“Sir, what is it Adone does?” said Clelia Alba, one dusky and stormy eve after vespers.  “At nightfall out he goes; and never a word to me, only ‘Your blessing, mother,’ he says, as if he might lose his life where he goes.  I thought at first it was some love matter, for he is young; but it cannot be that, for he is too serious, and he goes fully armed, with his father’s pistols in his belt and his own long dagger in his stocking.  True, they go so to a love tryst, if it be a dangerous one; if the woman be wedded; only I think it is not that, for men in love are different.  I think that he broods over some act.”

“Neither you nor I can do aught.  He is of age to judge for himself,” said Don Silverio; “but, like you, I do not think a woman is the cause of his absence.”

“Can you not speak to him, sir?”

“I have spoken.  It is useless.  He is moved by a motive stronger than any argument we can use.  In a word, good Clelia, this coming seizure of the water is suffering so great to him that he loses his reason.  He is trying to make the men of the commune see as he sees.  He wants to rouse them, to arm them.  He might as well set the calves in your stalls to butt the mountain granite.”

“Maybe, sir,” said Clelia Alba, unwillingly; but her eye gleamed, and her stern, proud face grew harder.  “But he has the right to do it if he can.  If they touch the water they are thieves, worse than those who came down from the hills in the years of my girlhood.”

“You would encourage him in insurrection, then?”

“Nay, I would not do that; but neither would I blame him.  Every man has a right to defend his own.  Neither his father nor mine, sir, were cowards.”

“This is no question of cowardice.  It is a question of common sense.  A few country lads cannot oppose a government.  With what weapons can they do so?  Courage I honour; without it all active virtues are supine; but it is not courage to attempt the impossible, to lead the ignorant to death —­ or worse.”

“Of that my son must judge, sir,” said Adone’s mother, inflexible to argument.  “I shall not set myself against him.  He is master now.  If he bid me fire the place I shall do it.  For four-and-twenty years he obeyed me like a little child; never a murmur, never a frown.  Now he is his own master, and master of the land.  I shall do as he tells me.  It is his turn now, and he is no fool, sir, Adone.”

“He is no fool; no.  But he is beside himself.  He is incapable of judgment.  His blood is on fire and fires his brain.”

“I think not, sir.  He is quiet.  He speaks little”

“Because he meditates what will not bear speech.  Were he violent I should be less alarmed.  He shuns me —­ me —­ his oldest friend.”

“Because no doubt, sir, he feels you are against him.”

“Against him!  How can I, being what I am, be otherwise?  Could you expect me to foment insurrection, and what less than that can opposition such as he intends become?”