"My child!" The voice was that of a wolfish false friar who, seeing her pass quickly near by, broke off in threat, solicitation and appeal for sous, to intercept her. "Aren't you in a hurry, my child?"
"It may be," she answered steadily, with no effort to conceal her aversion at sight of the gleaming eyes and teeth. "Too much so, to speak with you, who are no friar!"
"What mean you?" His expression, ingratiating before, had darkened, and from his mean eyes shot a malignant look; she met it with fearless disdain.
"That you make pretext of this holy day to rob the people—as if they are not poor enough!"
"Ban you with bell, book and candle! Your tongue is too sharp, my girl!" he snarled, but did not linger long, finding the flashing glance, the contemptuous mien, or the truth of her words, little to his liking. That he profited not by the last, however, was soon evident, as with amulets and talismans for a bargain, again he moved among the crowd, conjuring by a full calendar of saints, real and imaginary, and professing to excommunicate, in an execrable confusion of monkish gibberish, where the people could not, or would not, comply with his demands.
"So they are—poor enough!" Leaning on a stick, an aged fishwife who had drawn near and overheard part of the dialogue between the thrifty rogue and the girl, now shook her withered head. "Yet still to be cozened! Never too poor to be cozened!" she repeated in shrill falsetto tones.
"And why," sharply my lady turned to the crone, "why are they so poor? The lands are rich—the soil fertile."
"Why?" more shrilly. "You must come from some far-off place not to know. Why? Don't you, also, have to pay métayage to some great lord? And banalité here, and banalité there, until—"
"But surely, if you applied to your great lord, your Governor; if you told him—"
"If we told him!" Brokenly the woman laughed. "Yes; yes; of course; if—"