"Even hunger need not make one vile," he answered.
But he did not disclose all his thoughts to his mother.
He was so intolerant of these poor people of Ruscino because he foresaw the hopelessness of forging their weak tempers into the metal necessary for resistance. As well might he hope to change a sword-rush of the river into a steel sabre for combat. Masaniello, Rienzi, Garibaldi, had roused the peasantry and led them against their foes; but the people they dealt with must, he thought, have been made of different stuff than these timorous villagers, who could not even be make to comprehend the magnitude of the wrong which was plotted against them.
"Tell them," he said to old Trizio: "tell them their wells will run dry; their fish will rot on the dry bed of what was once the river; their canes, their reeds and rushes, their osiers, will all fail them; when they shall go out into their fields nothing which they sow or plant will grow, because the land will be cracked and parched; there will be no longer the runlets and rivulets to water the soil; birds will die of thirst, and thousands of little river creatures will be putrid carcasses in the sun; for the Edera, which is life and joy and health to this part of the country, will be carried far away, imprisoned in brick walls, drawn under ground, forced to labour like a slave, put to vile uses, soiled and degraded. Cannot you tell them this, and make them see?"
The old man shook his white head. "They would never believe. It is too hard for them. Where the river runs, there it will always be. So they think."
"They are dolts, they are mules, they are swine!" said Adone. "Nay, may the poor beasts forgive me! The beasts cannot help themselves, but men can if they choose."
"Humph!" said Trizio doubtfully. "My lad, you have not seen men shot down by the hundred. I have — long ago, long ago."
"There is no chance of their being shot," he said with contempt, almost with regret. "All that is wanted of them are common sense, union, protestation, comprehension of their rights."
"Aye, you all begin with that," said the old Garabaldino. "But, my lad, you do not end there, for it is just those things which are your right which those above you will never hear of; and then up come the cannon thundering, and when the smoke clears away there are your dead — and that is all you get."
The voice of the old soldier was thin and cracked and feeble, but it had a sound in it which chilled the hot blood of his hearer.