, of labour, of prayer, of gospel
words? Was it the anticipation of a luminous hour in the future?

He gave the bundle back into his master's hands.

"Farewell!" said he.

Don Clemente hastened away.

The room the master of the house had set apart for Benedetto's use
contained a large sofa, a small square table, covered with a yellowish
cloth; over which a blue floral pattern sprawled; a few shaky chairs;
one or two armchairs, their stuffing showing through the rents in
the old and faded leather; and two portraits of bewigged ancestors in
tarnished frames. It had two windows, one almost blinded by a grey wall,
the other open to the fields, to a lovely, peaceful hill, to the sky.
Before receiving his visitors Benedetto approached this window to take a
last farewell of the fields, the hill, and the poor town itself. Seized
with sudden weakness, he leaned against the sill. It was a gentle,
pleasant weakness. He was hardly conscious of the weight of his body,
and his heart was flooded with mystic beatitude. Little by little, as
his thoughts became vague and objectless he was moved by a sense of the
quiet, innocent, external life; the drops falling from the roofs, the
air laden with odours of the hills, stirring mysteriously at that hour
and in that place. The memory of distant hours of his early youth came
back to him, of a time when he was still unmarried and had no thought of
marriage. He recalled the close of a thunder storm in the upper Valsolda
on the crest of the Pian Biscagno. How different his fate would have
been had his parents lived thirty or even twenty years longer! At least
one of them! In his mind's eye he saw the stone in the cemetery at Oria:

TO FRANCO
IN GOD
HIS LUISA;

and his eyes filled with tears. Then came the violent reaction of his
will against this soft langour of the intellect, this temptation of
weakness.

"No, no, no!" he murmured, half aloud. A voice behind him answered:

"You do not wish to listen to us?"

Benedetto turned round, surprised. Three young men stood before him.
He had not heard them enter. The one who appeared to be the eldest, a
fine-looking young fellow, short of stature, dark, with eyes speaking
knowledge of many things, asked him boldly why he had laid aside the
clerical dress. Benedetto did not reply.

"You do not wish to say?" the other exclaimed.

"It does not matter, but listen to us. We are students from the
University of Rome, men of little faith, t