THE FOOL ERRANT - World eBook Library - World Public Library

"I say," I replied, "that I am thankful for your kindness to one who has used you ill. My maladroitness was horrible."
"Your amendment was, however, handsomely done," she said—and added fiercely, "Let me tell you that nobody has ever
touched my foot with his lips before. I owe you for that."
"You are generous indeed, Virginia," I said; "I shall be proud to be in your debt for a lodging." We were not long in reaching
Condoglia, which, so far as I could see, was no more than a row of hovels on the summit of a crag; and then we entered the
meanest dwelling I have ever seen.
It was like a gipsy's tent, made of mud, thatched with furze, and consisted of a single room, on whose floor of beaten dung
huddled a family of starving wretches—hollow-eyed, pale, gaunt, and almost naked; a round dozen of them. There were a man,
bright and peaked with hunger; a poor drudge of a woman, worn to a rag before her time, with a dying child upon her empty
breast; a grown son and seven children—all crouched there close together like pigs in a yard to keep life in their bodies. I saw
no signs of food, and I reflected that outside this misery and want the rich Tuscan earth was a-steam with fecund heat, and bore
a thousandfold for every germinating seed. To them, faint and desperate as they were, the entrance of Virginia, herself as thin as
a rod, and of myself, a stranger, caused no surprise. They looked to the door as we came in, but neither stirred nor spoke;
indeed, it was Virginia who did what was necessary. She brought from her bosom a loaf of rye-bread; she fetched a flask of oil;
she broke up the one and soaked it in the other and distributed the victual—first to the guest, then to the children and her
parents, last to herself. The bread was musty, the oil rank; but the children tore at it as if they had been young wolves—all but
one, who was too weak to hold its own, and might have died that night had I not taken it upon my knee and put some food
between its grey lips. No one spoke; it grew dark; there was no candle or other light. I sat awhile in the absolute silence, then
fell fast asleep with the child on my knees, wrapped in my cloak. In the morning, when I awoke, Virginia was gone.
Deeply touched by what I had seen, and still more by the desperate patience with which afflictions so bitter were borne, before
I went away I gave the husbandman all the silver money I had left, some few liras, and reserved for my future needs one single
ducat, the last gold piece I had. The man thanked me exorbitantly in a voice broken with gratitude, yet almost in the same
breath admitted the insufficiency of the gift.
"We shall send Virginia into Pistoja to-morrow," he said. "It has come to this, that her brothers and sisters are dying, and she
must do what she can."
I asked, "Will you send her to beg?"
The question was evaded. "She'll do well enough when she's been fed and cleaned, for she's a well-made, handsome girl. There
is a great man there—we shall keep the wolf from the door by what she sends us-and maybe have something over. Misery
teaches all trades to a man, you see."
I trembled and turned pale. "I entreat you," I said, "to do no such dreadful thing. I have serious reasons for asking—very
serious. There is one thing which we cannot afford to lose, even if we lose life itself in keeping it. And it is a thing for which we
pay so dear now and again that we cannot value it too highly. I mean our self-respect."
The peasant looked round upon his hovel and sleeping brood with those famine-bright eyes of his. "Must I keep my self-respect
sooner than some of them? Must I not throw one to the wolves sooner than a half-dozen?" He gave over his unhappy survey
with a shrug. "It seems I have nothing to get rid of here," he said quietly, "except that valuable thing."
I pulled out my gold piece. "Will that keep it safe for you?" I asked. The gleam of the man's eyes upon it was terrible to see.
"Will you engage the word of a man that, in exchange for this, you will never do what you have proposed?"
"St. Mary help me, I will, sir," he said. The coin changed hands.
"Where is Virginia?" I asked him, and he told me that she and Gino her brother had been up before the light and were spreading
dung. "Now," said I, "it is proper that I should tell you that I am without a farthing in the world. I say that, not because I grudge
you the money, but that you may see how entirely I trust you."
35