the lad continued to pour out detail after detail, and his listeners to heap benediction upon benediction.
Suddenly a hurried step was heard on the stairs, and the bell rang violently. The door opened, and a tall, pale priest, with a drawn mouth, appeared on the threshold. He was a recent acquaintance of the family, who felt no great sympathy for him, but who received him courteously more out of respect for his cloth than out of regard for his merits.
As he entered, all but the son sprang up and surrounded him with excited exclamations.
"Well, have you heard the news? Thank God, it's all ended! The hand of God is in it! What do you think of it all? Tell us, let us hear your opinion!"
"But what news?"asked the priest, looking from one to the other with astonished eyes.
In wild haste, and all speaking at once, they poured out the story of the festival, the forgiveness, the reconciliation.
The priest stared at them, with the look of a man who finds himself unexpectedly surrounded by lunatics; then, with a withering glance at the boy, and a smile of malignant triumph—
"Luckily," he said, "there is not a word of truth in it!"
"Not a word of truth in it?" they clamored, turning upon their informant.
The boy, unmoved by their agitation, returned the priest's look half-scornfully, half-sadly.
"Your reverence, don't say fortunately. Since you are an Italian, say rather, 'Alas, that it is not so!'"
For a moment the others stood aghast; then, angered, as people will be, rather against those who undeceive them than against those who delude them, they turned towards the priest, involuntarily echoing the boy's words: "He's right, your reverence! Say rather, 'Alas, that it is not so!'"
The priest pointed to his own breast with a long knotty finger.
"I?" he exclaimed bitterly, "never!"
At these words, the boy's father, rudely roused from his mood of tender exaltation, and bursting, after his wont, into sudden fury, stretched his arm towards the priest, with a cry that rang through the room like a pistol-shot: "Out of my house this instant!"
The priest stalked out, slamming the door. The lad's arms were about his father's neck; and the old man, laying his hands on his son's head, said gently: "I forgive you."
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