He looked with impatience at the priest, who remained silent, and burst out in a subdued voice:
"I believe you people are hoping now to bring him back into the world again, that old friend of yours." He waited for a moment. "Sit down, Abbé."
Father Carpi sank into the armchair with some dignity while Count Helion snatched a three-legged stool and planted himself on it on the other side of the table. "Now, wouldn't you?"
Something not bitter, not mocking, but as if disillusioned seemed to touch the lips of Father Carpi at the very moment he opened them to say quietly:
"Only as a witness to the reign of God."
"Which of course would be your reign. Never mind, a man like me can be master under any reign." He jerked his head slightly towards the bed. "Now what sort of devil would it be in that child?"
The deprecatory gesture of Father Carpi did not detract from his dignity. "I should call it dumb myself," continued Count Helion. "We will leave it alone for a time. What hurts me often is the difficulty of getting at your thoughts, Abbé. Haven't I been a good enough friend to you?" To this, too, Father Carpi answered by a deferential gesture and deprecatory murmur. Count Helion had restored the church, rebuilt the presbytery, and had behaved generally with great munificence. Father Carpi, sprung from shopkeeping stock in the town of Novi, had lived through times difficult for the clergy. He had been contented to exist. Now, at the age of forty or more, the downfall of the Empire, which seemed to carry with it the ruin of the impious forces of the Revolution, had awakened in him the first stirrings of ambition. Its immediate object was the chaplaincy to the Count of Montevesso's various charitable foundations.
There was a man, one of the great of this world, whom, without understanding him in any deeper sense or ever trying to judge his nature, he could see plainly enough to be unhappy. And that was a great point.
For the unhappy are more amenable to obscure influences, religious and others. But Father Carpi was too intelligent to intrude upon the griefs of that man with the mysterious past either religious consolation or secular advice. For a long time now he had watched and waited, keeping his thoughts so secret that they seemed even hidden from himself. To the outbreaks of that rough, arrogant, contemptuous, and oppressive temper he could oppose only the gravity of his sacerdotal character as Adèle did her lofty serenity, that detachment, both scornful and inaccessible, which seemed to place her on another plane.
Father Carpi had never been before confronted so directly by the difficulties of his position as at that very moment and on the occasion of that intolerable and hopeless girl. To gain time he smiled, a slight, non-committal smile.