Paolo was entirely remote from Maria's world. He had not yet even
grasped the fact of money, not thoroughly. He reckoned in land and olive
trees. So he had the old fatalistic attitude to his circumstances, even
to his food. The earth was the Lord's and the fulness thereof; also the
leanness thereof. Paolo could only do his part and leave the rest. If he
ate in plenty, having oil and wine and sausage in the house, and plenty
of maize-meal, he was glad with the Lord. If he ate meagrely, of poor
polenta, that was fate, it was the skies that ruled these things, and no
man ruled the skies. He took his fate as it fell from the skies.
Maria was exorbitant about money. She would charge us all she could for
what we had and for what was done for us.
Yet she was not mean in her soul. In her soul she was in a state of
anger because of her own closeness. It was a violation to her strong
animal nature. Yet her mind had wakened to the value of money. She knew
she could alter her position, the position of her children, by virtue of
money. She knew it was only money that made the difference between
master and servant. And this was all the difference she would
acknowledge. So she ruled her life according to money. Her supreme
passion was to be mistress rather than servant, her supreme aspiration
for her children was that in the end they might be masters and
not servants.
Paolo was untouched by all this. For him there was some divinity about a
master which even America had not destroyed. If we came in for supper
whilst the family was still at table he would have the children at once
take their plates to the wall, he would have Maria at once set the table
for us, though their own meal were never finished. And this was not
servility, it was the dignity of a religious conception. Paolo regarded
us as belonging to the Signoria, those who are elect, near to God. And
this was part of his religious service. His life was a ritual. It was
very beautiful, but it made me unhappy, the purity of his spirit was so
sacred and the actual facts seemed such a sacrilege to it. Maria was
nearer to the actual truth when she said that money was the only
distinction. But Paolo had hold of an eternal truth, where hers was
temporal. Only Paolo misapplied this eternal truth. He should not have
given Giovanni the inferior status and a fat, mean Italian tradesman the
superior. That was false, a real falsity. Maria knew it and hated it.
But Paolo could not distinguish between the accident of riches and the
aristocracy of the spirit. So Maria rejected him altogether, and went to
the other extreme. We were all human beings like herself; naked, there
was no distinction between us, no higher nor lower. But we were
possessed of more money than she. And she had to steer her course
between these two conceptions. The money alone made the real
distinction, the separation; the being, the life made the common level.
Paolo had the curious peasant's avarice also, but it was not meanness.
It was a sort of religious conservation of his own power, his own self.
Fortunately he could leave all business transactions on our account to
Maria, so that his relation with us was purely ritualistic. He would
have given me anything, trusting implicitly that I would fulfil my own
nature as Signore, one of those more godlike, nearer the light of
perfection than himself, a peasant. It was pure bliss to him to bring us
the first-fruit of the garden, it was like laying it on an altar.
And his fulfilment was in a fine, subtle, exquisite relationship, not of
manners, but subtle interappreciation. He worshipped a finer
understanding and a subtler tact. A further fineness and dignity and
freedom in bearing was to him an approach towards the divine, so he
loved men best of all, they fulfilled his soul. A woman was always a
woman, and sex was a low level whereon he did not esteem himself. But a
man, a doer, the instrument of God, he was really godlike.
Paolo was a Conservative. For him the world was established and divine
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