went on an unceasing quarrel; they
quarrelled in my room, in the corridor, and, as I knew by their shrill
voices, in places remote; yet I am sure they did not dislike each
other, and probably neither of them ever thought of parting.
Unexpectedly, one evening, this woman entered, stood by the bedside,
and began to talk with such fierce energy, with such flashing of her
black eyes, and such distortion of her features, that I could only
suppose that she was attacking me for the trouble I caused her. A
minute or two passed before I could even hit the drift of her furious
speech; she was always the most difficult of the natives to
understand, and in rage she became quite unintelligible. Little by
little, by dint of questioning, I got at what she meant. There had
been _guai_, worse than usual; the mistress had reviled her
unendurably for some fault or other, and was it not hard that she
should be used like this after having _tanto, tanto lavorato_! In
fact, she was appealing for my sympathy, not abusing me at all. When
she went on to say that she was alone in the world, that all her kith
and kin were _freddi morti_ (stone dead), a pathos in her aspect
and her words took hold upon me; it was much as if some heavy-laden
beast of burden had suddenly found tongue and protested in the rude
beginnings of articulate utterance against its hard lot. If only we
could have learnt in intimate detail the life of this domestic
serf[14]! How interesting and how sordidly picturesque against the
background of romantic landscape, of scenic history! I looked long
into her sallow, wrinkled face, trying to imagine the thoughts that
ruled its expression. In some measure my efforts at kindly speech
succeeded, and her "Ah, Cristo!" as she turned to go away, was not
without a touch of solace.'

[Footnote 14: Here is a more fully prepared expression of the very essence
of Biffen's artistic ideal.--_By the Ionian Sea_, chap. x.]

In 1892 Gissing was already beginning to try and discard his down look, his
lugubrious self-pity, his lamentable cadence. He found some alleviation
from self-torment in _David Copperfield_, and he determined to borrow a
feather from 'the master's' pinion--in other words, to place an
autobiographical novel to his credit. The result was _Born in Exile_
(1892), one of the last of the three-volume novels,--by no means one of