“O Don Emidio!” I exclaimed, “I forgot you were not one of us. I forgot you were an Italian.”
“It needs no apology, signorina. I agree with a great deal that you say. In the first place, you spoke chiefly of Neapolitans. I am only half a Neapolitan. And, secondly, whatever you may think of Italians you are too just not to believe there are many honest men amongst them.”
“You are very kind to let me off so easily. No one who knew Padre Cataldo, who is a Neapolitan, could fail to believe in the possibility of honest Italians.”
“Excuse me, signorina, if I say that you would be nearly as far wrong in taking Padre Cataldo as a guarantee for there being honest men amongst us as you would be in believing us all rogues because you have met with people like the Casinelli.”
“Why so?”
“Because saints are as much an exception to the generality as are accomplished Machiavellians like the Casinelli.”
“You are right,” said Mary. “But do you not think that just as the French are specially addicted to vanity, so the Italians are to intrigue?”
“I do. It is the reverse of the medal. The French are sanguine, and the drawback to that is self-conceit. The Italians are astute, and the corresponding defect is cunning.”
“As Emidio is too sensible to be thin-skinned at our speaking out our thoughts,” interrupted Frank, “I must say that I have always thought the Italians great in duplicity.”
“The Italian does not care to tell you an untruth about a trifle. If he did so, it would be from carelessness rather than from purpose. But when [pg 551] once he sees his way, or thinks he sees it, to accomplishing some distant and important end, then the full strength of his close-knit mind and his marvellous faculty of mental investigation are brought to bear. He is unscrupulous because he is passionate. Not passionate only as a sudden burst, but condensed, sustained passion. The object he has in view, no matter what it be, becomes the object of his passion, and gradually he weaves around it the web of his whole being. With fixed, undeviating purpose, he bends all things to one point. If truth will serve him, he will employ truth; where that fails, deceit will be as readily adopted. He overlooks mountains and valleys, walls and barriers, in pursuit of his end; or rather he sees through them, as if they were merely a mist, and fixes his unflinching gaze on what he is resolved to obtain beyond them. So long as his purpose is unchanged, nothing will stay his progress. Once that changed, no matter how or why—out of his own will or through the will of others—and the whole fabric of deceit passes from him like a mantle loosely draped from his shoulders, only to be resumed when next required.”