"It is difficult to be left alone in a world full of other people! If your hero wants a Thebaid, he can go and buy one in La Plata, or the Argentine, with the price we shall give for his land."
"We?" repeated Don Silverio with significant emphasis.
Corradini reddened a little. "I only use the word because I am greatly interested in the success of this enterprise, being convinced of its general utility to the province. Being cognisant as I am of the neighbourhood, I hoped I could prevent some friction."
"The shares are, I believe, already on the market?"
It was a harmless remark, yet it was a disagreeable one to the Syndic of San Beda.
"What would be the selling price of the Terra Vergine?" he said abruptly. "It is valued at twelve thousand francs."
"It is useless to discuss its price," replied Don Silverio, "and the question is much wider than the limits of the Terra Vergine. In one word, is the whole of the Valdedera to be ruined because a Minister has a relation who desires to create an unnecessary railway?"
"Ruined is a large word. These constructions appear to all, except primitive and ignorant people, to be improvements, acquisitions, benefits. In our province we are so aloof from all movement, so remote in our seclusion, so moss-grown in our antiquity, so wedded to the past, to old customs, old habits, old ways of act and thought, that the modern world shocks us as impious, odious, and intolerable."
"Sir," said Don Silverio with his most caustic smile, "if you are here to sing the praises of modernity, allow me to withdraw from the duet. I venture to ask you, as I asked you this morning, one plain question. To whom is Adone Alba, to whom are my people of Ruscino, to appeal against the sequestration?"
"To no one. The Prefect approves; the Minister approves; the local deputies approve; I and my municipal and provincial councils approve; Parliament has approved and authorised. Who remain opposed? A few small landowners and a mob of poor persons living in your village of Ruscino and in similar places."