"But what news?" asked the priest, looking in the face of each one in turn with a pair of rolling eyes.
They all told him at once, hastily and eagerly, of the festival, the pardon, the reconciliation.
The priest looked at all of them with the air of a man who fears that he has fallen into the midst of a set of lunatics: then flashing a fiery glance upon the young man, he exclaimed with a sinister smile, "There is not a shadow of truth in it, fortunately."
"Oh!" they all exclaimed, turning toward the son.
The latter, without seeming disconcerted, looked fixedly at the priest, and said to him, in a half-sorrowful, half-contemptuous voice, "Only, reverend father, do not say 'fortunately.' You are an Italian: say, 'What a pity that it is not so!'"
And all the others flew once more at the priest, and, as is generally the case, more incensed against the one who had destroyed the illusion than against him who had created it, they repeated almost involuntarily, "Decidedly! Say rather, 'What a pity!'"
"I?" answered the priest, turning toward his breast a long knotty finger: then, in a bitter vibrant voice, "Never!"
The old man, thus suddenly wounded and so rudely deprived of the delightful emotion which had agitated him, lost his wits as usual, and stretching out his arm toward the door framed with his lips the word "Begone!"
The priest disappeared, slamming the door behind him. The son threw his arms around his father's neck: the latter, looking toward the door, muttered in a feeble voice, "Heartless man!"