'One more crime—that!—of your Parliamentary Italy! What harm had the poor things done that they should be turned out? You heard what that carabiniere said?—that they farmed half the plateau. And now look at that! I feel as I do when I see a blackbird's nest on the ground, that some beastly boy has been robbing and destroying. I want to get at the boy.'
'The boy would plead perhaps that the blackbirds were too many—and the fruit too scant. Is it wise, my dear sir, to stand there in the damp?'
The voice was pitched low. Lucy detected the uneasiness of the speaker.
'One moment. You remember, I was here before in November. This summer night is a new impression. What a pure and exquisite air!'—Lucy could hear the long inhalation that followed the words. 'I recollect a vague notion of coming to read here. The massaja told us they took in people for the summer. Ah! There are some lights, I see, in those upper windows.'
'There are rooms in several parts of the building. Mine were in that further wing. They were hardly watertight,' said the priest hastily, and in the same subdued voice.
'It is a place that one might easily rest in—or hide in,' said Manisty with a new accent on the last words. 'To-morrow morning I will ask the woman to let me walk through it again.—And to-morrow midday, I must be off.'
'So soon? My old Francesca will owe you a grudge. She is almost reconciled to me because you eat—because you praised her omelet.'
'Ah! Francesca is an artist. But—as I told you—I am at present a wanderer and a pilgrim. We have had our talk—you and I—grasped hands, cheered each other, "passed the time of day," undweiter noch—noch weiter—mein treuer Wanderstab!'
The words fell from the deep voice with a rich significant note. Lucy heard the sigh, the impatient, despondent sigh, that followed.
They moved away. The whiffs of tobacco still came back to her on the light westerly wind; the sound of their voices still reached her covetous ear. Suddenly all was silent.