ously. "Oh, yes: so are we, aren't we?"

"Certainly," says the mistress of Surrenden.

* * * * *

At the first Drawing-room this year, the admired of all eyes, and the
centre of all comment, is the Lady Brandolin.

DON GESUALDO.

CHAPTER I.

It was a day in June.

The crickets were chirping, the lizards were gliding, the butterflies
were flying above the ripe corn, the reapers were out among the wheat,
and the tall stalks were swaying and falling under the sickle. Through
the little windows of his sacristy Don Gesualdo, the young vicar of San
Bartolo, in the village of Marca, looked with wistful eyes at the
hill-side which rose up in front of him, seen through a frame of
cherry-boughs in full fruit. The hill-side was covered with corn, with
vines, with mulberry-trees; the men and women were at work among the
trees, it was the first day of harvest; there was a blue, happy sky
above them all; their voices chattering and calling to one another over
the sea of grain came to his ears gayly and softened by air and
distance. He sighed as he looked and as he heard. Yet, interrogated, he
would have said that he was happy and wanted for nothing.

He was a slight, pale man, still almost a youth, with a delicate face
without color and beardless; his eyes were brown and tender and serious,
his mouth was sensitive and sweet. He was the son of a fisherman away by
Bocca d'Arno, where the river meets the sea, amidst the cane- and
cactus-brakes which Costa loves to paint. But who could say what fine,
time-filtered, pure Etruscan or Latin blood might not run in his veins?
There is so much of the classic features and the classic form among the
peasants of Tyrrhene sea-shores, of Cimbrian oak woods, of Roman
grass-plains, of Maremma marshes.

It was the last day of peace which he was destined to know in Marca.

He turned from the window with reluctance and regret, as the old woman
who served him as housekeeper and church-cleaner in one summoned him to
his frugal supper. He could have supped at any hour he had chosen, there
were none to say him nay, but it was the custom at Marca to sup at the
twenty-third hour, and he was not a person to violate custom: he would
as soon have thought of spitting on the blessed bread itself. Habit is a
masterful ruler in all Italian communities; it has always been so; it is
a formula which excuses all things and sanctifies all things, and to
none did it