my lariat the other day,” he said. “She came back this morning. I am grateful to her, Donna Hera. But for that dash for liberty I should not be with you to-day.”
She could have told him that her gratitude ought to be more than his, and yet was not so, for the fate the river had offered now seemed kinder than the one in store for her.
“I perceive that the heifer soon tired of her liberty,” Donna Beatrice remarked, complacently. “Do you not think, Signor Forza, it would be the same with your common people? Give them what they think they want, and quickly they will be whining for what they had before and which was better for them.”
“I suppose they would,” Mario assented, smiling, “if the new condition left them hungry and shelterless, as it did our heifer. She dreamed of freedom, but woke to find that her two stomachs were exceedingly real affairs. So she came home and sold her freedom for a mess of pottage.”