"Spare your mother. Speak gently," said the elder man; the younger man made a sign of assent and of obedience.
"He will go to Rome," said Adone to himself, and almost he regretted that he had urged the journey, for in his own veins the fever of unrest and the sting of fierce passions were throbbing, and he panted and pined for action. He was the heir of the lords of the river.
VIII
Like the cooper Ruffo, Clelia Alba had received the tidings with incredulity, though aghast at the mere suggestion.
"It is impossible," she said. She had seen the water there ever since she had been a babe in swaddling clothes.
"It is not possible," she said, "that any man could be profane enough to alter the bed which heaven had given it."
But she was sorely grieved to see the effect such a fear had upon Adone.
"I was afraid it was a woman," she thought; "but this thing, could it be true, would be worse than any harlot or adulteress. If they took away the river the land would perish. It lives by the river."
"The river is our own as far as we touch it," she said aloud to her son; "but it was the earth's before it was ours. To sever water from the land it lives in were worse than to snatch a child from its mother's womb."