Il Buon Di Si Conosce Da Mattina.

While Ibarra and Elias were on the lake, old Tasio, ill in his solitary little house, and Don Filipo, who had come to see him, were also talking of the country. For several days the old philosopher, or fool—as you find him—prostrated by a rapidly increasing feebleness, had not left his bed.

“The country,” he was saying to Don Filipo, “isn’t what it was twenty years ago.”

“Do you think so?”

“Don’t you see it?” asked the old man, sitting up. “Ah! you did not know the past. Hear the students of to-day talking. New names are spoken under the arches that once heard only those of Saint Thomas, Suarez, Amat, and the other idols of my day. In vain the monks cry from the chair against the demoralization of the times; in vain the convents extend their ramifications to strangle the new ideas. The roots of a tree may influence the parasites growing on it, but they are powerless against the bird, which, from the branches, mounts triumphant toward the sky!”