“They are not common,” said Don Silverio.  “Nor are they as easy to find as flies in summer.”

What was the marriage of the poor for the woman?  What did it bring?  What did it mean?  The travail of child-bearing, the toil of the fields, the hardship of constant want, the incessant clamour on her ear of unsatisfied hunger, the painful rearing of sons whom the State takes away from her as soon as they are of use, painful ending of life on grudged crusts as a burden to others on a hearth no longer her own.  This, stripped of glamour, is the lot nine times out of ten of the female peasant —­ a creature of burden like the cow she yokes, an animal valued only in her youth and her prime; in old age or in sickness like the stricken and barren goat, who has nought but its skin and its bones.

Poor little Nerina!

As he went home he saw her cutting fodder for a calf; she was kneeling in a haze of rose colour made by the many blossoms of the orchis maculat which grew there.  The morning light sparkled in the wet grass.  She got up as she saw him cross the field, dropped her curtsey low with a smile, then resumed her work, the dew, the sun, the sweet fresh scents shed on her like a benison.

“Poor little soul,” thought Don Silverio.  “Poor little soul!  Has Adone no eyes?”

Adone had eyes, but they saw other things than a little maiden in the meadow-grass.

To her he was a deity; she believed in him and worshipped him with the strongest faith, as a little sister might have done.  She would have fought for him like a little mastiff; she would have suffered in his service with rapture and pride; she was as vigilant for his interests as if she were fidelity incarnated.  She watched over all that belonged to him, and the people of Ruscino feared her more than they feared Pierino the watch-dog.  Woe betided the hapless wight who made free with the ripe olives, or the ripe grapes, with the fig or the peach or the cherry which grew on Adone’s lands; it seemed to such marauders that she had a thousand eyes and lightning in her feet.

One day, when she had dealt such vigorous blows with a blackthorn stick on the back of a lad who had tried to enter the fowl-house, that he fell down and shrieked for pardon, Adone reproved her.  “Remember they are very poor, Nerina,” he said to her.  “So were your own folks, you say.”

“I know they are poor,” replied Nerina; she held to her opinions.  “But when they ask, you always give.  Therefore it is vile to rob you.  Besides,” she added, “if you go on and let them steal and steal till you will have nothing left.”

Whatever she saw, whatever she heard, she told Adone; and he gave ear to her because she was not a chatterer, but was usually of few words.  All her intelligence was spent in the defence and in the culture of the Terra Vergine; she did not know her alphabet, and did not wish to do so; but she had the quickest of ears, the keenest of eyes, the brightest of brains.