Yet we talked much, at one time and another, though we were
silent more; for the silences told more. Only our talk and our
silences were always of the present. It was understood that the
whole story of the past would come, some day, when I had strength for
it. Of the future we never spoke. I could not then have told why;
though now all too well I can.
Sick man though I was, bliss filled those days for me, and their
memory is steeped in bliss. Yet a thought began, after a while, to
trouble me. We were living on these poor Bavarelli, and, for aught I
knew, paying them not a penny. The good farmer might be grateful to
his priest-brother down yonder; but even if his gratitude were
inexhaustible we--strangers as we were--ought not to test it so.
To be sure, he and his wife wore a smile for us, morning and
evening--and this, though I had a notion that Donna Battestina was of
a saving disposition. I had heard the pair of them protest when the
Princess offered to make herself useful in the farm-work--for which
she was plainly unfit--or, failing that, in the housework. They had
made up their minds about us, that we were persons of gentle blood,
to whom all work must be derogatory.
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