"Who makes the will of God?"
"It is the great moving impulse at the heart of things," said the Marchesa.
"Nonsense," said the old man. "One makes the will of God for himself. The moving impulse is here," and he struck his chest with his clenched hand. "What we dream comes true if we make it come true. But it does not if we sit on our doorstep or shut ourselves up to await a visitation."
He made a great sweeping gesture. "How can these elements that are dead and an appearance resist the human mind that is alive and real?"
"But providence," said the Marchesa, "chance, luck, fortune, circumstance, do these words mean nothing?"
The old man laughed.
"Marchesa," he said, "if a man had a double equipment of skull space he could sweep these words out of the language."
"Then you do not believe they stand for anything?"
"They stand for ignorance."
"We are taught from the cradle," continued the Marchesa, "that there is in the universe a guiding destiny that moves the lives of each one of us to a certain fortune."