Adone was sceptical.  He laughed harshly.

“If so, sir, why do they not arrest me?  That would be easy enough.  I do not hide.”

“Have you not ofttimes seen a birdcatcher spread his net?  Does he seize the first bird which approaches it?  He is not so unwise.  He waits until all the feathered innocents are in the meshes:  then he fills his sack.  That is how the Government acts always.  It gives its enemies full rope to hang themselves.  It is cold of blood, and slow, and sure.”

“You say this to scare me, to make me desist.”

“I say it because it is the truth; and if you were not a boy, blind with rage and unreason, you would long since have known that such actions as yours, in rousing or trying to rouse the peasants of the Valdedera, must come to the ear of the authorities.  Do not mistake.  They let you alone as yet, not because they love you or fear you; but because they are too cunning and too wise to touch the pear before it is ripe.”

Adone was silent.  He was convinced; and many evil thoughts were black within his brain.  His first quarrel with a mother he adored had intensified all the desperate ferocity awake in him.

“You are as blind as a mole,” said Don Silverio, “but you have not the skill of the mole in constructing its hidden galleries.  You scatter your secrets broadcast as you scatter grain over your ploughed field.  You think it is enough to choose a moonless night for you and your companions-in-arms to be seen by no living creature!  Does the stoat, does the wild cat, make such a mistake as that?  If you make war on the State, study the ways of your foe.  Realise that it has as many eyes, as many ears, as many feet as the pagan god; that its arm is as long as its craft, that it has behind it unscrupulous force and unlimited gold, and the support of all those who only want to pursue their making of wealth in ease and in peace.  Do you imagine you can meet and beat such antagonists with a few rusty muskets, a few beardless boys, a poor little girl like Nerina?”

Don Silverio’s voice was curt, imperious, sardonic; his sentences cut like whips; then after a moment of silence his tone changed to an infinite softness and sweetness of pleading and persuasion.

“My son, my dear son! cease to live in this dream of impossible issues.  Wake to the brutality of fact, to nakedness of truth.  You have to suffer a great wrong; but will you be consoled for it by the knowledge that you have led to the slaughter men whom you have known from your infancy?  It can but end in one way —­ your conflict with the power of the State.  You, and those who have listened to you, will be shot down without mercy, or flung into prison, or driven to lead the life of tracked beasts in the woods.  There is no other possible end to the rising which you are trying to bring about.  If you have no pity for your mother, have pity on your comrades, for the women who bore them, for the women who love them.”