As for his
own soul's weal, it probably was sufficiently safeguarded by the
paramount nature of the duty which required him to do the will of
his employer; or, in any case, what was his soul that any care for
it should come into competition with the will of the Marchese
Lamberto di Castelmare? Niccolo would have been profoundly ashamed
at admitting to any one of his own class that the family he served
were not so great and so masterful as to render it a matter of
course that their will must override all other considerations
whatsoever.
To old Niccolo it was indeed as a symptom of the end of all things--
as a rising of the powers of darkness against the established order
of God's world that a Marchese di Castelmare should be arrested. It
was incomprehensible to him. There was but one power great enough,
as he understood matters, to accomplish so dread a catastrophe; and
that was the power of the Marchese Lamberto himself. And he inclined
accordingly to the belief, that if indeed the Marchese Ludovico were
in prison, the truth was that for some inscrutable reason the
Marchese Lamberto chose that so it should be.
"Is it really true, Signor Giovacchino," whispered the old man,
coming close up to the lawyer, as the latter was crossing the
stable-yard; "is it really true that the Marchese Ludovico has been
put in prison?"
"Well, that much is true, I am afraid, Niccolo; but I hope it may
not be for long," said Fortini, pausing in his walk, as though he
were not unwilling to talk to the old man.
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