“After all,” he said, “if you can accept the situation, I ought to accept it, too.”

“It is a matter of business,” said Orsino, returning to his argument.  “There is no such thing as obligation where money is borrowed on good security and a large interest is regularly paid.”

It was clear that Orsino was developing commercial instincts.  His grandfather would have died of rage on the spot if he could have listened to the young fellow’s cool utterances.  But Contini was not pleased and would not abandon his position so easily.

“It is very well for you, Don Orsino,” he said, vainly attempting to light his cigar.  “You do not need the money as I do.  You take it from Del Ferice because it amuses you to do so, not because you are obliged to accept it.  That is the difference.  The count knows It too, and knows that he is not conferring a favour but receiving one.  You do him an honour in borrowing his money.  He lays me under an obligation in lending it.”

“We must get money somewhere,” answered Orsino with indifference.  “If not from Del Ferice, then from some other bank.  And as for obligations, as you call them, he is not the bank himself, and the bank does not lend its money in order to amuse me or to humiliate you, my friend.  But if you insist, I shall say that the convenience is not on one side only.  If Del Ferice supports us it is because we serve his interests.  If he has done us a good turn, it is a reason why we should do him one, and build his houses rather than those of other people.  You talk about my conferring a favour upon him.  Where will he find another Andrea Contini and Company to make worthless property valuable for him?  In that sense you and I are earning his gratitude, by the simple process of being scrupulously honest.  I do not feel in the least humiliated, I assure you.”

“I cannot help it,” replied Contini, biting his cigar savagely.  “I have a heart, and it beats with good blood.  Do you know that there is blood of Cola di Rienzo in my veins?”

“No.  You never told me,” answered Orsino, one of whose forefathers had been concerned in the murder of the tribune, a fact to which he thought it best not to refer at the present moment.

“And the blood of Cola di Rienzo burns under the shame of an obligation!” cried Contini, with a heat hardly warranted by the circumstances.  “It is humiliating, it is base, to submit to be the tool of a Del Ferice—­we all know who and what Del Ferice was, and how he came by his title of count, and how he got his fortune—­a spy, an intriguer!  In a good cause?  Perhaps.  I was not born then, nor you either, Signor Principe, and we do not know what the world was like, when it was quite another world.  That is not a reason for serving a spy!”

“Calm yourself, my friend.  We are not in Del Ferice’s service.”

“Better to die than that!  Better to kill him at once and go to the galleys for a few years!  Better to play the fiddle, or pick rags, or beg in the streets than that, Signor Principe.  One must respect oneself.  You see it yourself.  One must be a man, and feel as a man.  One must feel those things here, Signor Principe, here in the heart!”