“Communism, in fact!” burst forth the cavaliere.  His piping voice, now hoarse with rage, quivered.  “You are here to form a communistic association!  God help us!”

“I care not what you call it,” cried the count, with a rising passion.  “My faith, my hope, is the ideal of freedom as opposed to the abstraction of hierarchical superstition and monarchic tyranny.  What are popes, kings, princes, and potentates, to me who deem all men equal?  It is by a republic alone that we can regenerate our beloved, our unfortunate Italy, now tossed between a debauched monarch—­a traitor, who yielded Savoy—­an effete Parliament—­a pack of lawyers who represent nothing but their own interests, and a pope—­the recreant of Gaeta!  The sooner our ideas are circulated, the sooner they will permeate among the masses.  Already the harvest has been great elsewhere.  I am here to sow, to reap, and to gather.  For this end—­mark me, cavaliere, I entreat you—­I am here, for none other.”

Here the triumphant patriot became suddenly embarrassed.  He stopped, hesitated, stopped again, took breath, and sighed; then turned full upon Trenta, in order to obtain some response to the appeal he had addressed to him.  But again Trenta, sullenly silent, had buried himself in the depths of the arm-chair, and was, so to say, invisible.

“For this end” (a mournful cadence came into the count’s voice when he at length proceeded) “I am ready to sacrifice my life.  My life!—­what is that?  I am ready to sacrifice my love—­ay, my love—­the love of the only woman who fulfills the longings of my poetic soul.”

The count ceased speaking.  The fair Enrica, with her tender smile, and patient, chastened loveliness—­Enrica, as he had imagined her, the type of the young Madonna, was before him.  No, Enrica could never be his; no child of his would ever be encircled by those soft, womanly arms!  With a strong effort to shake off the feeling which so deeply moved him, the count continued: 

“In the boundless realms of ideal philosophy”—­his noble features were at this moment lit up into the living image of that hero he so much resembled—­“man grapples hand to hand with the unseen.  There are no limits to his glorious aspirations.  He is as God himself.  He, too, becomes a Creator; and a new and purer world forms beneath his hand.”

“Have you done?” asked Trenta, looking up out of the arm-chair.  He was so thoroughly overcome, so subdued, he could have wept.  From the very commencement of the count’s explanation, he had felt that it was not given to him to combat his opinions.  If he could, he was not sure that he would have ventured to do so.  “Let pitch alone,” says the proverb.