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674 poor Sunta, appealingly; “surely we may hope that the Virgin will send us a good number.”

“You have every reason, my dear friend, to expect a blessing on you and yours. I know nobody in whose case 1 should look forward to one with greater confidence,” replied the priest; “but the worst of the misfortune is, that a good number cannot be trusted to as an escape.”

“Signor Sandro told me something of that,” said Beppo; “but I did not rightly understand him. He seemed to say, as far as I could make out, that after they had drawn the men by lot, if they did not like what the lot gave them, they picked out others.”

“Well, it comes to nearly that,” returned the priest; “for these sons of Belial are not honest even in the carrying out of their own infamous laws. If there is a man they fancy anywhere near on the list, they will make all kinds of lying excuses to get rid of the others, till they can put their hand on him. Such a lad as you, my poor Beppo, is just the sort they want to make a soldier of; and you may depend on it, if they have half a chance, they will leave no stone unturned to get hold of you.”

“I don’t think that seems fair,” said Beppo; “a fair lot is in the hands of the blessed Virgin and the saints; but when you come to picking and choosing, that is another matter.”

The theory which thus limited the sphere of the influence of the spiritual powers was a curious one. But the Bella Luce theology was about contemporaneous with the Bella Luce system of vine-dressing, which, as we have seen, dated from before the Georgics.

The priest, however, only said in reply to Beppo’s remonstrance:—

“Fair! no: as if anything done by a robber government was likely to be fair! It is all a mass of fraud, and violence, and tyranny, and iniquity, and godless impiety together.”

It will be observed that the priest was very much more outspoken in his disaffection to the new government than he had been on the former occasion, when we had last the pleasure of meeting him. But Signor Sandro Bertoldi, the attorney, was present upon that occasion; a man from the town, not one who could be counted on as a stanch adherent of the good cause—in short, not a safe man at all. Now, the parish priest was speaking before none but members of his own mountain congregation, and he spoke out accordingly. He was not aware, however, how far the minds of the younger generation of his audience had slipped away from the old moorings, and drawn (who can say how? Who can say how minds do draw nutriment from the surrounding atmosphere of thought, as silently as trees do from the air?) somehow or other the material for the formation of new judgments and views of the world around them. The slowness of the peasant’s mind, the submissive reverence which prevents him from ever “giving his priest an answer,” as the vulgar phrase goes, and the unexpansive silence in which his intellect works, combined to prevent the parish clergy from being fully aware of the degree to which the minds of the rising generation of their flocks have emancipated themselves from their leading-strings. Not that there was the slightest danger that any one of the Bella Luce family would have made any use of the disaffected words uttered by their priest in a manner to be injurious to him. Besides that, this unhappy conscription question had, to a certain extent, thrown their minds into unison of sentiment with his once more. Otherwise Beppo had begun to form a shrewd opinion of his own, that the papal government was about as bad a one as it could be; and that the new one, at all events, promised to be much better. But this conscription—it could not be denied that it was a bitter pill, and a staggering difficulty for the adherents of the new order of things.

“They do say,” remarked old Paolo in reply to the priest’s last words, “that money may buy a man off if he is drawn. I should not wonder: there’s few things that money can’t do. But how can I find the means of buying Beppo off?—a poor working man like me. How can I do it, your reverence!—not to be able to keep a decent house over my head and pay my way, church-dues and offerings and alms and masses as well. How can it be done? It stands to reason it can’t.”

This was a desperate attempt on the part of the old farmer to know the worst, and ascertain whether he was expected to ransom his son at the cost of his hardly-saved and dearly-loved dollars. He knew very well that, if the priest said he must do so, he should have to do it. And he had thrown out a few topics for consideration to the curato—with the greatest tact and delicacy, as he flattered himself—which he thought might have the effect of influencing his decision upon the point in question.

The oracle spoke, and comforted him inexpressibly.

“There are few things, as you remark, Signor Vanni, which money judiciously employed may not do. Certainly it may bribe the wretches, who have usurped the territory and the power of the Holy Father, to disgorge the prey which they have seized in their infamous man-stealing. But I have very grave doubts of the lawfulness of thus expending money. I may say, indeed, that I am tolerably sure that it cannot be done without sin. And 1 have the means of knowing that such is the opinion of those in high places, and of the best authorities. To contribute money wilfully, not by compulsion, to the support of the excommunicated government is to give aid, countenance, and comfort to the enemies of our Holy Father, and persons under sentence of excommunication, which is very palpably damnable and mortal sin. But assuredly those who give their money for the purpose in question are guilty of doing this. My mind is quite clear upon the subject. I do not see how I should be able to give absolution, perhaps not even in articulo mortis, to a person lying under the guilt of this sin!”

“But,” Beppo ventured to say timidly,—“but, your reverence, if you go to fight for the new government yourself, is not it as bad as paying another to do it for you? Must it not be equally sinful to go yourself? And yet one or other of the two you must do.”

“Must you?” said the priest, drily.