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On the day of the parroco's induction his portrait was placed over the church door and after the celebration of the morning mass, a breakfast was given, which grew to be so splendid in time, that in the fifteenth century a statute limited its profusion.
The parroco's lips quivered with scorn. He remembered the affair a scandalous business! The King and Queen present, and a Jew daring before them, to plead the need of 'a new religion' in Italy, where Catholicism, Apostolic and Roman, was guaranteed as the national religion by the first article of the Statuto. The Contessa replied with some dryness that Mazzoli spoke as a philosopher.
The Saint would have remained locked up in his musty shrine, without the faintest chance of performing a miracle of any kind. They argued, consequently, that Saint Dodekanus got the credit for what was really the parroco's notion.
Alone here, where modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone with the earth and the sky, the mediæval castle, the dead ladies, with Annunziata, and the parroco, and the parroco's Masses and Benedictions to-day, he would please himself by fancying, might be a yesterday of long ago that had somehow dropped out of the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past that had been forgotten and left over.
They said, among other things, that after begging money from wealthy foreigners for alleged repairs to the parish organ and other godly purposes, he kept the proceeds himself on the principle that charity began at home and ought to end there. Nobody could deny his devotion to mother, sisters, and even distant relatives. So much was also certain, that the PARROCO'S family was poor.
"Give me these," he wound up, "a book or two, and a jug of the parroco's 'included wine' my wilderness is paradise enow." Lady Blanchemain's eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells of disappointment, then gushing fountains of reproach. "Oh, you villain!" she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her pretty fist. "So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash them!
The PARROCO'S thin lips, peaked nose, beady eyes and colourless cheeks proclaimed the anchorite, if not the monomaniac. He flitted about like a draught of cold air, refusing all refreshments and not daring to smell the flowers, lest he should derive too much pleasure from them. He was often called Torquemada, from his harsh and abstemious habits.
When the Contessa returned, Eleanor took up a volume of French translations from the Greek Anthology that the Contessa had lent her the day before. She restored the dainty little book to its mistress, pointing to some of her favourites. The parroco's face fell as he listened. 'Ah! these are from the Greek! he said, looking down modestly, as the Contessa handed him the book.
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