lambs, dead of hunger, lying by the road-side.  Worse still, he sees other lambs—­human lambs with Christian souls—­fade and pine and shrink into a little grave, from failing of mother’s milk, dried up for want of proper food.  He sees, too, the aged die before God calls them, failing through lack of nourishment—­a little wine, perhaps, or a mouthful of soup; the young and strong grow old with ceaseless striving.  Poor Silvestro! he sees too much.  He cannot be severe.  He is born merciful.  Silvestro is honest as the day, but he hides things from the marchesa; he is honest, but he cannot—­no, he cannot—­grind and vex the poor, as she would have him do.  Yet she has no one to take his place in that God-forgotten town—­so they pull on, man and mistress—­a truly ill-matched pair—­pull on, year after year.  It is a weary life for him when the great lady comes up for her villeggiatura—­Silvestro, divided, cleft in twain, so to say, as he is, between his awe and respect for the marchesa and her will, and his terrible sympathy for all suffering creatures, man or beast.

As to the marchesa, she despises Silvestro too profoundly to notice his changing moods.  It is not her habit to look for any thing but obedience—­absolute obedience—­from those beneath her.  A thousand times she has told herself such a fool would ruin her; but, up to this present time, she has borne with him, partly from convenience, and partly because she fears to get a rogue in his place.  She does not guess how carefully Silvestro has hid the truth from her; she would not give him credit for the power of concealing any thing.

The sindaco having sent a boy up to Silvestro’s house with the marchesa’s message, “that he is to attend her,” the steward comes hurrying down through the terraces cut in the steep ground behind the villa—­broad, stately terraces, with balustrades, and big empty vases, and statues, and grand old lemon-trees set about.  Great flights of marble steps cross and recross, rest on a marble stage, and then recross again.  Here and there a pointed cypress-tree towers upward like a green pyramid in a desert of azure sky.  Bright-leaved autumn flowers lie in masses on the rich brown earth, and dainty streamlets come rushing downward in little sculptured troughs.

What a dismal sigh Silvestro gave when he got the marchesa’s message, and knew that she had arrived!  How he wrung his hands and looked hopelessly upward to heaven with vacant, colorless eyes, the big heat-drops gathering on his bald, wrinkled forehead!  He has so much to tell her!—­It must be told too; he can hide the truth no longer.  She will be sure to ask to see the accounts.  Alas! alas! what will his mistress say?  For a moment Silvestro gazes wistfully at the mountains all around with a vacant stare.  Oh, that the mountains would cover him!  Anyway, there are caves and holes, he thinks, where the marchesa’s wrath would never reach him; caves and holes where he might live hidden for years, cared for by those who love him.  Shall he flee, and never see his mistress’s dark, dreadful eyes again?  Folly!