"Ah! you are like Padre Angelo, are you?" rejoined the bandit, carelessly; "you are surprised that, when I pass this spot I don't drop on my knees and recite an _oremus_ for my father's soul? In order to go through with that classic ceremony three beliefs are requisite, none of which I have: first, that there is a God; second, that man has an immortal soul; third, that my prayers can serve the slightest purpose in case my father's soul is undergoing merited punishment. You consider me impious, I presume? I will bet that you are as much so as I am, and that if it weren't for the respect of other men and a sort of hypocritical sense of propriety to which everybody, even the man of intellect, feels bound to submit, you would say that I am perfectly right!" "I shall never submit to any hypocritical sense of propriety," replied Michel. "I believe firmly and sincerely in the three things in which you boast that you do not believe." "Ah! then you are horrified by my atheism?" "No, for I choose to believe that it is involuntary, and I have no right to be scandalized by an error, when my own mind certainly is not open to the absolute truth in many other respects. I am not a devotee, that I should blame and condemn those who don't think as I do. But I will tell you frankly that there is one sort of atheism which appals and disgusts me: that is atheism of the heart, and I am very much afraid that yours does not flow from the inclination of your mind alone." "Good! good! go on!" said the Piccinino, surrounding himself with clouds of tobacco smoke, with a careless vivacity, perhaps a little forced. "You think that I have a heart of stone, because I do not shed torrents of tears to my father's memory over this rock, which I am forced to pass every day, and on which I have sat a hundred times?" "I know that you lost him when you were so young that you could not regret his companionship. I know that you must be accustomed, almost indifferent, to the gloomy memories connected with this spot. I say everything to myself to excuse your lack of feeling, but it does not justify in my eyes the species of bravado with which you place before me, designedly, I believe, the strange spectacle. I never knew your father, and had no tie of kinship with him, and yet the fact that my uncle loved him dearly and that a portion of his life was made illustrious by patriotic and valorous deeds is enough to inspire me with profound respect beside his grave, and to make me feel distressed and offended by your attitude at this moment."