according to what one believes to be the truth, is a duty; therefore, why did they persecute him?
"You cannot change?" said the professor, bending over him and fixing on his face two squinting eyes. "You cannot change?"
Don Rocco kept silent.
The professor straightened up and started on his walk again.
"Very well," he said, with ostentatious quiet. "You are at liberty to do so."
He suddenly turned to Don Rocco, who was following him with heavy steps.
"Gracious!" he exclaimed with annoyance, "do you really think that you have in your house a regular saint? Do you take no account of the gossip, of the scandal? To go against the whole country, to go against those who give you your living, to go against your own good, against Providence, for that creature? Really, if I did not know you, my dear Don Rocco, I would not know what to think."
Don Rocco squirmed, winking furiously, as if he were fighting against secret anguish, and breathless, as if words were trying to break forth involuntarily.
"I cannot change; it is just that," said he when he got through his grimaces. "I cannot."
"But why, in the name of heaven?"
"Because I cannot, conscientiously."
Don Rocco finally raised his eyes. "I have
