But what would became of Paolo when Marzio had killed him?  Well, in time his body would become earth, that was all.  There was something else, however.  Marzio was conscious to certainty that Paolo would in some way or other be at his elbow ever afterwards, just as he seemed to feel his presence this afternoon in the workshop.  What sort of presence would it be?  Marzio could not tell, but he knew he should feel it.  It did not matter whether it were real to others or not, it would be too real to him.  He could never get rid of the sensation; it would haunt him and oppress him for the rest of his life, and he should have no peace.

How could it, if it were not a real thing?  Even the priests said that the spirits of dead men did not come back to earth; how much more impossible must it be in Marzio’s view, since he denied that man had a soul.  It would then only be the effect of his imagination recalling constantly the past deed, and a thing which only existed in imagination did not exist at all.  If it did not exist, it could not be feared by a sensible man.  Consequently there was nothing to fear.

The conclusion contradicted the given facts from which he had argued, and the chiseller was puzzled.  For the first time his method of reasoning did not satisfy him, and he tried to find out the cause.  Was it, he asked to himself, because there lingered in his mind some early tradition of the wickedness of doing murder?  Since there was no soul, there was no absolute right and wrong, and everything must be decided by the standard of expediency.  It was a mistake to allow people to murder each other openly, of course, because people of less intellectual capacity would take upon themselves to judge such cases in their own way.  But provided that public morality, the darling of the real freethinker, were not scandalised, there would be no inherent wrong in doing away with Paolo.  On the contrary, his death would be a benefit to the community at large, and an advantage to Marzio in particular.  Not a pecuniary advantage either, for in Marzio’s strange system there would have been an immorality in murdering Paolo for his money if he had ever had any, though it seemed right enough to kill him for an idea.  That is, to a great extent, the code of those persons who believe in nothing but what they call great ideas.  The individuals who murdered the Czar would doubtless have scrupled to rob a gentleman in the street of ten francs.  The same reasoning developed itself in Marzio’s brain.  If his brothel had been rich, it would have been a crime to murder him for his wealth.  It was no crime to murder him for an idea.  Marzio said to himself that to get rid of Paolo would be to emancipate himself and his family from the rule and interference of a priest, and that such a proceeding was only the illustration on a small scale of what he desired for his country; consequently it was just, and therefore it ought to be done.