Edwards started, as if he were waking from a reverie.
"Oh yes, Signor Calabressa," said he, "I am not likely to forget that. Perhaps I think more seriously about it than you. To you it is nothing. But I cannot forget, you see, that you and I are practically conniving at a murder."
"Hush, hush, my dear friend!" said Calabressa, glancing round. "Be discreet! And what a foolish phrase, too! You—you whose business is merely to translate; to preach; to educate a poor devil of a Russian—what have you to do with it? And to speak of murder! Bah! You do not understand the difference, then, between killing a man as an act of private anger and revenge, and executing a man for crimes
against society? My good friend Edouarts, you have lived all your life among books, but you have not learned any logic—no!"
Edwards was not inclined to go into any abstract argument
"I will do what I have been appointed to do," he said, curtly; "but that cannot prevent my wishing that it had not to be done at all."
"And who knows?" said Calabressa, lightly. "Perhaps, if you are so fearful about your small share, your very little share—it is no more than that of the garcon who helps one on with his coat: is he accessary, too, if a rogue has to be punished?—is he responsible for the sentence, also, if he brushes the boots of the judge?—or the servant of the court who sweeps out the room, is he guilty if there is a miscarriage of justice? No, no; my dear friend Edouarts, do not alarm yourself. Then, I was saying, perhaps it may not be necessary, after all. You perceived, my friend, that when the proposal of his eminence the Cardinal was mentioned, the Secretary Granaglia smiled, and I, thoughtless, laughed. You perceived it, did you not?"
By this time they were in the Chiaja, beyond the Villa Reale; and there were fewer people about. Calabressa stopped and confronted his companion. For the purposes of greater emphasis, he rested his right elbow in the palm of his left hand, while his forefinger was at the point of his nose.
"What?" said he, in this striking attitude, "what if we were both fools—ha? The Secretary Granaglia and myself—what if we were both fools?"
Calabressa abandoned his pose, linked his arm within that of his companion, and walked on with him.