"This," answered Toto, with more feeling than accuracy, "is the
blessed soul of my grandfather."
"He shall have Christian burial in a few days," Malipieri said
gravely.
Toto shrugged his shoulders, not irreverently, but as if to say that
when a dead man has been without Christian burial sixty years, it
cannot make any difference whether he gets it after all or not. "The
crowbar is still good," Toto said, stooping down to disengage it from
the skeleton's grasp. But Malipieri laid a hand on his shoulder, for
it occurred to him that the mason, armed with an iron bar, might be a
dangerous adversary if he tried to escape.
"You do not need that just now," said the architect.
Toto glanced at Malipieri furtively and saw that he was understood. He
stood upright, affecting indifference. They went on, through the
breach to which the slit had been widened. Toto moved slowly, and held
his candle down to the running water in the channel.
"There is plenty of it," he observed.
"Where does it come from?" asked Malipieri, suddenly, in the hope of
an unguarded answer.
"From heaven," answered Toto without hesitation; "and everything that
falls from heaven is good," he added, quoting an ancient proverb.
"What would happen if we closed the entrance, so that it could not get
in at all?"
"The book of wisdom," Toto replied, "is buried under Pasquino.
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