in a great scarf, above which rose
the red and shining professorial nose, irritated by the snow. As it was
already late they immediately took leave of Uncle Piero, who was left
alone with his milk and his lamp before the dying embers of the
juniper-bush.

A slight shadow of disapproval still rested on his face. Franco was
playing the poet too much. Nowadays life was hard at Casa Maironi.
Breakfast consisted of a cup of milk and chicory-coffee, and they used a
sort of reddish sugar that tasted of the chemist's shop. They indulged
in meat only on Thursdays and Sundays. A bottle of Grimelli wine
appeared on the table regularly every day for Uncle Piero, who rebelled
against being the privileged one. Every day clouds gathered around this
bottle and a little storm burst forth, which, however, always ended as
Uncle Piero wished, in a short shower of the decoction into each of the
five glasses. The servant had been dismissed, and only Veronica remained
to do the heavy work, stir the _polenta_, and sometimes look after
Maria. But in spite of these and other economies Luisa could not make
both ends meet, though Cia had refused to accept any wages, and gifts of
curds, of _mascherpa_, of goats'-cheeses, of chestnuts and walnuts were
always pouring in upon them from the townspeople. She had obtained some
copying from a notary at Porlezza, but it was hard work for miserable
pay. Franco had also begun to copy diligently, but he accomplished less
than his wife and, moreover, there was not work enough for two. He
should have bestirred himself, have sought some private employment, but
Uncle Piero saw no signs of this, and so----?

And so this thinking about poetic expeditions seemed to him more out of
place than ever. After having pondered a long time upon their sad
plight, and upon the slender probability that Franco would ever be able
to extricate them from it, he reflected that, for him, the first thing
to do was to drink his milk, and the second, to go to bed. But another
thought came to him. He opened the hall-door, and seeing the room was
quite dark, went into the kitchen, lighted a lantern, and carried it to
the loggia, where he opened one of the windows. Although it was snowing
there was no wind, so he placed the lantern on the window-sill, that its
light might help those poetic people to steer their homeward course over
the dark lake.

Then he went to bed.

* * * * *

Ismaele brought his fr