iest
generally made a visit to the city about that time of the year, but he
had never realized that Don Teodoro always arrived on the same day, the
tenth of December, and had done so unfailingly for many years past.

Before he had been curate of the distant village of Muro, which belonged
to the Serra family, Don Teodoro had been tutor to Bosio Macomer. He had
lived in Naples as a priest at large, a student, and in those days, to
some extent, a man of the world. When Bosio was grown up, his tutor had
remained his friend--the only really intimate friend he had in the
world, and a true and devoted one. It was perhaps because he was too
much attached to Bosio that Matilde Macomer had induced him at last to
accept the parish in the mountains with the chaplaincy of the ancestral
castle of the Serra,--an office which was a total sinecure, as the
family had rarely gone thither to spend a few weeks, even in the days of
the late prince. Matilde hated the place for its appalling gloominess
and wild scenery, and Veronica, to whom it now belonged, had never seen
it at all. It had the reputation of being haunted by all manner of
ghosts and goblins, and during the first ten years following the Italian
annexation of Naples, the surrounding mountains had been infested by
outlaws and brigands. But Don Teodoro, as curate and chaplain, received
a considerable stipend which enabled him to procure for himself books at
his pleasure, when he could bring himself to curtail the daily and
yearly charities in which he spent almost all he received.

He was, indeed, a man torn between two inclinations which almost
amounted to passions,--charity and the love of learning,--and their
action was so evenly balanced that it was a real pain to him either to
deny himself the book he coveted, or to forfeit the pleasure of giving
the money it would cost to the poor. He had sometimes kept the last note
he had left at the end of the month for many days, quite unable to
decide whether he should send it to Naples for a new volume, or buy
clothes with it for some half-clad child. So sincere was he in both
longings, that after he had disposed of the money in one way or the
other, he almost invariably had an acute fit of self-reproach. His
common sense alone told him that when he had given away nine-tenths of
all he received, he had the right to spend the other tenth upon such
food for his mind as was almost more indispensable to him than bread.
But, besides this,