“What are you thinking about so earnestly?” asked the grandfather after a considerable silence between them.
“I was longing for you to tell me about your life in winter when the boys have gone home. I wonder if you stay in the tower all alone or if you have to leave despite your being so happy here,” replied Vinzi.
“I have not gone to the valley for at least ten years and I do not care to,” said the grandfather, inhaling a deep breath of the sunny mountain air. “I could neither stand the heavy air nor the crowds of people who get in each other’s way. I don’t have to live alone in the tower because the monks in the hospice up there are my good friends. You know where it is, don’t you?”
“No,” replied Vinzi, “and I don’t even know what kind of place it is.”
“It is a good place,” said the old man. “They receive there in winter poor travellers who cannot go on for the cold and the masses of snow, and whom they often find lying outside half frozen. The good monks who live in the hospice fetch them in to a warm fire, then give them strengthening food and drink till they are able to travel on their way. They are my very best friends, and when the boys drive the cattle home in the autumn, I go up to live with them. You may have seen the hospice, for it is just a little way up in that direction.”
“Oh, yes, I remember it now,” exclaimed Vinzi, for the picture of a big stone house on the road rose before him. He remembered having seen it on his walk and he recalled how still and dead everything about it had seemed, exactly as if no one lived there.
“A warm chimney corner is always ready for me there,” continued the old man. “I sit there all winter long and hear many a good word from the monks. Once in a while I see a poor wretch who would have perished miserably but for their help. After being cared for he is able to take up his load again with fresh courage. I hear things about the world once in a while that make me glad that I am so far away.”
“I can well believe it,” replied Vinzi understandingly.
“How would it be if we made a little music now?” asked the grandfather after a pause. Then he set the empty pitcher, the plate and knife under the bench in order to make more room. “What would you like best to play?”
