the thirty pounds a year which the State pays to such parish priests;
and he had nothing else.

He was a tall and naturally stately man, but his form was bent by
that want of good food which is the chronic malady of many parts of
Italy. There was little to eat in Ruscino, and had there been more
there would have been no one who knew how to prepare it. Bread,
beans, a little oil, a little lard, herbs which grew wild, goat's
milk, cheese, and at times a few small river fish; these were all his
sustenance: his feasts and his fasts were much alike, and the little
wine he had he gave away to the sick and the aged. For this reason
his high stature was bent and his complexion was of the clear, yellow
pallor of old marbles; his profile was like the Caesarian outline on
a medallion, and his eyes were deep wells of impenetrable thought;
his finely cut lips rarely smiled, they had always upon them an
expression of bitterness, as though the apple of life in its eating
had been harsh and hard as a crab.

His presbytery was close to his church, a dreary place with only a
few necessaries and many books within it, and his only servant was an
old man, lame and stupid, who served also as sacristan.

It was a cure of souls which covered many miles but counted few
persons. Outside the old walls of Ruscino nearly all the land of vale
of Edera was untilled, and within them a few poverty-stricken people
dragged out their days uncared for by any one, only remembered by the
collectors of fiscal dues. "_They_ never forget," said the people.
"As soon as one is born, always and in every season, until one's
bones rattle down into the ditch of the dead, _they_ remember
always."