ld it fare better than its masters?"

Their words had called out of the house a lean bent woman, whose
shrivelled skin showed through the rents in her unbleached shift. At
sight of Odo she pushed Giannozzo aside and hurried forward to ask how
she might serve the gentleman.

"With supper and a bed, my good Filomena," said Odo; and she flung
herself at his feet with a cry.

"Saints of heaven, that I should not have known his excellency! But I am
half blind with the fever, and who could have dreamed of such an
honour?" She clung to his knees in the mud, kissing his hands and
calling down blessings on him. "And as for you, Giannozzo, you
curd-faced fool, quick, see that his excellency's horses are stabled and
go call your father from the cow-house while I prepare his excellency's
supper. And fetch me in a faggot to light the fire in the bailiff's
parlour."

Odo followed her into the kitchen, where he had so often crouched in a
corner to eat his polenta out of reach of her vigorous arm. The roof
seemed lower and more smoke-blackened than ever, but the hearth was
cold, and he noticed that no supper was laid. Filomena led him into the
bailiff's parlour, where a mortal chill seized him. Cobwebs hung from
the walls, the window-panes were broken and caked with grime, and the
few green twigs which Giannozzo presently threw on the hearth poured a
cloud of smoke into the cold heavy air.

There was a long delay while supper was preparing, and when at length
Filomena appeared, it was only to produce, with many excuses, a loaf of
vetch-bread, a bit of cheese and some dried quinces. There was nothing
else in the house, she declared: not so much as a bit of lard to make
soup with, a handful of pasti or a flask of wine. In the old days, as
his excellency might remember, they had eaten a bit of meat on Sundays,
and drunk aquarolle with their supper; but since the new taxes it was as
much as the farmers could do to feed their cattle, without having a
scrap to spare for themselves. Jacopone, she continued, was bent double
with the rheumatism, and had not been able to drive a plough or to work
in the mulberries for over two years. He and the farm-lads sat in the
cow-stables when their work was over, for the sake of the heat, and she
carried their black bread out there to them: a cold supper tasted better
in a warm place, and as his excellency knew, all the windows in the
house were unglazed save in the bailiff's parlour. Her man would be