“A good one.  He is blameless in his domestic relation, an indulgent landlord, a gentleman, respectful of religion, assiduous in his duties; but he is in debt; his large estates produce little; he has no other means.  I would not take upon me to say that he would be above a bribe.”

At five of the clock, as the Syndic had told him to do, Don Silverio presented himself at the Palazzo Corradini.  He was shown with much deference by an old liveried servant into a fine apartment with marble busts in niches in the walls, and antique bookcases of oak, and doorhangings of Tuscan tapestry.  The air of the place was cold, and had the scent of a tomb.  It was barely luminated by two bronze lamps in which unshaded oil wicks burned.  Corradini joined him there in five minutes’ time, and welcomed him to the house with grace and warmth of courtesy.

“What does he want of me?” thought Don Silverio, who had not been often met in life by such sweet phrases.  “Does he want me to be blind?”

“Dear and reverend sir,” said the mayor, placing himself with his back to the brass lamps, “tell me fully about this youth whom you protect, who will not sell the Terra Vergine.  Here we can speak at our ease; yonder at the municipality, there may be always some eavesdropper.”

“Most worshipful, what I said is matter well known to the whole countryside; all the valley can bear witness to its truth,” replied Don Silverio, and he proceeded to set forth all that he knew of Adone and Clelia Alba, and of their great love for their lands; he only did not mention what he believed to be Adone’s descent, because he feared that it might sound fantastical or presumptuous.  Nearly three hundred years of peasant ownership and residence were surely titles enough for consideration.

“If land owned thus, and tilled thus by one family, can be taken away from that family by Act of Parliament to please the greedy schemes of strangers, why preserve the eighth commandment in the Decalogue?  It becomes absurd.  There cannot be a more absolute ownership than this of the Alba to the farm they live on and cultivate.  So long as there is any distinction at all between meum et tuum, how can its violent seizure be by any possibility defended?”

“There will be no violent seizure,” said Corradini.  “The young man will be offered a good price; even, since you are interested in him, a high price.”

“But he will take no price —­ no price, if he were paid million; they would not compensate for his loss.”

“He must be a very singular young man.”

“His character is singular, no doubt, in an age in which money is esteemed the sole goal of existence, and discontent constitutes philosophy.  Adone Alba wants nothing but what he has; he only asks to be left alone.”

“It is difficult to be left alone in a world full of other people!  If your hero want a Thebaid, he can go and buy one in La Plata, or the Argentine, with the price we shall give for his land.”