“You might as well talk of converting the horses on Monte Cavallo as of making Paolo change his mind,” replied Pandolfi, beginning to sip the white wine he had ordered.  “You don’t know him—­he is an angel, my brother!  Oh, quite an angel!  I wish somebody would send him to heaven, where he is so anxious to be!”

“Look out, Marzio!” exclaimed the lawyer, glancing from the vinegar cruet towards the door and then at his friend.

“No such luck,” returned the chiseller.  “Nothing ever happens to those black-birds.  When we get as far as hanging them, my dear brother will happen to be in Paris instead of in Rome.  You might as well try to catch a street cat by calling to it micio, micio! as try and catch a priest.  You may as well expect to kill a mule by kicking it as one of those animals, Burn the Vatican over their heads and think you have destroyed them like a wasps’ nest, they will write you a letter from Berlin the next day saying that they are alive and well, and that Prince Bismarck protests against your proceedings.”

“Bravo, Sor Marzio!” cried the journalist.  “I will put that in the paper to-morrow—­it is a fine fulmination.  You always refresh my ideas—­why will you not write an article for us in that strain?  I will publish it as coming from a priest who has given up his orders, married, and opened a wine-shop in Naples.  What an effect!  Magnificent!  Do go on!”

Marzio did not need a second invitation to proceed upon his favourite topic.  He was soon launched, and as the little room filled, his pale and sunken cheeks grew red with excitement, his tongue was unloosed, and he poured out a continuous stream of blasphemous ribaldry such as would have shocked the ears of a revolutionist of the year ’89 or of a petroleuse of the nineteenth century.  It seemed as though the spring once opened would never dry.  His eyes flashed, his fingers writhed convulsively on the table, and his voice rang out, ironical and cutting, with strange intonations that roused strange feelings in his hearers.  It was the old subject, but he found something new to say upon it at each meeting with his friends, and they wondered where he got the imagination to construct his telling phrases and specious, virulent arguments.

We have all wondered at such men.  They are the outcome of this age and of no previous time, as it is also to be hoped that their like may not arise hereafter.  They are found everywhere, these agitators, with their excited faces, their nervous utterances, and their furious hatred of all that is.  They find their way into the parliaments of the world, into the dining-rooms of the rich, into the wine-shops of the working men, into the press even, and some of their works are published by great houses and read by great ladies, if not by great men.  Suddenly, when we least expect it, a flaming advertisement announces a fiery tirade against all that the great mass of mankind hold in honour, if not in reverence.