she would exclaim, “how many pounds of bread we throw to the dogs in the week?  Enough to feed fifty packs of hounds.”  Drink?  “It streams at every street corner.”  “Thus,” she would conclude, “are our necessities supplied.  For luxuries we have the sun in sheltered cloisters, the rain to cleanse the ways in which we walk, the splendours of the church to feast our eyes, the chances and changes of the streets and taverns to keep our minds alert.  No, no, Don Francis,” quoth she, “let them sweat and grow thin who must.  We are free.”

I could not admit all the conclusions of this philosophy, though I was not concerned to dispute them.  But Virginia’s theories of life interested me extremely and her ability to apply them was extraordinary.  Perhaps I was by predestination a vagabond, and no doubt she was.  All I can say is that if I myself became strong and healthy on those terms, Virginia bloomed like a wild rose and seemed to grow in grace under my eyes.  She devoted herself to me and kept me in excellent order; washed my shirt and stockings at the fountain, kept my clothes neatly mended, buttons on my vest; brushed my cloak, clouted my shoes.  She was not inattentive to her own person either.  She put her hair up into a coil and pinned it with a silver comb, kept herself clean, and wore shoes and stockings.  A pair of stays became her well, and a loose white kerchief for her bare neck.  She showed to be a beautiful girl.  Her eyes lost their sombre regard, her colour cleared, her cheeks took rounder curves.  Where she got her clothes, where the food which made her sleek, where the happy light in her eyes, were mysteries to me.  She seldom left me, she showed no signs of having been at work; so far as I knew she had no friends in Pistoja and asked no extraordinary charities.  I believed that she shared in the distribution of alms at the gates of certain monasteries; I fancied once or twice that a look of recognition passed between her and various persons as they met in the streets, but as she said nothing to me on the subject I made no inquiries.  There was no doubt of her devotion to myself; she never left me or met me again without kissing my hand; she always spoke of me by a title of respect—­ as Don Francis, or your honour, or sir—­and yet was entirely unceremonious in what else she said to me, criticised my actions, and quarrelled with me hotly upon many subjects.  She took a plain view of my feelings towards Aurelia, as the reader will have seen, and a very plain view of Aurelia’s towards me.  But when she found that to have expressed them would really have hurt me, she withheld the expression, but did not change her view.  One thing she never did:  she betrayed not the slightest symptom of love for me.  I might have been her sister, or she my brother, for any false shame she had—­or for any sign of passion towards me.  She concealed nothing, she spared nothing, but she asked nothing that I was not ready to give her—­and this, as I then thought, was not because she was determined