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The dinner of the laborer is a dish of polenta, a few figs, some cheese, a glass of thin wine. His wants are few and easily supplied. He is not overfed, his diet is not stimulating; I should say that he would pay little to the physician, that familiar of other countries whose family office is to counteract the effects of over-eating.
Women held their scaldinoes, little pots of hot charcoal, closer under their shawls, and even the dogs had a sad, half-frozen look. One and all longed for the warm winds of spring and the summer heat they loved. It was bad enough for those who had warm clothes and plenty of polenta, but for the poor life was very hard those cold wintry days.
It is not easy to tell what they would do without these bountiful chestnut-harvests, for their principal article of food is a thick porridge called polenta, which they make from the ground nuts. In France a kind of cake is made from the same material, and the chestnuts are prepared by drying them in smoke.
I must still confess that I never did hear it under similar circumstances, except in conversation across half a mile of lagoon, when, as usual, the burden of the lay was polenta or soldi.
The old woman who sat in the door did not thread the beads as the girl does in one of Whistler's Venetian etchings, but stabbed a basketful with a wire, each time gathering a few more. The great outstanding buildings of the Giudecca are Palladio's massive Redentore and S. Eufemia, and at the west end the modern Gothic polenta mill of Signor or Herr Stucky, beyond which is the lagoon once more.
The handsome damsel was a spectacle herself, so dramatic was she as she shook her fist at the Pope, and cheered for the King, with a ladle in one hand, an artichoke in the other, her fine eyes flashing, and her mellow voice trembling, while she talked regardless of the polenta going to destruction in the frying-pan.
As the morning advanced the busy sounds of labor ceased, and we saw groups of dark-eyed men reclining in the shade of the rocks, partaking of their frugal dinners of orange-colored polenta plenten, as our Seppl called it.
The good old Kathi stood at the door cooling a gigantic pan of buckwheat polenta, and when she had set down this dish, intended for the haymakers' supper, she brought us each, as our pay, a couple of krapfen, which are oblong dough-cakes fried in butter.
The cook had ruined his polenta; the coachman had given him a bad driver to bring him to see me; the dogs had barked all night; there had been more guests than usual and he had found it necessary to eat at a side table.
Ercole had told Padre Francesco that the second hay crop had been half spoilt by thunderstorms; also that the price of wine in Ardea had gone up, while the price of polenta had remained the same; also that a wild boar had broken out of the king's preserves near Nettuno and was supposed to be wandering in the brush not far away; also that if Ercole and Nino found him they would kill him, and that there would be a feast.
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