them a desirable prey; they have seized it, they will keep it.  They were all courteous enough.  They are polite, and even unwilling to cause what they call unnecessary friction.  But they will not give an inch.  Their talons are in our flesh as an eagle’s in a lamb’s.  One thinks fondly that what a man possesses is his own, be it land, house, stream—­what not!  But we mistake.  There is a thing stronger, higher, more powerful than any poor title of property acquired by heritage, by purchase, or by labour.  It is what they call expropriation.  You think the Edera cannot be touched:  it can be expropriated.  You think the Terra Vergine cannot be touched:  it can be expropriated.  Against expropriation no rights can stand.  It is the concentration and crystallisation of Theft legitamised by Government; that is by Force.  A vagrant may not take a sheaf of your wheat, a fowl from your hen-house:  if he do so, the law protects you and punishes him.  A syndicate of rich men, of powerful men, may take the whole of your land, and the State will compel you to accept any arbitrary price which it may choose to put upon your loss.  According as you are rich or poor yourself, so great or so small will be the amount awarded to you.  All the sub-prefects, all the syndics, all the officials in this province, will be richly rewarded; the people defrauded of the soil and the river will get what may be given them by an enforced valuation.  I have conversed with all kinds and conditions of men; and I have heard only one statement in the mouths of all:  the matter is beyond all alteration.  There is money in it; the men whose trade is money will not let it go.  My son, my dearest son, be calm, be prudent.  Violence can only injure yourself, and it can save nothing.”

He had for the moment spoken as he had been speaking for the last two weeks to men of education and of the world.

He was recalled to the fact that his present auditor did not reason, did not comprehend, only felt, and was drunk with his own force of feeling.  The look on Adone’s face appalled him.

The youth seemed almost to have no intelligence left, almost as if all which had been said to him had reached neither his ear nor his brain.

Don Silverio had been in the world of men, and unconsciously he had adopted their phraseology and their manner.  To Adone, who had expected some miracle, some rescue almost archangelic, some promise of immediate and divine interposition, these calm and rational statements conveyed scarcely any sense, so terrible was the destruction of his hopes.  All the trust and candour and sweetness of his nature turned to gall.

He listened, a sullen, savage darkness stealing over his countenance.

“And our rights?  Theirs? —­ mine?” he said as Don Silverio paused.

“For all rights taken away they will give legal compensation.”

“You dare repeat that, sir?”

Don Silverio controlled his indignation with difficulty.