‘Come in, Bianca bella, I have two mushrooms in oil on the hearth, that, if I don’t mistake, you will thank me right prettily for when you have eaten!’
‘O bella!’ cries the girl laughing, ‘Bella come il fondo della padella’ (pretty as the bottom of the frying-pan), ‘as the proverb says. You don’t take me in with that kind of fun. I come on business.’
But even while she speaks Bianca has seated herself on the bench beside the hearth, and is proving the merits of the mushrooms.
‘How goes it, Ninetta?’ says she the while to the old servant. You have a fine time of it with this man, I can take my oath. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll have nothing to do with men.’
Master and maid burst into a loud laugh.
‘I suppose it’s not to see the colour of my ink that you’ve come again to-night, then, you little liar.’
The Cappellano makes as though to pinch her cheek, but thinks better of it, for the girls of this village are very proud.
‘Well, well, I have a new bottle of beautiful red! Oh, what funghi, eh? Come into my study. I never do business in the kitchen. Ninetta has the long tongue; and a love-letter, why, it’s as delicate a matter as the confessional!’
‘Vossignoria can easily jest, because you are but a priest, who knows nothing of these things’—Bianca blushes and is pleased as she says this—‘but indeed it is of no love that I speak to-night, and that you might have known me better than to suppose!’
More laughing; nobody believes a word that anybody else says! More chattering, and a little good, sound gossip; then the Cappellano leads the way to his study. It is not very different from the kitchen. Instead of a hearth in the middle of the floor, there is an old, rough-hewn table; instead of bright copper and earthenware vessels upon the walls, there are strangely-coloured maps of the two hemispheres. Two or three books bound in white calf—breviaries perhaps—lean to one or other side of the bookcase shelves; in the table’s midst is an ink-stand with a sponge soaked into it, a sand-pot, and a steel pen. The Cappellano sits before these implements, takes a sheet of pink paper from a drawer, dips the pen in the ink, shakes it, writes the date, and awaits further orders of Bianca, who stands smiling to herself in a corner.