Don Agostino looked at him. "When, and why?" he asked, abruptly.
"When? Two days ago. The day your reverence went to Rome. Why? Because I am an honest man, and because I and my people have been faithful servants to Casa Acorari for a hundred years and more. Is it not reason enough?" and Sor Beppe laughed bitterly.
Don Agostino poured out a glass of wine and pushed it towards him. "Tell me how it has come about," he said. "If I am not mistaken," he added, looking at the agent keenly, "Casa Acorari has too much need of honest men just now to be able to spare one."
"Ah!" exclaimed Fontana, quickly, "you know that, too? You have heard it in Rome, perhaps?"
"I know nothing," replied Don Agostino. "I only guess. And I have heard nothing in Rome concerning the affairs of Casa Acorari—nothing, that is, connected with the estates. May I ask," he added, "apart from the reason you have just given, on what grounds you have been dismissed?"
Sor Beppe drank off his glass of wine.
"I will tell you, reverendo," he replied. "Some days ago I received instructions from the estate office in Rome that the rents of certain small holdings here at Montefiano were to be raised five per cent. I represented to the administration that the rents were already high enough, and that to increase them would certainly create much ill-feeling. The people can barely live like Christians and pay the rents they are paying, reverendo; and who should know it better than I, who have lived on the land for fifty years?"
Don Agostino nodded. "I know it, too," he observed. "Go on, Signor Fontana."
"I thought my protest had been accepted," continued Fontana, "as I heard no more from Rome. But four or five days ago that foreign priest, the Abbé Roux, as they call him, came into my office and asked what I meant by refusing to obey the instructions I had received from the administration. I replied that I had sent my reasons to the administration; and, moreover, that however many instructions to raise the rents in question might be sent to me from Rome, I should not obey them until I had explained the truth of the matter to the princess in person, and had received her orders as the Principessina Bianca's representative. Was I right, reverendo, or wrong?"
Don Agostino shrugged his shoulders. "You were right, decidedly, I should say," he replied; "but whether you were wise in your own interests is another matter."