Augustines were struck with
its simplicity and its moral. They followed the speaker in silence,
however, to the point where the path makes its first sudden descent. The
spot was favorable to the purpose of Il Maledetto. Though still on the
level of the lake, the convent, the Col, and all it contained, with the
exception of a short line of its stony path, were shut from their view, by
the barrier of intervening rock. The ravine lay beneath, ragged,
ferruginous, and riven into a hundred faces by the eternal action of the
seasons. All above, beneath, and around, was naked, and chaotic as the
elements of the globe before they received the order-giving touch of the
Creator. The imagination could scarce picture a scene of greater solitude
and desolation.

"Signore," said Maso, respectfully raising his cap, and speaking with
calmness, "this confusion of nature resembles my own character. Here
everything is torn, sterile, and wild; but patience, charity, and generous
love, have been able to change even this rocky height into an abode for
those who live for the good of others. There is none so worthless that use
may not be made of him. We are types of the earth our mother; useless, and
savage, or repaying the labor, that we receive, as we are treated like
men, or hunted like beasts. If the great, and the powerful, and the
honored, would become the friends and monitors of the weak and ignorant,
instead of remaining so many watch-dogs to snarl at and bite all that they
fear may encroach on their privileges, raising the cry of the wolf each
time that they hear the wail of the timid and bleating lamb, the fairest
works of God would not be so often defaced. I have lived, and it is
probable that I shall die an outlaw; but the severest pangs I ever know
come from the the mockery which accuses my nature of abuses that are the
fruits of your own injustice. That stone," kicking a bit of rock from the
path into the ravine beneath, "is as much master of its direction after my
foot has set its mass in motion, as the poor untaught being who is thrown
upon the world, despised, unaided, suspected, and condemned even before he
has sinned, has the command of his own course. My mother was fain and
good. She wanted only the power to withstand the arts of one, who, honored
in the opinions of all around her, undermined her virtue. He was great,
noble, and powerful; while she hath little beside her beauty and her
weakness. Signori,--the odds against he