As soon as she came into the sacristy, which was even more archaic and more mystical than the church itself, she regretted it. "What have I to do in here?" she asked herself. "What have I to give away? I own nothing but a couple of cartloads of garden truck. I certainly can't present the saints with a few baskets of artichokes!"
At one side of the room there was a long table at which a priest stood recording in a register all that was pledged to the saints. Concenza heard how one promised to present the old church with a sum of money, while a second promised to give his gold watch, and a third her pearl earrings.
Concenza stood all the while down by the door. Her last poor copper had been spent to procure a few delicacies for her son. She saw a number of persons who appeared to be no richer than herself buying wax candles and silver hearts. She turned her skirt pocket inside out, but she could not afford even that much.
She stood and waited so long that finally she was the only stranger in the sacristy. The priests walking about in there looked at her a little astonished. Then she took a step or two forward. She seemed at the start uncertain and embarrassed, but after the first move she walked lightly and briskly up to the table. "Your Reverence!" she said to the priest, "write that Concenza Zamponi, who was sixty last year, on Saint John the Baptist's Day, gives all her remaining years to the Pope, that the thread of his life may be lengthened!"
The priest had already begun writing. He was probably very tired after having worked at this register the whole night, and thought no more about the sort of things he was recording. But now he stopped short in the middle of a word and looked quizzically at Signora Concenza. She met his glance very calmly.
"I am strong and well, your Reverence," said she. "I should probably have lived out my allotted seventy years. It is at least ten years that I am giving to the Holy Father."
The priest marked her zeal and reverence and offered no objections. "She is a poor woman," thought he. "She has nothing else to give."
"It is written, my daughter," he said.
When old Concenza came out from the church, it was so late that the commotion had ceased and the streets were absolutely deserted. She found herself in a remote part of the city, where the gas lamps were so far apart that they dispelled only a very little of the darkness. All the same, she walked on briskly. She felt very solemn within and was certain that she had done something which would make many people happy.
As she walked up the street, she suddenly got the impression that a live being circled above her head. In the darkness, between the tall houses, she thought she could distinguish a pair of large wings, and she even fancied she heard the sound of their beating.