"In heaven's name, explain yourself," said Michel, unable to endure these attacks any longer. "It seems to me that we are fighting a duel in the darkness. I cannot parry your blows, and I apparently strike you when I am trying to defend myself. With what do you reproach me, or what do you ask of me? If I am a man of my time and of my class, is it my fault? I have just stepped foot for the first time on this island devoted to the worship of the past. I am not an atheist, but I am not pious. I do not believe in the superiority of certain classes, nor in the necessary inferiority of my own. I do not feel that I am the born servant of the old patricians, the old prejudices, and the old institutions of my native land. I place myself on a level with the haughtiest and most venerated heads, in order to pass judgment on them, so that I may know whether I should bend my head before true merit, or protect myself against unwarranted prestige. That is the whole of it, uncle, I give you my word. Now you know me. I admire what is noble, great and sincere before God. My heart is susceptible of affection and my mind prostrates itself before virtue. I love art, and I am ambitious of renown, I agree; but I love serious art and seek pure renown. I will not sacrifice any one of my duties to them; but I will not accept false duties, and I will spurn false principles. Am I a miserable wretch for that? and must I, in order to have the honor of being a true Sicilian, become a monk in your convent, or a brigand on the mountain?" Michel's spirited outburst did not displease the Capuchin. He listened to it with interest, and his face softened. But the young man's last words produced the effect of an electric shock upon him. He leaped up from his bench, and seizing Michel's arm with that herculean strength of which he had given him a specimen in the morning, exclaimed: "What is that metaphor? What are you talking about?" But, observing Michel's air of stupefaction at this new outbreak, he began to laugh: "Well, even if you do know it--even if your father has told you--what does it matter? Other people know it, and I am none the worse off. Well, my child, you have unconsciously used a very powerful illustration; it was what one might call the marrow of the truth. All men are not made to be fed upon it; there are milder and more digestible truths which suffice for the majority. But to those who desire to be absolutely logical in their opinions and their acts, what seems to you a paradox is the merest commonplace. You look at me in amazement? I tell you that you did, without knowing it, speak like an oracle when you said that, in order to have the honor of being a true Sicilian, one must be a monk in my convent, or a brigand on the mountain. I should prefer that you would be one or the other, rather than a cosmopolitan artist as you aspire to be. Listen to a story, and try to understand it: