'Very original,' said Orsino. 'It had never struck me.'
'I would also have made men so that their hair should stand on end when they are telling lies, as the donkey lifts his tail when he brays. That would also have been good. But the Creator did not think of it in time. Patience! They say it will be different in Paradise. Hope costs little, but you cannot cook it.'
'You are a philosopher,' observed Ippolito.
'No, signore,' answered the sacristan. 'You have been misinformed. I am a grocer, or, to say it better, I am the brother of the grocer. When it is the season, after Santa Teresa's day, I kill the pigs and salt the hams and make the sausages. I am also the sacristan, but that yields me little; for although there is much devotion in our town at festivals, there is little of it among private persons. Sometimes an old woman brings a candle to the Madonna, and she gives a soldo to have it lighted. What is that? Can one live with a soldo now and then? But my brother, thanks be to Heaven, is well-to-do, and a widower. He makes me live with him. He had a son once, but, health to you, Christ and the sea took the boy when he was not yet twenty. Therefore I live with him, to divert him a little, and I kill the pigs, speaking with respect of your face.'
'And what do you do during the rest of the year?' enquired Orsino, as they neared the gate.
'Eh, I live so. According to the season, I pack oranges, I trim vines, I make the wine for my brother, and the oil, I take the honey and the wax from the bees, I graft good fruit upon the wild pear trees—what should I do? A little of everything, in order of eat.'
'But your brother seems to be rich. Have you nothing?'
'Signore, to me money comes like a freshet in spring and runs away, and immediately I am dry. But to my brother it comes like water into a well, and it stays there. Men are thus made. The one gives, the other takes; the one shuts his hand, the other opens his. My mother, blessed soul, used to say to me, "Take care, my son, for when you are old, you will go in rags!" But thanks be to Heaven, I have my brother, and I am as you see me.'
They came to the little church with its freshly whitewashed walls and tiled roof.
'This is the chapel of Santa Vittoria,' said the fat sacristan. 'The church in the town is dedicated to Our Lady of Victories, but this is the chapel of the saint, and there is more devotion here, though it is small, and at the great feast of Santa Vittoria the procession starts from here and goes to the church, and returns here.'