“We?” repeated Don Silverio with significant emphasis.

Corradini reddened a little.  “I only use the word because I am greatly interested in the success of this enterprise, being convinced of its general utility to the province.  Being cognisant as I am of the neighbourhood, I hoped I could prevent some friction.”

“The shares are, I believe, already on the market?”

It was a harmless remark, yet it was a disagreeable one to the Syndic of San Beda.

“What would be the selling price of the Terra Vergine?” he said abruptly.  “It is valued at twelve thousand francs.”

“It is useless to discuss its price,” replied Don Silverio, “and the question is much wider than the limits of the Terra Vergine.  In one word, is the whole of the Valdedera to be ruined because a Minister has a relation who desires to create an unnecessary railway?”

“Ruined is a large word.  These constructions appear to all, except primitive and ignorant people, to be improvements, acquisitions, benefits.  In our province we are so aloof from all movement, so remote in our seclusion, so moss-grown in our antiquity, so wedded to the past, to old customs, old habits, old ways of act and thought, that the modern world shocks us as impious, odious, and intolerable.”

“Sir,” said Don Silverio with his most caustic smile, “if you are here to sing the praises of modernity, allow me to withdraw from the duet.  I venture to ask you, as I asked you this morning, one plain question.  To whom is Adone Alba, to whom are my people of Ruscino, to appeal against the sequestration?”

“To no one.  The Prefect approves; the Minister approves; the local deputies approve; I and my municipal and provincial councils approve; Parliament has approved and authorised.  Who remain opposed?  A few small landowners and a mob of poor persons living in your village of Ruscino and in similar places.”

“Who can create grave disorders and will do so.”

“Disorders, even insurrections, do not greatly alarm authority nowadays; they are easily pressed since the invention of the quick-firing guns.  The army is always on the side of order.”

Don Silverio rose.

“Most honourable Corradini! your views and mine are so far asunder that no amount of discussion can assimilate them.  Allow me to salute you.”

“Wait one instant, reverence,” said the Syndic.  “May I ask how it is that an ecclesiastic of your appearance and your intellect can have been buried so long in such an owls’ nest as Ruscino?”

“Sir,” replied Don Silverio very coldly, “ask my superiors:  I am but one of the least of the servants of the Church.”

“You might be one of her greatest servants, if influence —­”

“I abhor the word influence.  It means a bribe too subtle to be punished, too gilded to alarm.”

“Nay, sometimes it is but a word in season, a pressure in the right place.”