'Don't talk nonsense! I want my money—for to-morrow at latest, mind.'
'Crescenzio, you are putting a man already on the rack to torture.'
'That is fine chatter. I can't go to San Francesco on your account. You are so many murderers. I go to Costa for money, and find that he has failed—that he is going off to Rome, to do he knows not what. If it is true, he is going to Rome ... and I get no money. I go to Marzano, and find him half dead. Here you tell me you are on the pavement and have no money.'
'We are all ruined—all of us,' muttered the ex-priest.
'Well, you all want to kill me, do you? But when you needed credit I gave it to you ... and now you want to kill me and my family! But you have got sons also; you must think about feeding them—to-morrow and every other day; you ought to do something. You will think of me—think of my babies—think that we are Christians, too!'
'Do you know what I must do to-morrow to give my little ones bread?'
'What do I care? I know you will give it to them. I know that my children are not to go fasting while yours get their food.'
'Well, listen: I am not a priest now; I have been excommunicated, I am outside the pale of the Church; therefore I will get no help there. I had a professor's post, a good safe thing, but I have lost it; I needed money too much. Don't ask me for sad confessions. I will not get my post again, nor any other; I am a marked man.'
'But what is the use of telling me about these sorrows? I know about them. I know they will do my affairs no good.'
'Look here, then: I have no outlook; now, as I have put unlucky beings into the world, I feel that it is my duty to give them bread—at least that. I have gambled away on the lottery what they had as a certainty, an unfailing resource; but it is folly to think of that. Therefore I have taken the great decision, once for all.'