“And have you mentioned t his to the podesta?” inquired Benedetta, who stood with the empty flask in her hand, listening to the discourse; “I should think that sail would open his eyes.”

“I cannot say I have; but then I told him so many other things more to the point, that he cannot do less than believe this, when he hears it.  Signor Viti promised to meet me here, after he has had a conversation with the vice-governatore; and we may now expect him every minute.”

“Il Signor Podesta will be welcome,” said Benedetta, wiping off a spare table, and bustling round the room to make things look a little smarter than they ordinarily did; “he may frequent grander wine-houses than this, but he will hardly find better liquor.”

“Poverina!—­Don’t think that the podesta comes here on any such errand; he comes to meet me,” answered ’Maso, with an indulgent smile; “he takes his wine too often on the heights, to wish to come as low as this after a glass.  Friends of mine (amigi mii), there is wine up at that house, that, when the oil is once out of the neck of the flask[2], goes down a man’s throat as smoothly as if it were all oil itself!  I could drink a flask of it without once stopping to take breath.  It is that liquor which makes the nobles so light and airy.”

[2] It is a practice in Tuscany to put a few drops of oil in the neck of each flask of the more delicate wines, to exclude the air.

“I know the washy stuff,” put in Benedetta, with more warmth than she was used to betray to her customers; “well may you call it smooth, a good spring running near each of the wine-presses that have made it.  I have seen some of it that even oil would not float on!”

This assertion was a fair counterpoise to that of the sail, being about as true.  But Benedetta had too much experience in the inconstancy of men, not to be aware that if the three or four customers who were present should seriously take up the notion that the island contained any better liquor than that she habitually placed before them, her value might be sensibly diminished in their eyes.  As became a woman who had to struggle singly with the world, too, her native shrewdness taught her, that the best moment to refute a calumny was to stop it as soon as it began to circulate, and her answer was as warm in manner as it was positive in terms.  This was an excellent opening for an animated discussion, and one would have been very likely to occur, had there not fortunately been steps heard without, that induced ’Maso to expect the podesta.  Sure enough, the door opened, and Vito Viti appeared, followed, to the astonishment of all the guests, and to the absolute awe of Benedetta, by the vice-governatore himself.