Tactfully!--Samuelino, walk to the back of the house and tell my sister you will stay to lunch. I am to have a little Chinese vegetable dish. Will you have that or a little risotto and chestnut-paste? You can buy yourself something solid on the way down hill. How is Astrée-Luce? Very well. A little illness would be good for her. I am uncomfortable when I am with her. There are certain doctors, Samuele, who are not happy when they are talking to people in good health. They are so used to the supplicating eyes of patients that say: Shall I live? In the same way I am ill at ease in the company of persons who have never suffered. Astrée-Luce has eyes of blue porcelain. She has a fair pure heart. It is sweet to be in the company of a fair pure heart, but what can one say to it? There was St. Francis, Father...? But he had been libertine in his youth, or thought he had.--Senta! Who can understand religion unless he has sinned? who can understand literature unless he has suffered? who can understand love unless he has loved without response? _Eco_! The first sign of Astrée-Luce's being in trouble was last month. There is a certain Monsignore who wants her millions for his churches in Bavaria. Every few days he climbs the hill to Tivoli and breathes into her ear: _And rich He hath sent empty away_. The poor child trembles and pretty soon Bavaria will have some enormous churches, too ugly for words. Oh, you know, there is for every human being one text in the Bible that can shake him, just as every building has a musical note that can overthrow it. I will not tell you mine, but do you want to know Leda d'Aquilanera's? She is a great hater, and they say that during the Pater Noster she closes her teeth tight upon: _Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris_. At this he laughed for a long time, his body shaking in silence. But was not Astrée-Luce devoted to her mother? I asked. No, she has had no losses. That was when she was ten. She has poetized her, that is all. Father, why did not that literal faith of hers carry her to a convent? She promised her dying mother she would stay alive to put a Bourbon on the throne of France. How can you laugh, Father, at her devotion to ... We old men are allowed to laugh at things that you little students may not even smile about. Oh, oh, the house of Bourbon. Would you be surprised if I gave up my life to reviving the royal brother-and-sister marriages of Egypt? Well! It is not more impossible. Dear Father, won't you write one more book? Look, you have about you all the greatest books of the first quarter of my century ... And very stupid they are, too. Won't you make us one. Such a great book, Father Vaini. About yourself, essays like Montaigne,--about China and about your animals and Augustine ...