do so more than to Gesualdo. Often he was not in the least
hungry at sunset, often he grudged sorely the hours spent in breaking
black bread and in eating poor soup when Nature was at her sweetest and
the skies giving their finest spectacle to a thankless earth. Yet never
did he fail to meekly answer old Candida's summons to the humble repast.
To have altered the hour of eating would have seemed to him irreligious,
revolutionary, altogether impossible.

Candida was a little old woman, burnt black by the sun, with a wisp of
gray hair fastened on the crown of her head, and a neater look about her
kerchief and her gown than was usual in Marca, for she was a woman
originally from a Northern city. She had always been a servant in
priests' houses, and, if the sacristan were ill or away, knew as well as
he where every book, bell, and candle were kept, and could have said the
offices herself had her sex allowed her. In tongue she was very sharp,
and in secret was proud of the power she possessed in making the
vicegerent of God afraid of her. The priest was the first man in this
parish of poor folks, and the priest would shrink like a chidden child
if she found out that he had given his best shirt to a beggar, or had
inadvertently come in with wet boots over the brick floor which she had
just washed and sanded. It was the old story of so many sovereignties.
He had power, no doubt, to bind and loose, to bless and curse, to
cleanse or refuse to cleanse the sinful souls of men; but for all that
he was only a stupid, forgetful baby of a man in his servant's eyes, and
she made him feel the scorn she had for him, mixed up with a
half-motherly, half-scolding admiration, which saw in him half a child,
half a fool, and, maybe she would add in her own thoughts, a kind of
angel.

Don Gesualdo was not wise or learned in any way: he had barely been able
to acquire enough knowledge to pass through the examinations necessary
for entrance into the priesthood. That slender amount of scholarship was
his all; but he was clever enough for Marca, which had very little
brains of its own, and he did his duty most faithfully, as far as he saw
it, at all times. As for doubts of any sort as to what that duty was,
such scepticism never could possibly assail him. His creed appeared as
plain and sure to him as the sun which shone in the heavens, and his
faith was as single-hearted and unswerving as the devoted soul of a
docile sheep-dog.

He was of a po