The young man did not think it was a very hard injunction, but when it came to performing it he felt its effect. At first he used to go three times a day, but he was so ashamed of ringing the saint’s bell so often, that very soon he went no more than once a day. That dropped to two or three times a week, then once a week, and long before next Easter he had given her up and had become all his parents could wish him to be.
7
‘There was another such case; just such another, only this man had a wife too, but he was so infatuated with the other, he would have it she loved him the better of the two.’
‘Yes; and the other was a miniature-painter,’ broke in corroboratively a kind of charwoman who had come in to tidy the place while we were talking.
‘Yes, she was a miniature-painter,’ continued the narrator; ‘but it’s I who am telling the story.’
‘Padre Filippo said, “How much do you allow her?”’
‘Twenty pauls a day,’ broke in the charwoman.
‘Forty scudi a month,’ said the narrator positively.
‘There’s not much difference,’ interposed I, fearing I should lose the story between them. ‘Twenty pauls a day is sixty scudi a month. It doesn’t matter.’