looked dreamily at her, and repeated her words, "come back." It was
no wonder that his mind was enfeebled by his bodily exhaustion, but she
hoped that he apprehended her meaning. She opened her basket, which was
filled with pieces of soft bread, and put one of the pieces into his
hand.

"Do you keep your bread for those that can't swallow, madonna?" said a
rough-looking fellow, in a red night-cap, who had elbowed his way into
the inmost circle of spectators--a circle that was pressing rather
closely on Romola.

"If anybody isn't hungry," said another, "I say, let him alone. He's
better off than people who've got craving stomachs and no breakfast."

"Yes, indeed; if a man's a mind to die, it's a time to encourage him,
instead of making him come back to life against his will. Dead men want
no trencher."

"Oh, you don't understand the Frate's charity," said a young man in an
excellent cloth tunic, whose face showed no signs of want. "The Frate
has been preaching to the birds, like Saint Anthony, and he's been
telling the hawks they were made to feed the sparrows, as every good
Florentine citizen was made to feed six starving beggar-men from Arezzo
or Bologna. Madonna, there, is a pious Piagnone: she's not going to
throw away her good bread on honest citizens who've got all the Frate's
prophecies to swallow."

"Come, madonna," said he of the red cap, "the old thief doesn't eat the
bread, you see: you'd better try _us_. We fast so much, we're half
saints already."

The circle had narrowed till the coarse men--most of them gaunt from
privation--had left hardly any margin round Romola. She had been taking
from her basket a small horn-cup, into which she put the piece of bread
and just moistened it with wine; and hitherto she had not appeared to
heed them. But now she rose to her feet, and looked round at them.
Instinctively the men who were nearest to her pushed backward a little,
as if their rude nearness were the fault of those behind. Romola held
out the basket of bread to the man in the night-cap, looking at him
without any reproach in her glance, as she said--

"Hunger is hard to bear, I know, and you have the power to take this
bread if you will. It was saved for sick women and children. You are
strong men; but if you do not choose to suffer because you are strong,
you have the power to take everything from the weak. You can take the
bread from this basket; but I shall watch by this old man; I shall