Should he tell Adone this or not?

Would the knowledge of his ancestry put a thorn in the boy’s contented heart?  Would it act as a spur to higher things, or be merely as the useless sting of a nettle?

Who could say?

Don Silverio remembered the gorgeous dreams of his own youth; and what had been their issue?

At fifty years old he was buried in a deserted village, never hearing from year’s end to year’s end one word of friendship or phrase of culture.

Would it be well or would it be wrong to disturb that tranquil acquiescence in a humble destiny?  He could not decide.  He dared not take upon himself so much responsibility.  “In doubt do nothing” has been the axiom of many wise men.  The remembrance of the maxim closed his lips.  He had himself been in early manhood passionately ambitious; he was only a priest, but of priests are made the Gregorio, the Bonifazio, the Leone of the Papal throne; to the dreams of a seminarist nothing is impossible.  But Adone had no such dreams; he was as satisfied with his lot as any young steer which wants nothing more than the fair, fresh fields of its birth.  But one day as he was sitting with the boy, then fifteen years old, on the south bank of the Edera, the spirit moved him and he spake.  It was the day of San Benedetto, when the swallows come.  The grass was full of pink lychnis and yellow buttercups.  A strong east wind was blowing from the sea.  A number of martins, true to the proverb, were circling gaily above the stream.  The water, reflecting the brilliant hues of the heavens, was hurrying on its seaward way, swollen by recent rains and hastened by a strong wind blowing from the eastern mountains.

The lands of the Terra Vergine lay entirely on the south-east bank of the river, and covered many acres, of which some was moorland still.  Almost opposite to it was the one-arched stone bridge, attributed to Theodoric, and on the northern bank was the ruined Rocca, towering above the trees which had grown up around it; whilst hidden by it and by the remains of the fortifications was that which was now the mere village of Ruscino.

“Listen, Adone!” he said in his deep, melodious voice, grave and sweet as a mass of Palestrina.  “Listen, and I will tell you the tale of yonder donjon and village, and of the valley of the Edera, so far as I have been able to make it out for myself.”

According to the writers whose manuscripts he had discovered the town of Ruscino, like Cremona, had existed before the siege of Troy, that is, six hundred years before the foundation of Rome.  Of this there was no proof except tradition, but the ruins of the walls and the tombs by the riverside and in the fields proved that it had been an Etruscan city, and of some considerable extent and dignity, in those remote ages.