your debt for a lodging." We were not long in reaching Condoglia, which,
so far as I could see, was no more than a row of hovels on the summit of
a crag; and then we entered the meanest dwelling I have ever seen.

It was like a gipsy's tent, made of mud, thatched with furze, and
consisted of a single room, on whose floor of beaten dung huddled a
family of starving wretches--hollow-eyed, pale, gaunt, and almost naked;
a round dozen of them. There were a man, bright and peaked with hunger;
a poor drudge of a woman, worn to a rag before her time, with a dying
child upon her empty breast; a grown son and seven children--all
crouched there close together like pigs in a yard to keep life in their
bodies. I saw no signs of food, and I reflected that outside this misery
and want the rich Tuscan earth was a-steam with fecund heat, and bore a
thousandfold for every germinating seed. To them, faint and desperate as
they were, the entrance of Virginia, herself as thin as a rod, and of
myself, a stranger, caused no surprise. They looked to the door as we
came in, but neither stirred nor spoke; indeed, it was Virginia who did
what was necessary. She brought from her bosom a loaf of rye-bread; she
fetched a flask of oil; she broke up the one and soaked it in the other
and distributed the victual--first to the guest, then to the children
and her parents, last to herself. The bread was musty, the oil rank; but
the children tore at it as if they had been young wolves--all but one,
who was too weak to hold its own, and might have died that night had I
not taken it upon my knee and put some food between its grey lips. No
one spoke; it grew dark; there was no candle or other light. I sat
awhile in the absolute silence, then fell fast asleep with the child on
my knees, wrapped in my cloak. In the morning, when I awoke, Virginia
was gone.

Deeply touched by what I had seen, and still more by the desperate