Every step had followed as the inevitable consequence of what had gone before.  The brooding and suspicious nature of the artist had persisted in seeing in each change in himself the blackest treachery in those who surrounded him.  His wife was an implacable enemy, his daughter a spy, his apprentice a traitor, and as for Paolo himself, Marzio considered him the blackest of villains.  For all this chain of hatreds led backwards, and was concentrated with tenfold virulence in his great hatred for his brother.  Paolo, in his estimation, was the author of all the evil, the sole ultimate cause of domestic discord, the arch enemy of the future, the representative, in Marzio’s sweeping condemnation, not only of the church and of religion, but of that whole fabric of existing society which the chiseller longed to tear down.

Marzio’s socialism, for so he called it, had one good feature.  It was sincere of its kind, and disinterested.  He was not of the common herd, a lazy vagabond, incapable of continuous work, or of perseverance in any productive occupation, desiring only to be enriched by impoverishing others, one of the endless rank and file of Italian republicans, to whom the word “republic” means nothing but bread without work, and the liberty which consists in howling blasphemies by day and night in the public streets.  His position was as different from that of a private in the blackguard battalion as his artistic gifts and his industry were superior to those of the throng.  He had money, he had talent, and he had been very successful in his occupation.  He had nothing to gain by the revolutions he dreamed of, and he might lose much by any upsetting of the existing laws of property.  He was, therefore, perfectly sincere, so far as his convictions went, and disinterested to a remarkable degree.  These conditions are often found in the social position of the true fanatic, who is the more ready to run to the greatest length, because he entertains no desire to better his own state.  Marzio’s real weakness lay in the limited scope of his views, and in a certain timid prudence which destroyed his power of initiative.  He was an economical man, who distrusted the future; and though such a disposition produces a good effect in causing a man to save money against the day of misfortune, it is incompatible with the career of the true enthusiast, who must be ready to risk everything at any moment.  The man who would move other men, and begin great changes, must have an enormous belief in himself, an unbounded confidence in his cause, and a large faith in the future, amounting to the absolute scorn of consequence.