8
‘Ah, there’s plenty to be said about Padre Filippo,’ said the charwoman; and I should have liked to put her under examination, but that it would have been a breach of hospitality, as the other evidently did not like the interruption; so I was obliged to be satisfied with the testimony she had already afforded of the popularity of the saint. ‘Ha, good Padre Filippo, he was content to eat “black bread” like us’; and she took a hunch out of her pocket to show me; (it was only like our ‘brown bread.’)
‘There was no lack where he was. Once I know, with half a rubbio[8] of corn, he made enough to last all the community ten years,’ she, however, ran on to say before she could be dismissed.