_Monsignor._ I would better not: I should rip up old disgraces, let out my poor brother's weaknesses. By the 80 way, Maffeo of Forli (which, I forgot to observe, is your true name), was the interdict ever taken off you, for robbing that church at Cesena? _Intendant._ No, nor needs be; for when I murdered your brother's friend, Pasquale, for him-- 85 _Monsignor._ Ah, he employed you in that business, did he? Well, I must let you keep, as you say, this villa and that _podere_, for fear the world should find out my relations were of so indifferent a stamp? Maffeo, my family is the oldest in Messina, and century after century 90 have my progenitors gone on polluting themselves with every wickedness under heaven: my own father--rest his soul!--I have, I know, a chapel to support that it may rest; my dear two dead brothers were--what you know tolerably well; I, the youngest, might have rivaled them 95 in vice, if not in wealth: but from my boyhood I came out from among them, and so am not partaker of their plagues. My glory springs from another source; or if from this, by contrast only--for I, the bishop, am the brother of your employers, Ugo. I hope to repair some 100 of their wrong, however; so far as my brother's ill-gotten treasure reverts to me, I can stop the consequences of his crime--and not one _soldo_ shall escape me. Maffeo, the sword we quiet men spurn away, you shrewd knaves pick up and commit murders with; what opportunities 105 the virtuous forego, the villainous seize. Because, to pleasure myself, apart from other considerations, my food would be millet-cake, my dress sackcloth, and my couch straw--am I therefore to let you, the offscouring of the earth, seduce the poor and ignorant by appropriating 110 a pomp these will be sure to think lessens the abominations so unaccountably and exclusively associated with it? Must I let villas and _poderi_ go to you, a murderer and thief, that you may beget by means of them other murderers and thieves? No--if my cough would but 115 allow me to speak! _Intendant._ What am I to expect? You are going to punish me? _Monsignor._ Must punish you, Maffeo. I cannot afford to cast away a chance. I have whole centuries of sin to redeem, and only a month or two of life to do it in. 120 How should I dare to say-- _Intendant._ "Forgive us our trespasses"?