A neighbouring contadino turns up next, to bargain for the sale of a calf. Here the Prevosto is all alert. His thoughts would be distracted by gardening. The affair must be concluded over a bottle of sour Monferrato.
‘Two marenghi—why, you take me for a fool! I will give you one, and pay you for ten francs with a portion of the hay from the field of the marshes!’
‘Per Bacco! But I also am no sucking child! The hay is all rotten. No—a marengo and fifteen francs on this table, as the Madonna hears me swear it.’
The bargain is made, the old Parroco has none the worst of it, and the maid, or rather the mistress, Caterina, announces, ‘Here is the wife of squinting Giacomo, who bids you quickly to the cottage of Maddalena of the cherry orchard!’
‘I come—I come quickly; but why the woman should have owed me such a grudge as to die when the polenta is cooked and I faint from hunger! These peasants are uneducated!’ And he hurries to shrive the departing soul—none the less tender-hearted, none the less moved for his rough words of five minutes before; none the less ready, either, to advise the girl whom he meets on his downward path as to the superior usefulness of wool over cotton for a dress, be it for wedding or prima communione.
The men chatter to him of crops, the women of sick children, of inconsiderate husbands, of the expense of linen fabric, of the scarcity in eggs, and all the while he rapidly recites to himself the obligatory office, answering merrily to questions at every breathing space.
Then home to boiled beans and oil, to the perusing of a newspaper, or perhaps, even of a book and certainly to a sharp word-tussle with Luigina, his cousin of upstairs, or with Caterina, the rough and faithful companion of his long years of contented loneliness and poverty. Such is the parish priest.
The Priest’s Serving Maid.
The little footpath that, amid pear and cherry trees, and vine-trelissed ‘pergola,’ runs up alongside of the church, leads to the threshold of the prevosto’s house. The establishment does not boast many rooms, and these are rough and poorly built, with great bare rafters, whitewashed walls and deep embrasured windows. The walls are ill-plastered, so that, when the weather has been hot and the rains heavy, spiders and scorpions can creep from out the cracks; the doors are cumbrous and unsightly, with great chinks at the hinges, but the rooms are large and lofty as far as may be, and in summer the curato is cosy enough.
It is the kitchen that you must enter first, and through it alone can you pass into the rest of the house. Caterina, the maid-of-all-work, stands before the dresser, rolling out the paste for minestra. Beans and potatoes, sliced gourd and mushrooms, tomatoes, sweet herbs, and the unfailing garlic are already cooking, so that the kitchen is filled with a fragrant odour. Caterina rolls out the paste, throwing it gracefully over the rolling-pin, wielding and handling it artfully. She is a gaunt, threadbare-looking woman, of some five-and-thirty years—but the prevosto is gaunt too, and sallow; the two match well together.