“Of what use would wealthy relations be to me?  What are people with money—­what is money itself—­to a man who follows my calling?”

“Money is something to everybody.”

“Is it?  When have you found that I have taken any account of it?  Give me money enough to buy my daily bread, and to pay for my lodging and my coarse cassock, and though I may want much for the poor, for myself I want no more.  Then have you found me mercenary?  Do I not help you in this studio, for love of you and of the art, without exacting so much as journeyman’s wages?  Have I ever asked you for more than a few crowns to give away on feast-days among my parishioners?  Money! money for a man who may be summoned to Rome to-morrow, who may be told to go at half an hour’s notice on a foreign mission that may take him to the ends of the earth, and who would be ready to go the moment when he was called on!  Money to a man who has no wife, no children, no interests outside the sacred circle of the Church!  Brother, do you see the dust and dirt and shapeless marble chips lying around your statue there?  Cover that floor instead with gold, and, though the litter may have changed in color and form, in my eyes it would be litter still.”

“A very noble sentiment, I dare say, Rocco, but I can’t echo it.  Granting that you care nothing for money, will you explain to me why you are so anxious that Maddalena should marry Fabio?  She has had offers from poorer men—­you knew of them—­but you have never taken the least interest in her accepting or rejecting a proposal before.”

“I hinted the reason to you, months ago, when Fabio first entered the studio.”

“It was rather a vague hint, brother; can’t you be plainer to-day?”

“I think I can.  In the first place, let me begin by assuring you that I have no objection to the young man himself.  He may be a little capricious and undecided, but he has no incorrigible faults that I have discovered.”

“That is rather a cool way of praising him, Rocco.”

“I should speak of him warmly enough, if he were not the representative of an intolerable corruption, and a monstrous wrong.  Whenever I think of him I think of an injury which his present existence perpetuates; and if I do speak of him coldly, it is only for that reason.”

Luca looked away quickly from his brother, and began kicking absently at the marble chips which were scattered over the floor around him.

“I now remember,” he said, “what that hint of yours pointed at.  I know what you mean.”

“Then you know,” answered the priest, “that while part of the wealth which Fabio d’Ascoli possesses is honestly and incontestably his own; part, also, has been inherited by him from the spoilers and robbers of the Church—­”

“Blame his ancestors for that; don’t blame him.”

“I blame him as long as the spoil is not restored.”

“How do you know that it was spoil, after all?”