Basilio changed color and advanced a step.
"What do you want me to do ?" he asked angrily.
"Without means, without social position, how may I bring their murderers to justice?
I would merely be another victim, shattered like a piece of glass hurled against a rock.

Ah, you do ill to recall this to me, since it is wantonly reopening a wound!" "But what if I should offer you my aid ?" Basilio shook his head and remained pensive.

"All the tardy vindications of justice, all the revenge in the world, will not restore a single hair of my mother's head, or recall a smile to my brother's lips.

Let them rest in peace--what should I gain now by avenging them ?" "Prevent others from suffering what you have suffered, that in the future there be no brothers murdered or mothers driven to madness.

Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when it encourages tyrants: there are no despots where there are no slaves! Man is in his own nature so wicked that he always abuses complaisance.