o? What
they eat nourishes me."

Momo, who found himself beside this group, drew away his plate, so that
his brothers would not have the temptation to ask him for its contents.
His father, who remarked it, said to him:--

"Don't be avaricious; it is a shameful vice: be not avaricious; avarice
is an abject vice. Know that one day an avaricious man fell into the
river. A peasant who saw it, ran to pull him out; he stretched out his
arm, and cried to him, 'Give me your hand!' What had he to give? A
miser--give! Before giving him anything he allowed himself to be swept
down by the current. By chance he floated near to a fisherman: 'Take my
hand!' he said to him. As it was a question of taking, our man was
willing, and he escaped danger."

"It is not such wit you should relate to your son, Manuel," said Maria.
"You ought to set before him, for example, the bad rich man, who would
give to the unfortunate neither a morsel of bread nor a glass of water.
'God grant,' answered the beggar to him, 'that all that you touch
changes to this silver which you so hold to.' The wish of the beggar was
realized. All that the miser had in his house was changed into metals as
hard as his heart. Tormented by hunger and thirst, he went into the
country, and having perceived a fountain of pure water, clear as
crystal, he approached with longing to taste it; but the moment his lips
touched it the water was turned to silver. He would take an orange and
the orange was changed to gold. He thus died in a frenzy of rage and
fury, cursing what he had desired."

Manuel, the strongest minded man in the assembly, bowed down his head.

"Manuel," his mother said to him, "you imagine that we ought not to
believe but what is a fundamental article, and that credulity is common
only to the imbecile. You are mistaken: men of good sense are
credulous."

"But, my mother, between belief and doubt there is a medium."

"And why," replied the good old woman, "laugh at faith, which is the
first of all virtues? How will it appear to you if I say to you, 'I have
given birth to you, I have educated you, I have guided your earliest
steps--I have fulfilled my obligations!' Is the love of a mother nothing
but an obligation? What say you?"

"I would reply that you are not a good mother."

"Well, my son, apply that to what we were speaking of: he who does not
believe except from obligation, and only for that, cannot cease to
believe without being a renegade, a bad C