ng towards
her right shoulder, one arm under her pillow, and the other resting
across her breast. They looked at her and kissed her smiling, and then
the silent thoughts of both flew to Grandmamma Teresa, who would have
loved her so dearly. With serious faces, they kissed her once more. "My
poor little one!" said Franco. "Poor, penniless, Donna Maria Maironi!"

Luisa placed her hand upon his mouth. "Be quiet!" said she. "We are
fortunate, we who are the penniless Maironis."

Franco understood, and did not answer at once, but presently, when they
were leaving the room to go to the boat, he said to his wife, forgetting
one of his grandmother's threats, "It will not always be thus."

This allusion to the old Marchesa's wealth displeased Luisa. "Do not
speak of it to me," she said. "I would not soil my fingers by touching
that money."

"I was thinking of Maria," Franco observed.

"Maria has us. We can work."

Franco was silent. Work! That was one of the words that chilled his
heart. He knew he was leading a life of indolence, for were not music,
books, flowers, and a few verses now and then, merely vanities and a
waste of time? And he was leading this life almost entirely at the
expense of others, for how could he possibly have managed with only his
one thousand Austrian lire a year? How could he have maintained his
family? He had taken his collegiate degree, but without deriving the
slightest profit from it. He doubted his own ability, felt himself too
much of an artist, too foreign to forensic wiles, and he was well aware
that the blood of earnest labourers did not flow in his veins. His only
hope was in a revolution, a war, in the freedom of his country. Ah! When
Italy should be free, how well he would serve her, with what great
strength, what joy! This poetry he had indeed in his heart, but he
lacked the energy, the constancy to prepare himself by study for such a
future.

While he was rowing away from the shore in silence, Luisa was wondering
how it was that her husband could pity the child because she was poor.
Did not this sentiment stand in contradiction to Franco's faith, to his
Christian piety? She recalled Professor Gilardoni's categories. Franco
believed firmly in a future life, but in practice he clung passionately
to all that is beautiful and good in this earthly life, clung to all its
lawful pleasures, including cards and dainty dinners. One who obeyed the
precepts of the Church so scrupulously, who w