Paolo was mistaken in actual life, but Maria was
ultimately mistaken.
Paolo, conservative as he was, believing that a priest must be a priest
of God, yet very rarely went to church. And he used the religious oaths
that Maria hated, even _Porca-Maria_. He always used oaths, either
Bacchus or God or Mary or the Sacrament. Maria was always offended. Yet
it was she who, in her soul, jeered at the Church and at religion. She
wanted the human society as the absolute, without religious
abstractions. So Paolo's oaths enraged her, because of their profanity,
she said. But it was really because of their subscribing to another
superhuman order. She jeered at the clerical people. She made a loud
clamour of derision when the parish priest of the village above went
down to the big village on the lake, and across the piazza, the quay,
with two pigs in a sack on his shoulder. This was a real picture of the
sacred minister to her.
One day, when a storm had blown down an olive tree in front of the
house, and Paolo and Giovanni were beginning to cut it up, this same
priest of Mugiano came to San Gaudenzio.
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