This assertion was not strictly true—at any rate, so far as the Signorina Giacinta was concerned. The professor, no doubt, seldom went inside a church, except, perhaps, on special occasions, such as Easter or Christmas. He possessed a scientific conscience as well as a spiritual conscience, and he found an insuperable difficulty in reconciling the one with the other on a certain point of dogma which need not be named. He was not antichristian, however, though he might be anticlerical, and he encouraged Giacinta to go to the churches rather than the reverse, as many fathers of families in his position do, both in Italy and elsewhere.
Professor Rossano and his daughter had inhabited the Palazzo Acorari nearly three months before Bianca made the discovery that the girl at whom she had cast stolen glances of curiosity, as being the first heretic of her own nationality she had ever beheld, was, if appearances spoke the truth, no heretic at all. She had actually seen Giacinta kneeling in the most orthodox manner at mass in the neighboring church of Santa Maria dei Campitelli. Bianca had informed the princess of her discovery that very day at breakfast in the presence of the Abbé Roux, who was an invariable guest on Sundays and feast-days. She nourished a secret hope that her step-mother might become more favorably disposed towards the family on the second floor if it could satisfactorily be proved not to be entirely heretical. The princess, however, did not receive the information in the spirit Bianca had expected.
"People of that sort," she had responded, coldly, "often go to mass in order to keep up appearances, or sometimes to meet—oh, well"—she broke off, abruptly—"to stare about them as you seem to have been doing this morning, Bianca, instead of saying your prayers. Is it not so, Monsieur l'Abbé?" she added to the priest, with whom she generally conversed in French, though both spoke Italian perfectly.
The Abbé Roux sighed. "Ah, yes, madame," he replied, "unluckily it is undoubtedly so. The Professor Rossano, if one is to judge by certain arrogant and anticatholic works of which he is the author, is not likely to have brought up his children to be believers. And if one does not believe, what is the use of going to mass?—except—except—" And here he checked himself as the princess had done, feeling himself to be on the verge of an indiscretion.
"You hear, Bianca, what Monsieur l'Abbé says," observed the princess. "You must understand once for all, that what Professor Rossano and his daughter may or may not do is no concern of ours—"
"So long as they pay their rent," added the Abbé, pouring himself out another glass of red wine.
"So long as they pay their rent," the princess repeated. "They are not of our society—" she continued.
"And do not dance," interrupted Bianca.
The princess looked at her a little suspiciously. She was never quite sure whether Bianca, notwithstanding her quiet and apparently somewhat apathetic disposition, was altogether so submissive as she seemed.
"Dance!" she exclaimed. "Why should they dance? I don't know what you mean, Bianca."