which satisfied his conscience. It would doubtless be very amusing to
be revenged on the masons by drowning them in a cellar, with the
absolute certainty of never being suspected of the deed. The plan had
great attractions. The masons themselves should have known better than
to accept a job which belonged by right to him, and they undoubtedly
deserved to be drowned. Yet Toto somehow felt that as there was no
woman in the case he might some day, in his far old age, be sorry for
having killed several men in cold blood. It was really not strictly
moral, after all, especially as his grandfather's death had been
properly avenged by the death of the murderer.

As for allowing the government to have a share in the profits of the
discovery, that was not to be thought of. He was a Roman, and the
Italian government was his natural enemy. If he could have turned all
the "lost water" in the city upon the whole government collectively,
in the cellars of the Palazzo Conti, he would have felt that it was
strictly moral to do so. The government had stolen more than two years
of his life by making him serve in the army, and he was not going to
return good for evil. With beautiful simplicity of reasoning he cursed
the souls of the government's dead daily, as if it had been a family
of his acquaintance.

But the Pope was quite another personage. There had always been popes,
and there always would be till the last judgment, and everything
connected with the Vatican would last as long as the world itself.
Toto was a conservative. His work had always kept him among lasting
things of brick and stone, and he was proud of never having taken a
day's wages for helping to put up the modern new-fangled buildings he
despised. The most lasting of all buildings in the world was the
Vatican, and the most permanent institution conceivable was the Pope.