He came to no immediate conclusion, and moreover there was no great hurry.  He knew well enough that it would take time to pierce the wall, after the drilling was over, and he could easily tell when that point was reached by listening every day in the Vicolo dei Soldati.  It would still be soon enough to play tricks with the water, if he chose that form of vengeance, and he grinned again as he thought of the vast expense he could force upon Volterra in order to save the palace.  But he might do something else.  Instead of flooding the cellars and possibly drowning the masons who had ousted him, he could turn informer and defeat the schemes of Volterra and Malipieri, for he never doubted but that if they found anything of value they meant to keep the whole profit of it to themselves.

He had the most vague notions of what the treasure might be.  When the fatal accident had happened his grandfather had been the only man who had actually penetrated into the innermost hiding-place; the rest had fled when the water rose and had left him to drown.  They had seen nothing, and their story had been handed down as a mere record of the catastrophe.  Toto knew at least that the vaults had then been entered from above, which was by far the easier way, but a new pavement had long ago covered all traces of the aperture.

There was probably gold down there, gold of the ancients, in earthen jars.  That was Toto’s belief, and he also believed that when it was found it would belong to the government, because the government took everything, but that somehow, in real justice, it should belong to the Pope.  For Toto was not only a genuine Roman of the people, but had always regarded himself as a sort of hereditary retainer of an ancient house.

His mind worked slowly.  A day passed, and he heard the steady hammering still, and after a second night he reached a final conclusion.  The Pope must have the treasure, whatever it might be.

That, he decided, was the only truly moral view, and the only one which satisfied his conscience.  It would doubtless be very amusing to be revenged on the masons by drowning them in a cellar, with the absolute certainty of never being suspected of the deed.  The plan had great attractions.  The masons themselves should have known better than to accept a job which belonged by right to him, and they undoubtedly deserved to be drowned.  Yet Toto somehow felt that as there was no woman in the case he might some day, in his far old age, be sorry for having killed several men in cold blood.  It was really not strictly moral, after all, especially as his grandfather’s death had been properly avenged by the death of the murderer.

As for allowing the government to have a share in the profits of the discovery, that was not to be thought of.  He was a Roman, and the Italian government was his natural enemy.  If he could have turned all the “lost water” in the city upon the whole government collectively, in the cellars of the Palazzo Conti, he would have felt that it was strictly moral to do so.  The government had stolen more than two years of his life by making him serve in the army, and he was not going to return good for evil.  With beautiful simplicity of reasoning he cursed the souls of the government’s dead daily, as if it had been a family of his acquaintance.