"
The fat man looked scandalised, and the first speaker waved the subject
aside as unworthy of attention.
"Such tales are for women and monks," he said impatiently. "But the
business has its serious side. I tell you we are being hurried to our
ruin. Here's this matter of draining the marshes at Pontesordo. Who's to
pay for that? The class that profits by it? Not by a long way. It's we
who drain the land, and the peasants are to live on it."
The visionary youth tossed back his hair. "But isn't that an inspiration
to you, sir?" he exclaimed. "Does not your heart dilate at the thought
of uplifting the condition of your down-trodden fellows?"
"My fellows? The peasantry my fellows?" cried the other. "I'd have you
know, my young master, that I come of a long and honourable line of
cloth-merchants, that have had their names on the Guild for two hundred
years and over. I've nothing to do with the peasantry, thank God!"
The youth had emptied another glass. "What?" he screamed. "You deny the
universal kinship of man? You disown your starving brothers? Proud
tyrant, remember the Bastille!" He burst into tears and began to quote
Alfieri.
"Well," said the fat man, turning a disgusted shoulder on this display
of emotion, "to my mind this business of draining Pontesordo is too much
like telling the Almighty what to do. If God made the land wet, what
right have we to dry it? Those that begin by meddling with the Creator's
works may end by laying hands on the Creator.
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