THE FOOL ERRANT - World eBook Library - World Public Library

me extremely, and was of great comfort and assistance, nor that, as the reader will soon see, I gave her, and with good reason,
respect, gratitude, a strong affection—as much of these as a man can give to any woman born. Of her feelings towards me at
this time I shall not attempt any relation. She herself had said that she loved me. Whether she meant by that more than a
sympathetic affection, a common cause, an adventure shared, a comradeship, I know not—or at least I did not know then. All I
have to add is, that she never betrayed it.
CHAPTER XIV. MY HAPPY DAYS; THEIR UNHAPPY END
I lived in Pistoja for a month or more, very happily, without money in my pocket or a house to my name, to the benefit of my
health and spirits and with no injury to my heart's treasure. I mean by that expression that I by no means, in the interests of my
new surroundings, forgot Donna Aurelia; on the contrary, I assured Virginia every day that expiation was extremely necessary
for me, and Aurelia's restoration to her husband a vital part of it. Virginia, without professing to understand me, fell in with my
convictions; but she replied to them that my Aurelia must either have gone to Siena, or be about to go. If the latter, we should
be in the way to meet her by staying in Pistoja; if she was already at home with her mother, the more time we left for the
soreness to subside the better it would be for all of us. I fell in with this line of argument, which seemed to me unanswerable,
because I was not then aware that the shorter way to Siena from Padua was by Arezzo.
I was now to learn that it was very possible, in a country where all classes save one were poor, to do away with the standard
which obtains all over the civilised world, and to measure men, not by what they have, but by what they are. For a man to be
without money where others have much is to be without foothold—the goal for any fribble's shot of contempt. It is as if he
stood naked in a well-dressed assembly. But where all are naked alike, no man need to be ashamed; and where all pockets are
empty, it is not singular to be without them; your wit becomes your stock in the funds, and your right hand your ready money.
So, I say, I found it to be; but I believe that wit and ready hand were alike Virginia's. I may have caught at the theory—hers
was the practice. Virginia's opinion was that work for hire was either done by habit or on compulsion. An ox, said she, draws
the plough, because his race have always drawn it; a peasant works afield, because he is part of the soil's economy. He comes
from it, he manures it, tills it, feeds off it, returns to it again. It is his cradle, his meat, his shroud, his grave. But in cities the case
is altered. Here man is predatory, solitary, prowling, not gregarious. Here, for a man of wits, his fellows are the field which he
tills. He is the best husbandman who can tickle the soil to his easiest profit, who can grow the finest crop at the least pains, and
get for little what is worth much. What, she would say, do we need which the city will not give us for the reaching out of a hand?
Shelter? A hundred houses stand empty week by week. Take any one of them; they are there to be chosen. Clothing? "Do you
know, Don Francesco, how small a part of the person the laws of morality compel you to cover? There is not a dust-box in
Pistoja but will give you a new suit to that measure every day." Food? "Have you ever asked yourself," she would exclaim,
"how many pounds of bread we throw to the dogs in the week? Enough to feed fifty packs of hounds." Drink? "It streams at
every street corner." "Thus," she would conclude, "are our necessities supplied. For luxuries we have the sun in sheltered
cloisters, the rain to cleanse the ways in which we walk, the splendours of the church to feast our eyes, the chances and changes
of the streets and taverns to keep our minds alert. No, no, Don Francis," quoth she, "let them sweat and grow thin who must.
We are free."
I could not admit all the conclusions of this philosophy, though I was not concerned to dispute them. But Virginia's theories of
life interested me extremely and her ability to apply them was extraordinary. Perhaps I was by predestination a vagabond, and
no doubt she was. All I can say is that if I myself became strong and healthy on those terms, Virginia bloomed like a wild rose
and seemed to grow in grace under my eyes. She devoted herself to me and kept me in excellent order; washed my shirt and
stockings at the fountain, kept my clothes neatly mended, buttons on my vest; brushed my cloak, clouted my shoes. She was
not inattentive to her own person either. She put her hair up into a coil and pinned it with a silver comb, kept herself clean, and
wore shoes and stockings. A pair of stays became her well, and a loose white kerchief for her bare neck. She showed to be a
beautiful girl. Her eyes lost their sombre regard, her colour cleared, her cheeks took rounder curves. Where she got her clothes,
where the food which made her sleek, where the happy light in her eyes, were mysteries to me. She seldom left me, she showed
no signs of having been at work; so far as I knew she had no friends in Pistoja and asked no extraordinary charities. I believed
that she shared in the distribution of alms at the gates of certain monasteries; I fancied once or twice that a look of recognition
passed between her and various persons as they met in the streets, but as she said nothing to me on the subject I made no
inquiries. There was no doubt of her devotion to myself; she never left me or met me again without kissing my hand; she always
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