The kitchen of the inn was cool compared with the road outside, and though it smelt chiefly of the stale smoke of green wood, this was pervaded and tempered by odours of fern, fresh cabbages, goats’-milk cheese, and sour red wine.  The brown earthen pot simmered over one of the holes in the hearth, emitting little clouds of steam; but boiling beans have no particular smell, as everybody knows.

Paoluccio had pushed his weather-beaten soft hat back on his head, and sat drumming on the oak table with his knotty fingers.  He was a strong man, thickset and healthy, with grizzled hair and an intensely black beard.  His wife was fat, and purple about the jaws and under the ears.  She stood with her back to the hearth, looking at him, with a wooden spoon in her hand.

“Beans,” she said slowly, and she looked up at the rafters and down again at her husband.

“You have told me so,” he growled, “and may the devil fly away with you!”

“Beans are not good for people who have the fever,” observed Nanna.

“Beans are rather heavy food,” assented the innkeeper, apparently understanding.  “Bread and water are better.  Pour a little oil on the bread.”

“A man who has the fever may die of eating beans,” said Nanna thoughtfully.  “This is also to be considered.”

“It is true.”  Paoluccio looked at his wife in silence for a moment.  “But a person who is dead must be buried,” he continued, as if he had discovered something.  “When a person is dead, he is dead, whether he dies of eating beans or—­”

He broke off significantly, and his right hand, as it lay before him, straightened itself and made a very slight vibrating motion, with the fingers all close together.  It is the gesture that means the knife among the southern people.  Nanna instantly looked round, to be sure that no one else was in the room.

“When you have given that medicine, you cannot send for the doctor,” she observed, lowering her voice.  “But if he eats, and dies, what can any one say?  We have fed him for charity; it is Friday and we have given him beans.  What can we know?  Are not beans good food?  We have nothing else, and it is for charity, and we give what we have.  I don’t think they could expect us to give him chickens and French wine, could they?”

Paoluccio growled approval.

“It is forty-seven days,” continued Nanna.  “You can make the account.  Chickens and milk and fresh meat for forty-seven days!  Even the bread comes to something in that time, at least two soldi a day—­two forties eighty, two sevens fourteen, ninety-four—­nearly five francs.  Who will give us the five francs?  Are we princes?”

“There is the cow,” observed Paoluccio with a grin.

“Imbecile,” retorted his wife.  “It has been a good year; we bought the wine cheap, we sell it dear, without counting what we get for nothing from the carters; we buy a cow with our earnings, and where is the miracle?”