to
light his cigar. "You do not need the money as I do. You take it from
Del Ferice because it amuses you to do so, not because you are obliged
to accept it. That is the difference. The count knows It too, and knows
that he is not conferring a favour but receiving one. You do him an
honour in borrowing his money. He lays me under an obligation in lending
it."

"We must get money somewhere," answered Orsino with indifference. "If
not from Del Ferice, then from some other bank. And as for obligations,
as you call them, he is not the bank himself, and the bank does not lend
its money in order to amuse me or to humiliate you, my friend. But if
you insist, I shall say that the convenience is not on one side only. If
Del Ferice supports us it is because we serve his interests. If he has
done us a good turn, it is a reason why we should do him one, and build
his houses rather than those of other people. You talk about my
conferring a favour upon him. Where will he find another Andrea Contini
and Company to make worthless property valuable for him? In that sense
you and I are earning his gratitude, by the simple process of being
scrupulously honest. I do not feel in the least humiliated, I assure
you."

"I cannot help it," replied Contini, biting his cigar savagely. "I have
a heart, and it beats with good blood. Do you know that there is blood
of Cola di Rienzo in my veins?"

"No. You never told me," answered Orsino, one of whose forefathers had
been concerned in the murder of the tribune, a fact to which he thought
it best not to refer at the present moment.

"And the blood of Cola di Rienzo burns under the shame of an
obligation!" cried Contini, with a heat hardly warranted by the
circumstances. "It is humiliating, it is base, to submit to be the tool
of a Del Ferice--we all know who and what Del Ferice was, and how he
came by his title of count, and how he got his fortune--a spy, an
intriguer! In a good cause? Perhaps. I was not born then, nor you
either, Signor Principe, and we do not know what the world was like,
when it was quite another world. That is not a reason for serving a
spy!"

"Calm yourself, my friend. We are not in Del Ferice's service."

"Better to die than that! Better to kill him at once and go to the
galleys for a few years! Better to play the fiddle, or pick rags, or beg
in the streets than that, Signor Principe. One must respect oneself. You
see it yourself. One must be a man, and feel as a man.