pain," said he. Noemi maintained a reverent
silence. Benedetto asked if she knew when this person had passed away.

Towards the end of April, she believed. She was absent from Italy at the
time. She was in Belgium, at Bruges, with a friend to whom the news had
been sent. She had understood from her friend that that person--a sense
of delicacy prevented Noemi from pronouncing the name--had died a very
holy death. She had also been asked to say that his papers had been
entrusted to the bishop of the city. Benedetto made a gesture of
approval which might also serve to close the interview. Noemi did not
move.

"I have not yet finished," she said, and hastened to add:

"I have a Catholic friend--I myself am not a Catholic, I am a
Protestant--who has lost her faith in God. She has been advised to
devote herself to deeds of charity. She lives with her brother, who is
very hostile to all religions. This innovation, the fact that his sister
interests herself in charities, that she associates with people who
promote good works from religious principles, is most displeasing to
him. At present he is ill; he becomes irritated, excited, protests
against these virtuous bigots, does not wish his sister to visit the
poor, to protect young girls, or to provide for abandoned children. He
says all these things are clericalism, are utopianism, that the world
wags in its own way, and that it must be allowed to wag in its own way,
that all this associating with the lower classes only serves to put
false and dangerous ideas into their heads. Now, my friend has been told
that she must either leave her brother, or lie to him, by doing secretly
what she has hitherto done openly. She is in sore need of sound advice!
She writes to me to ask you for it. She has read in the newspapers that
you are helping so many here in these hills, and she hopes you will not
refuse."

"As her brother is ill, both bodily and mentally," Benedetto answered,
"does she not find deeds of charity to perform in her own house? Will
she arrive at a knowledge of God by becoming a bad sister? Let her
give up her works of charity and devote herself to her brother; let
her attend to his bodily ills, and to his moral ills, with all the
affection"--he was going to say "which she bears him," but he corrected
himself, that he might not thus clearly admit a knowledge of the
person--"with all the affection of which she is capable; let her make
herself precious to him; let her win