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“Margherita!” he cried suddenly.

An old woman appeared, dropping a bleared courtesy, unlike her queenly name.

“What have you for dinner, Margherita?

“Enough for one; not enough for three, and they hungry off the road,” she said. “If thou, O father, art about to feed the lazzaroni of the north and south thou must at least give some notice, and engage another servant!”

“Nay, good Margherita,” answered the priest very meekly, “there is enough boiled fowl and risotto of liver and rice to serve half a score of appetites. See to it,” he said.

Margherita went grumbling away. What with beggars and leaping dogs, besides children crawling about the steps, it was ill living in such a presbytery–one also which was at any rate so old that no one could keep it clean, though they laboured twenty-four hours in the day–ay, and rose betimes upon the next day.

As the lady said, the place was old. Father Philip told us that it had been the wing of a monastery.

“See,” he said, “I will show you.”

So saying, he led us through a wide, cool, dusky place, with arched roof and high windows, the walls blotched and peeling, with the steam of many monkish dinners. The doors had been mostly closed up, and only at one side did an open window and archway give glimpses of pillared cloisters and living green. We begged that we might sit out here, which the priest gladly allowed, for the sight of the green grass and the tall white lilies standing amid was a mighty refreshment in the hot noontide. Sunshine flickered through the mulberry and one grey cherry-tree, and sifted down on the grass.

Then the priest told us all the sin of the villagers of Spellino. It was not that a remnant of the Waldenses was allowed to live there. The priest did not object to good Waldensians. But the people of Spellino would neither pay priest nor pastor. They were infidels.

“A bad people, an accursed people!” he repeated. “I have not had my dues for ten years as I ought. I send my agent to collect; and as soon as he appears, every family that is of the religion turns heretic. Not a child can sign the sign of the Cross, not though I baptized every one of them. All the men belong to the church of Pastor Gentinetta, and can repeat his catechism.”

The priest paused and shook his head.

“A bad people! a bad people!” he said over and over again. Then he smiled, with some sense of the humour of the thing.

“But there are many ways with bad people,” he said; “for when my good friend, Pastor Gentinetta, collects his stipend, and the blue envelopes of the Church are sent round, what a conversion ensues to Holy Church! Lo, there is a crucifix in every house in Spellino, save in one or two of the very faithful, who are so poor that they have nothing to give. Each child blesses himself as he goes in. Each bambino has the picture of its patron saint swung about its neck. The men are out at the festa, the women not home from confession, and there is not a soldo for priest or pastor in all this evil village of Spellino!”

Father Philip paused to chuckle in some admiration at such abounding cleverness in his parish.

“How then do you live, either of you?” I asked, for the matter was certainly curious.

The father looked at us.

“You are going on directly?” he said, in a subdued manner.

“Immediately,” we said, “when we have tired out your excellent hospitality.”

“Then I shall tell you. The manner of it is this. My friend Gentinetta;–he is my friend, and an excellent one in this world, though it is likely that our paths may not lie together in the next, if all be true that the Pope preaches. We two have a convention, which is private and not to be named. It is permitted to circumvent the wicked, and to drive the reluctant sheep by innocent craft.