"You made me what I am.

Besides, you distribute the alms of the intellect." "No, no! Those words applied to me are presumptuous!" Maria knew that the loving sense of human fraternity was not strong in Glovanni.
She felt--and she was loath to confess it even to herself--that this deficiency incapacitated her husband for the successful fulfilment of that great religious apostolate which should have resulted from his intellectual powers, and that deep and enlightened faith, which in him was more the fruit of genius, of study, of love of the divine, than of tradition or habit.

She reproached herself for having sometimes rejoiced at Giovanni's coldness towards his fellows, for it lent a precious flavour to the treasures of affection he lavished upon herself.
Nevertheless he was conscious of the fraternal obligations, and she had never known him turn a deaf ear to an appeal, or seen him insensible to the grief of others.

He did not feel, and therefore did not love God in man, which is the most sublime flame of charity; he felt and loved man in God, which is a cold love, as would be the love of one who was kind to his brother solely to please their father.

But this last is the temper common to even the best of human hearts.