range of mountains, fair
and forest-spread on the lower flanks, rising above into wild crags,
and broken, blackened peaks, that mock the soft blue radiance of the
evening sky.

CHAPTER II.

WHAT SILVESTRO SAYS.

Silvestro, the steward, is a man "full of conscience," as people say,
deeply sensible of his responsibilities, and more in dread of the
marchesa than of the Church. It is this dread that makes him so
emaciated--hesitate when he speaks, and bend his back and shoulders
into a constant cringe. But for this dread, Silvestro would forgive
the poor people more. He sees such pinching misery every day--lives in
it--suffers from it; how can he ask those for money who have none?
It is like forcing blood out of a stone. He is not the man to do it.
Silvestro lives at hand; he hears the rattle of the hail that burns
the grapes up to a cinder--the terrible din of the thunder before the
forked lightning strikes the cattle; he sees with his own eyes the
griping want of bread in the savage winter-time; his own eyes behold
the little lambs, dead of hunger, lying by the road-side. Worse still,
he sees other lambs--human lambs with Christian souls--fade and pine
and shrink into a little grave, from failing of mother's milk, dried
up for want of proper food. He sees, too, the aged die before God
calls them, failing through lack of nourishment--a little wine,
perhaps, or a mouthful of soup; the young and strong grow old with
ceaseless striving. Poor Silvestro! he sees too much. He cannot be
severe. He is born merciful. Silvestro is honest as the day, but he
hides things from the marchesa; he is honest, but he cannot--no, he
cannot--grind and vex the poor, as she would have him do. Yet she has
no one to take his place in that God-forgotten town--so they pull on,
man and mistress--a truly ill-matched pair--pull on, year after
year. It is a weary life for him when the great lady comes up for her
villeggiatura--Silvestro, divided, cleft in twain, so to say, as he
is, between his awe and respect for the marchesa and her will, and his
terrible sympathy for all suffering creatures, man or beast.

As to the marchesa, she despises Silvestro too profoundly to notice
his changing moods. It is not her habit to look for any thing but
obedience--absolute obedience--from those beneath her. A thousand
times she has told herself such a fool would ruin her; but, up to this
present time, she has borne with him, partly from convenience, and