Odo sprang out into the mud.  “Why do you beat the brute?” said he indignantly.  The other turned a dull face on him and he recognised his old enemy Giannozzo.

“Giannozzo,” he cried, “don’t you know me?  I am the Cavaliere Valsecca, whose ears you used to box when you were a lad.  Must you always be pummelling something, that you can’t let that poor brute alone at the end of its day’s work?”

Giannozzo, dropping his staff, stammered out that he craved his excellency’s pardon for not knowing him, but that as for the ass it was a stubborn devil that would not have carried Jesus Christ without gibbing.

“The beast is tired and hungry,” cried Odo, his old compassion for the sufferings of the farm-animals suddenly reviving.  “How many hours have you worked it without rest or food?”

“No more than I have worked myself,” said Giannozzo sulkily; “and as for its being hungry, why should it fare better than its masters?”

Their words had called out of the house a lean bent woman, whose shrivelled skin showed through the rents in her unbleached shift.  At sight of Odo she pushed Giannozzo aside and hurried forward to ask how she might serve the gentleman.

“With supper and a bed, my good Filomena,” said Odo; and she flung herself at his feet with a cry.

“Saints of heaven, that I should not have known his excellency!  But I am half blind with the fever, and who could have dreamed of such an honour?” She clung to his knees in the mud, kissing his hands and calling down blessings on him.  “And as for you, Giannozzo, you curd-faced fool, quick, see that his excellency’s horses are stabled and go call your father from the cow-house while I prepare his excellency’s supper.  And fetch me in a faggot to light the fire in the bailiff’s parlour.”

Odo followed her into the kitchen, where he had so often crouched in a corner to eat his polenta out of reach of her vigorous arm.  The roof seemed lower and more smoke-blackened than ever, but the hearth was cold, and he noticed that no supper was laid.  Filomena led him into the bailiff’s parlour, where a mortal chill seized him.  Cobwebs hung from the walls, the window-panes were broken and caked with grime, and the few green twigs which Giannozzo presently threw on the hearth poured a cloud of smoke into the cold heavy air.

There was a long delay while supper was preparing, and when at length Filomena appeared, it was only to produce, with many excuses, a loaf of vetch-bread, a bit of cheese and some dried quinces.  There was nothing else in the house, she declared:  not so much as a bit of lard to make soup with, a handful of pasti or a flask of wine.  In the old days, as his excellency might remember, they had eaten a bit of meat on Sundays, and drunk aquarolle with their supper; but since the new taxes it was as much as the farmers could do to feed their cattle, without having a scrap to spare for themselves.  Jacopone,