“Who are you that should teach me?” he repeated, raising his voice to a strained key and gesticulating fiercely.  “You, your very existence is a lie, and you are the server of lies, and you and your fellow liars would have created them if they didn’t already exist, you love them so.  You live by a fraud, and you want to drag everybody into the comedy you play every day in your churches, everybody who is fool enough to drop a coin into your greedy palm!  What right have you to talk to men?  Do you work?  Do you buy?  Do you sell?  You are worse than those fine gentlemen who do nothing because their fathers stole our money, for you live by stealing it yourselves!  And you set yourselves up as judges over an honest man to tell him what he is to do with his daughter?  You fool, you thing in petticoats, you deceiver of women, you charlatan, you mountebank, go!  Go and perform your antics before your altars, and leave hardworking men like me to manage their families as they can, and to marry their daughters to whom they will!”

Marzio had rolled off his string of invective in such a tone, and so rapidly, that it had been impossible to interrupt him.  The two women were sobbing bitterly.  Gianbattista, pale and breathing hard, looked as though he would throttle Marzio if he could reach him, and Don Paolo faced the angry artist, with reddening forehead, folding his arms and straining his muscles to control himself.  When Marzio paused for breath, the priest answered him with an effort.

“You may insult me if it pleases you,” he said, “it is nothing to me.  I cannot prevent your uttering your senseless blasphemies.  I speak to you of the matter in hand.  I tell you simply that in treating these two, who love each other, as you are treating them, you are doing a thing unworthy of a man.  Moreover, the law protects your daughter, and I will see that the law does its duty.”

“Oh, to think that I should have such a monster for a husband,” groaned the fat Signora Pandolfi, still rocking herself in her chair, and hardly able to speak through her sobs.

“You will do a bad day’s work for yourself and your art when you try to separate us,” said Gianbattista between his teeth.

Marzio laughed hoarsely, and turned his back on the rest, beginning to fill his pipe at the chimney-piece.  Don Paolo heard the apprentice’s words, and understood their meaning.  He went and laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Do not let us have any threats, Tista,” he said quietly.  “Sor Marzio will never do this thing—­believe me, he cannot if he would.”

“Go on,” cried Marzio, striking a match.  “Go on—­sow the seeds of discord, teach them all to disobey me.  I am listening, my dear Paolo.”

“All the better, if you are,” answered the priest, “for I assure you I am in earnest.  You will have time to consider this thing.  I have a matter of business with you, Marzio.  That is what I came for this evening.  If you have done, we will speak of it.”