"Very good! now, do you know what I think as I look at you? I say to myself: 'Here is a young man who has come much in contact with the minds of other men, who has very quickly thrown off the fetters of his class, who does not choose to share the sufferings of his native country, the labors of his kinsmen. He will succeed; he is a handsome youth, keener and more logical in his ideas and his words at eighteen than I was at thirty. He knows a multitude of things which had seemed useless to me and which I did not even suspect, until the leisure of the cloister enabled me to educate myself a little. He stands there, smiling at my enthusiasm, and, mounted on his sound sense, his premature experience, his knowledge of men, and his profound study of the science of personal interest, looks upon me in his mind as a teacher looks upon his pupil. He is the mature man; and I, an old brigand and old monk, am the fearless youth, the blind and artless child! Strange transposition! He represents the new generation, all for gold and glory; and I the dust of ruins, the silence of the tomb!' "Very good! but let the tocsin sound, let the volcano rumble, let the people roar, let that black point which we see in the roadstead, and which is the ship of State, bristle with guns to destroy the city at the first breath of aspiration toward liberty; let the brigands come down from the mountains, let the flames soar aloft to the clouds; and in that last convulsion of the dying fatherland, the young artist will take his brushes, he will go and take his seat upon a hill, out of all danger, and he will paint a picture, saying to himself: 'What an unfortunate people, and what a magnificent spectacle! I must hasten to put it on canvas! in an instant this people will have ceased to exist, its last hour is striking!' "Whereas the old monk will take his gun, which is not yet rusty; he will turn his sleeves back to the shoulder, and without stopping to ask himself what will be the result of it all, he will rush into the scrimmage and will fight for his countrymen until his crushed and trampled body no longer resembles a human being. And I would rather die so, boy, than survive, as you will do, the destruction of my race!" "My father! my father! do not believe it," cried Michel, conquered and carried off his feet by the Capuchin's exaltation. "I am not a coward! and if my Sicilian blood flowed sluggishly on foreign soil, it is quickened by the fiery breath which your breast exhales. Do not crush me beneath that terrible malediction! Take me in your arms and set me on fire with your flames. With you I feel really alive, and this new life intoxicates and enraptures me!" "Good! here is an honest impulse at last!" said the monk, embracing him. "I like this better than the fine theories concerning art which you have persuaded your father to respect blindly."