But, apart from the individual preferences, which you say it is your duty to overcome, I do not see why you are morally obliged to hinder our marriage, after having felt morally obliged to promote it ?" "Because you are a traitor to the cause," cried Marzio, with sudden fierceness.

"Because you are a friend of Paolo.

Is not that enough ?" "Poor Don Paolo seems to stick in your throat," observed Gianbattista.
"I do not see what he has done, except that he prevented me from killing you last night!" "Paolo! Paolo is a snake, a venomous viper! It is his business, his only aim in life, to destroy my peace, to pervert my daughter from the wholesome views I have tried to teach her, to turn you aside from the narrow path of austere Italian virtue, to draw you away from following in the footsteps of Brutus, of Cassius, of the great Romans, of me, your teacher and master! That is all Paolo cares for, and it is enough--more than enough! And he shall pay me for his presumptuous interference, the villain!" Marzio's voice sank into a hissing whisper as he bent over the wax he was twisting and pressing.

Gianbattista glanced at his pale face, and inwardly wondered at the strange mixture of artistic genius, of bombastic rhetoric and relentless hatred, all combined in the strange man whom destiny had given him for a master.

He wondered, too, how he had ever been able to admire the contrasts of virulence and weakness, of petty hatred and impossible aspirations which had of late revealed themselves to him in a new light.