she taught her boy to value and respect the soil.

"As you treat the ground ill or well, so will your ground treat you,"
she said to him.

She always wore the costume of the province, which was similar to
that of the Abruzzo villages, and suited her cast of features and her
strong and haughty carriage. On feast-days she wore three strings of
fine pearls round her throat, and bracelets of massive gold and of
fine workmanship, so many in number that her arms were stiff with
them; they had been her mother's and grandmother's and
great-grandmother's, and had been in her dower. To sell or pawn them
under stress of need, had such occurred, would never have seemed to
any of her race to be possible. It would have seemed as sacrilegious
as to take the chalice off the church altar, and melt its silver and
jewels in the fire. When she should go to her grave these ornaments
would pass to Adone as heirlooms; none of her family were living.

"Never talk of death, mother," he said, whenever she spoke of these
things. "Death is always listening; and if he hear his name he taps
the talker on the shoulder, just to show that he is there and must be
reckoned with."

"Not so, my son!" replied Clelia Alba, with a sigh. "He has every
soul of us written down in his books from the time we are born; we
all have our hour to go and none of us can alter it."

"I do not believe that," said Adone. "We kill ourselves oftentimes;
or we hasten our end, as drunkards do."