“Praised be God, yet we live! we are not, after all, at the mercy of the olives,” said the old man, cleverly shifting his ground; then he added, in more insinuating yet judicial tones, “If, instead of making calculations on the _tombola_, as I see you have been doing, whether numbers or colours I know not, the _padrone_ would make himself beautiful and marry one of those rich English ladies, who have more money than they know what to do with----” “Fie, Tonino! is it better to be at the mercy of a lady, than of the olives?” “That is quite different. They are only women at the best, however rich they may be; and a man is no man who cannot manage a woman; but the Providence of heaven which is inscrutable, which will send a frost when it is sunshine that is wanted, and torrents when one has but asked for showers, that is what no man can manage. The _padrone_ may be sure that I give him good advice.” “And why not?” said Pandolfini, with that smile which is confusion to all givers of advice. “Why not?” Was that an answer to make, as if it were some bagatelle? Antonio began to sweep energetically, careless of his master’s coffee; and Pandolfini sallied out into the fresh morning. He was not a man so objectless as not to know what to do with himself when he happened to be earlier than usual. But to-day, what was there to do? He crossed the streets, and went and looked over the low wall at Arno sweeping on below. There had been rain, and the stream was very full. The hurry and sweep of the yellow water seemed to carry his soul with it as it flowed and flowed. But it carried everything with indifference, not to be diverted from its flowing!--all kinds of waifs and strays, and even a common boat which had got loose, and was blundering heavily down-stream, like the blind thing it was, bumping here and there, carried along with a sort of labouring, piteous appeal for guidance. Pandolfini watched it with a kind of half amusement, half sympathy. It caught at last in a muddy corner under the first arch of the bridge, the only gloomy and dirty spot, so far as could be seen, in all the hurrying stream. Was this what Antonio called inscrutable Providence?--that strange, impersonal, half-heathen deity, to whose operations all Christendom attributes every evil with a sort of pious resentment?