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.
Gigi, who made wretched, perishable objects of wood and nails and
glue, such as doors and windows, sometimes launched into modern ideas.
Toto would have liked to know how many times the doors and windows of
the Palazzo Conti had been renewed since the walls had been built! He
pitied Gigi always, and sometimes he despised him, though they were
good friends enough in the ordinary sense.
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