"And you could have confounded them with one word, and did not!"
"What was the use? Besides, they were not the first offenders."
"No; your father was more to blame. Don't you feel sometimes as if you could hate him for what he has made you suffer?"
David Rossi shook his head. "I was saved from that bitterness by the saint who saved me from so much besides. 'Don't try to find out who your father is, David,' he said, 'and if by chance you ever do find out, don't return evil for evil, and don't avenge yourself on the world. By-and-bye the world will know you for what you are yourself, not for what your father is. Perhaps your father is a bad man, perhaps he isn't. Leave him to God!'"
"It's a terrible thing to think evil of one's own father, isn't it?" said Roma, but David Rossi did not reply.
"And then—who knows?—perhaps some day you may discover that your father deserved your love and pity after all."
"Perhaps!"
They had drawn up at another house under a thick clump of eucalyptus trees. It was the Trappist Monastery of Tre Fontane. Silence was everywhere in this home of silence.
They went up on to the roof. From that height the whole world around seemed to be invaded by silence.
It was the silence of all sacred things, the silence of the mass; and the undying paganism in the hearts of the two that stood there had its eloquent silence also.