“Heaven grant it may be only that!” murmured Marzio’s wife, turning up her eyes, and rising from her chair.

Lucia, who, as has been said, had a very keen appreciation of facts, did not believe that things would go so smoothly.

“You had better come back with him to our house when it is all over,” she said, “just to give us a sign that it is settled, you know, Uncle Paolo.”

Don Paolo himself had his doubts about the issue, although he put such a brave face on it, and in spite of the Signora Pandolfi.  That good lady was by nature very sincere, but she always seemed to bring an irrelevant and comic element into the proceedings.

The result of the interview was that, in half an hour, Don Paolo knocked at the door of the workshop in the Via dei Falegnami, where Marzio and Gianbattista were at work.  The chiseller’s voice bade him enter.

Don Paolo had not found much time to collect his thoughts before he reached the scene of battle, but his opinion of the matter in hand was well formed.  He loved his niece, and he had begun to like Gianbattista.  He knew the lawyer, Carnesecchi, by reputation, and what he had heard of him did not prejudice him in the man’s favour.  It would have been the same had Marzio chosen any one else.  In the priest’s estimation, Gianbattista had a right to expect the fulfilment of the many promises which had been made to him.  To break those promises for no ostensible reason, just as Gianbattista seemed to be growing up to be a sensible man, was an act of injustice which Don Paolo would not permit if he could help it.  Gianbattista was not, perhaps, a model man, but, by contrast with Marzio, he seemed almost saintly.  He had a good disposition and no vices; married to Lucia and devoted to his art, much might be expected of him.  On the other hand, Gasparo Carnesecchi represented the devil in person.  He was known to be an advanced freethinker, a radical, and, perhaps, worse than a radical—­a socialist.  He was certainly not very rich, and Lucia’s dowry would be an object to him; he would doubtless spend the last copper of the money in attempting to be elected to the Chambers.  If he succeeded, he would represent another unit in that ill-guided minority which has for its sole end the subversion of the existing state of things.  He would probably succeed in getting back the money he had spent, and more also, by illicit means.  If he failed, the money would be lost, and he would go from bad to worse, intriguing and mixing himself up with the despicable radical press, in the hope of getting a hearing and a place.