"these discourses are useless. Now that
the evil is done we must think of bread. You may count upon this house,
upon some modest savings which bring me in about four _svanziche_ a day,
and upon two more mouths to feed, mine and Cia's. Let us hope you will
not have to feed mine long." Franco and Luisa protested. "Better so,
better so!" Uncle Piero exclaimed, waving his arms as if in contempt of
unreasonable sentimentality. "Live well, and die in good time. That is
the best rule. I have performed the first part, now I must perform the
second. Meanwhile send some water to my room, and open my bag. You will
find ten meat croquettes, which Signora Carolina dell'Agria insisted
upon giving me. You see we are not so badly off, after all!"

Whereupon Uncle Piero rose and went out at the drawing-room door with a
firm step, and even when his back was turned, displaying a head and body
held erect, and an unruffled serenity like that of an ancient
philosopher.

Franco, with knitted brows and arms crossed upon his breast, was
standing motionless on the edge of the terrace, and looking towards
Cressogno. If at that moment he had had a bundle of Delegates,
Commissaries, police-agents, and spies between his teeth, he would have
ground them so hard that all these functionaries would have been reduced
to pulp.

CHAPTER VI

THE TRUMP CARD APPEARS

"The boat is ready," said Ismaele, coming in unceremoniously, his pipe
in his left hand, a lantern in his right.

"What time is it?" Franco asked.

"Half-past eleven."

"And the weather?"

"It is snowing."

"That is good!" Uncle Piero exclaimed ironically, stretching his legs
towards the flames of the juniper bush that was crackling in the little
fireplace.

In the small parlour, arranged for winter, Luisa, on her knees, was
tying a muffler round Maria's neck. Franco, holding his wife's cape,
stood waiting while the old housekeeper, her bonnet on and her hands
buried in her muff, was grumbling at her master. "What a man you are!
What are you going to do all alone here at home?"

"I don't need any one when I am asleep," the engineer answered. "Other
people may be mad, but I am not. Put my milk and the lamp here."

It was Christmas Eve and the mad idea these otherwise sane people had
conceived, the determination which seemed so incomprehensible to Uncle
Piero, was to go to the solemn Midnight-Mass at S. Mamette.

"And that innocent victim also!" said he, glancing at the c