"How much money have you?"
"Not any, Father. Beyond one volume of my breviary and the clothes you see me wearing, I have nothing in this world."
The old man emitted his amazement in a protracted, clucking noise. Then he rose abruptly and commanded:
"Come with me."
In an otherwise empty room at the head of the stairs stood a large clothes-press. As the cura threw open its doors a waft of camphor and lavender filled Antonio's nostrils. Unfolding some linen wrappers the cura took out a suit of black clothes, such as country tailors make for doctors and lawyers and officials.
"I have worn these clothes twice," said the cura, "once at the Bishop's funeral and once at my niece's wedding. Ah, my friend, I was a man in those days, not a shrimp. That was before I had my fever. I could eat a dinner with any man in the diocese; yes, and empty a bottle too. But since I've lost my appetite and come down to skin and bone, what good are these clothes to me? They'd flap about on me like a sack on a scarecrow. Take them, my son, and a good riddance to them."
As the cura had just consumed fully three pounds' weight of bacalhau, hake, beef, vegetables, and dark bread, to say nothing of the strawberries and the eggs, Antonio's gravity was shaken. His host was still so rosy and rotund that the young monk dared not picture him as he must have been before he sank to his shrimp-like and skin-and-bone condition. But it was only for a moment that he found the old man ridiculous. The main thing was that he was relieving Antonio's need with a tact as beautiful as his generosity.
The cura went to the window while Antonio donned the clothes. They fitted him ill, but not intolerably. Indeed, the cura, when he turned round, affirmed that there was not a tailor in Lisbon itself who could have fitted Antonio better. There was a difficulty about a hat, the monk's head being larger than the cura's; and it was finally agreed that a decent hat must be dispensed with until the traveler reached the nearest town, and that an improvisation of straw or grass must meanwhile serve in its stead.
Leading the way to his bedroom the old man unlocked a large coffer of chestnut-wood, and drew up from its depths a tarnished silver snuff-box. Within the snuff-box nestled a tiny leather pouch. The cura shook its contents into his left palm. Altogether there were eleven pieces of English gold, seven whole sovereigns and four halves. Such English pounds, libras esterlinas, and "half-pounds" were almost the sole gold currency in Portugal.
"I am going to lend you five pounds," said the cura. "If you can save enough to repay it while I am alive, so much the better. If you can do nothing till after I am dead, have Masses said for my soul. Here, take it, my son, and God bless you."