"Did your father hasten his end?" said his mother. "Did not some one
break that olive branch? It was not the tree itself, though the
Ruscino folks would have it cut down because they called it a felon."

"Was it not the devil?" said Adone.

He believed in the devil, of course, as he had been taught to do; and
had he not as a child met the infernal effigy everywhere--in marble,
in stone, in wood, in colour, in the church and outside it, on
water-spout and lamp-iron, and even on the leaves of his primer? But
it seemed to him that the devil had "_troppo braccia_" given him, was
allowed too long a tether, too free a hand; if indeed he it were that
made everything go wrong, and Adone did not see who else it could be.
Here, in the vale of Edera, all the world believed in Satan as in
holy water, or in daily bread.

Clelia Alba crossed herself hastily, for she was a pious woman.

"We are talking blasphemy, my son," she said gravely. "Of course
there is the good God who orders the number of our days for each of
us, and is over us all."

Adone was silent. To him it seemed doubtful. Did the good God kill
the pretty little children as the butcher in a city killed his lambs?
But he never contradicted or vexed his mother; he loved her with a
great and tender affection. He was less ignorant than she was, and
saw many things she could not see; he was, as it were, on a hilltop
and she down in a valley, but he had a profound respect for her; he
obeyed her implicitly, as if he were still a child, and he thought
the world held no woman equal to her.