“But, my dear,” said I, “we have three hours to wait before the Sagrestia is opened.  Do you ask me to stay here, in this cloister, for that time?”

She looked embarrassed, for the truth is that she would have asked me if I had not spoken of it.  She had forgotten that I was not of her nation.  “No, no,” she said hastily, “that is ridiculous.  How could I ask you to do such a thing as that?  The question!”

“I am glad of it,” I returned, “because there I can’t oblige you.  I must break my fast, so must you.  By the time we have done, the Sagrestia may be ready for us.  Observe also that in spending the night in that place I am obliging you, for I don’t at all see why we should do it.”

She searched my face with those grey eyes of hers, hunting my raillery out.  The thing above all which she dreaded was to be laughed at.  She never laughed herself, except bitterly, in anger, and hated the indulgence.  Suspecting still what she failed to find, she fell in with my desire to eat, though she must have thought it preposterous, and me a madman to have it.  She could never understand my attachment to custom, and never think of more than one thing at a time.  Just now she was engaged in hiding me from justice—­to succeed in which task she would have sat still for an eternity and gone without a thousand meals.  What an outcry she must have had ready for me—­and how she must have loved her hard taskmaster!  She did violence to all her feelings, fell in with my desire at once.

“Naturally, Don Francis, you must eat.  Naturally, I must eat.  Naturally, by the time we have finished, the Sagrestia will be open.  Very good, Don Francis.  But as to spending the night in the Sagrestia, shall I be impertinent if I tell you that by this time there is not a locanda in Florence that has not got a full and exact description of you and me, and not a landlord among them that would not hand you over for two baiocchi?”

“How do you know that, my dear?” I asked.

She stretched out her arms.  “How do I know?  Hear him!  How do I know that my mother is a woman and my father a man?  Dio buono!  Have I lived in my sty with my eyes shut?  And herded with thieves, and taken them for marchesi?  But you shall be fed, Don Francis.  Leave that to me.  Do you stay here quietly, I will get you some food.”

I said that I must come with her, whereupon she began to cry bitterly, to call me heartless and cruel, to pity herself in the most deplorable terms.  She nursed and fondled herself by name.  “Povera Virginia!  Poor little Virginia, that works so hard for her tyrant and gives herself no rest.  But he is cruel—­more cruel than if he beat her—­stabs her heart with cold words, rends it with sharp fingers.  Poor little Virginia, poor little outcast from the Madonna!”