Providence had given the impulsive Michel the only guide he could ever have accepted; for that young man was entirely different from his father in several respects. He was restless, suspicious, slightly egotistical, with a decided tendency toward ambition, instability and anger. And yet his also was a noble nature, because it was sincerely in love with the noble and the great, and surrendered enthusiastically when its confidence was justified. But it is beyond question that his temperament was less happy than it might have been, that his active and inquisitive intellect often fed upon itself; and that his sensitive and excitable mind sometimes made a desperate onslaught on the tranquillity of his heart. If a rough hand, the heavy hand of a mechanic desperately bent upon money-making, or subject to all the jealous indignation peculiar to the republican spirit, had undertaken to mould young Michel's mobile nature and discontented mind, it would have driven them to exasperation and would speedily have shattered or destroyed them. The improvident and cheerful temper of Pier-Angelo had acted as a counterpoise and sedative upon his passionate instincts. He rarely talked the language of cold reason to him, and never thwarted his fickle inclinations. But the fearless heedlessness of certain natures has a sympathetic effect which makes us blush for our weaknesses, and acts upon us more powerfully by example, by precepts nobly and simply put in execution, than all the speeches and sermons in the world could do. It was by this means that Pier-Angelo, while seeming to accede to Michel's desires and caprices, still exerted the only ascendancy to which he could have been induced to submit. VIII THE INTRUDER Once more, when he saw his father doing the work of two, Michel was ashamed of his absent-mindedness, and hastened to assist him. There was still a temporary staircase to be erected at one side of the ball-room, to communicate with a gallery on the floor above, and afford the anticipated crowd an additional artery of circulation. They could already hear numerous carriages rumbling in the distance over that magnificent street which is proudly called the _Ætnean Road_, and which passes through Catania in a straight line, from the water's edge to the foot of Ætna; as if, to quote a traveller, "the people who had erected their superb palaces along that road had intended to afford the angry volcano a way befitting its majesty."