"Upon my soul," said Aunt Bachissia, carefully cutting herself a slice, and speaking in a tone of gentle melancholy, "you are as good as gold, there is no doubt about that, but--you live at your ease, you have a house like a church, and a husband like a strong tower [Uncle Efes Maria coughed], and you have a circle of stars about you--motioning towards them--so it is easy enough to talk like that. Ah! if you knew once what it meant to be in want, and to look forward to having to beg your bread in your old age! Do you understand? In your old age!" "Bravo!" cried Paolo. "But I would like to have a clean knife." "What difference does that make, Bachissia Era?" answered Aunt Porredda. "You are afraid to trust in Divine Providence, and that means that you have lost your faith in God! How do you know whether you will be poor or rich when you are old? Is not Costantino Ledda coming back some day?" "Yes, to be a beggar too," said Aunt Bachissia coldly. "And God alone knows whether he ever will come back," observed the young lawyer brutally, taking the knife which the servant held out to him, blade foremost. They had all heard that Costantino was ill, and there was a report that his lungs were affected. In order to appear agitated,--and possibly she really was so to some extent,--Giovanna now hid her face in her hands and said brokenly: "Besides--if it is only to be a civil ceremony--it is--it is because----" Then she stopped. "Well, why don't you go on?" cried Paolo. "You are to be married by civil ceremony because the priests won't give you any other! They don't understand, and they never will understand; just as you will never understand, Mamma Porredda. What is marriage, after all? It is a contract made between men, and binding only in the sight of men. The religious ceremony really means nothing at all----" "It is a sacrament!" cried Aunt Porredda, beside herself. "Means nothing at all," continued Paolo. "Just as some day the civil ceremony will mean nothing at all. Men and women should be at liberty to enter spontaneously into unions with one another and to dissolve them when they cease to be in harmony. The man----" "Ah, you are no better than a beast!" exclaimed Aunt Porredda, though it was, in fact, not the first time that she had heard her son express these views. "It is the end of the world. God has grown weary; and who can wonder? He is punishing us; this is the deluge. I have heard that there have been terrible earthquakes already!" "There have always been earthquakes," observed Uncle Efes Maria, who did not know whether to side with his wife or his son. Probably, in the bottom of his heart his sympathies were with the former, but he did not want to say so openly for fear of being looked down upon by the gifted Paolo.