I asked, "Will you send her to beg?"
The question was evaded. "She'll do well enough when she's been fed and cleaned, for she's a well-made, handsome girl. There is a great man there—we shall keep the wolf from the door by what she sends us-and maybe have something over. Misery teaches all trades to a man, you see."
I trembled and turned pale. "I entreat you," I said, "to do no such dreadful thing. I have serious reasons for asking—very serious. There is one thing which we cannot afford to lose, even if we lose life itself in keeping it. And it is a thing for which we pay so dear now and again that we cannot value it too highly. I mean our self-respect."
The peasant looked round upon his hovel and sleeping brood with those famine-bright eyes of his. "Must I keep my self-respect sooner than some of them? Must I not throw one to the wolves sooner than a half-dozen?" He gave over his unhappy survey with a shrug. "It seems I have nothing to get rid of here," he said quietly, "except that valuable thing."
I pulled out my gold piece. "Will that keep it safe for you?" I asked. The gleam of the man's eyes upon it was terrible to see. "Will you engage the word of a man that, in exchange for this, you will never do what you have proposed?"
"St. Mary help me, I will, sir," he said. The coin changed hands.
"Where is Virginia?" I asked him, and he told me that she and Gino her brother had been up before the light and were spreading dung. "Now," said I, "it is proper that I should tell you that I am without a farthing in the world. I say that, not because I grudge you the money, but that you may see how entirely I trust you."
"You may trust me indeed, sir," said Virginia's father with tears, and I took my departure.
The peasant escorted me some half-mile of the road to Pistoja. He explained that Condoglia and all the country for ten miles square about it belonged to the Marchese Semifonte, who had a palace in Pistoja, another in Florence, several villas upon the neighbouring heights, and a fine eye for a handsome girl. It would have been at his door first of all, as to the proper and appointed connoisseur, that the young Virginia would have knocked, with her sixteen years for sale. For, in every sense of the word, said her father, she was his property—a chattel of his. I thanked God heartily that I had found a use for my gold piece, and a salve for his conscience into the bargain. I felt, and told myself more than once, that any tragic fortune to that nymph of the wild wood, not averted by me, would bring the guilt of it to my door.
I may as well confess, too, that her haggard beautiful face and thinly gowned shape were seldom out of my thoughts upon my two days' further journeying to Pistoja. On the other hand, with curious levity of fancy, I was convinced that before I had been many hours in that my first Tuscan city, I should be bedewing the feet of Aurelia with my tears. And so the sweet rainbow vision of my adored mistress also danced before my eyes as I fared, and disputed with that queen of rustic misery for the mastery of me.