but the children tore at it as if they had been young wolves—­all but one, who was too weak to hold its own, and might have died that night had I not taken it upon my knee and put some food between its grey lips.  No one spoke; it grew dark; there was no candle or other light.  I sat awhile in the absolute silence, then fell fast asleep with the child on my knees, wrapped in my cloak.  In the morning, when I awoke, Virginia was gone.

Deeply touched by what I had seen, and still more by the desperate patience with which afflictions so bitter were borne, before I went away I gave the husbandman all the silver money I had left, some few liras, and reserved for my future needs one single ducat, the last gold piece I had.  The man thanked me exorbitantly in a voice broken with gratitude, yet almost in the same breath admitted the insufficiency of the gift.

“We shall send Virginia into Pistoja to-morrow,” he said.  “It has come to this, that her brothers and sisters are dying, and she must do what she can.”

I asked, “Will you send her to beg?”

The question was evaded.  “She’ll do well enough when she’s been fed and cleaned, for she’s a well-made, handsome girl.  There is a great man there—­we shall keep the wolf from the door by what she sends us-and maybe have something over.  Misery teaches all trades to a man, you see.”

I trembled and turned pale.  “I entreat you,” I said, “to do no such dreadful thing.  I have serious reasons for asking—­very serious.  There is one thing which we cannot afford to lose, even if we lose life itself in keeping it.  And it is a thing for which we pay so dear now and again that we cannot value it too highly.  I mean our self-respect.”

The peasant looked round upon his hovel and sleeping brood with those famine-bright eyes of his.  “Must I keep my self-respect sooner than some of them?  Must I not throw one to the wolves sooner than a half-dozen?” He gave over his unhappy survey with a shrug.  “It seems I have nothing to get rid of here,” he said quietly, “except that valuable thing.”

I pulled out my gold piece.  “Will that keep it safe for you?” I asked.  The gleam of the man’s eyes upon it was terrible to see.  “Will you engage the word of a man that, in exchange for this, you will never do what you have proposed?”

“St. Mary help me, I will, sir,” he said.  The coin changed hands.

“Where is Virginia?” I asked him, and he told me that she and Gino her brother had been up before the light and were spreading dung.  “Now,” said I, “it is proper that I should tell you that I am without a farthing in the world.  I say that, not because I grudge you the money, but that you may see how entirely I trust you.”

“You may trust me indeed, sir,” said Virginia’s father with tears, and I took my departure.