Meanwhile my friendly offer caused so great a joy in the mother's heart
that I became quite embarrassed. She likened me, among other things, to
her favourite Saint.
All comparisons being odious, I turned the conversation by asking:
"And that last one?"
"Here," she said, pushing open the door of the inner room.
He lay on the couch fast asleep, in a glorious tangle of limbs, the
picture of radiant boyhood.
"This one, I think, has never been to Cisterna."
"No. He goes into the mountains with the woodcutters every morning an
hour before sunrise. It is up beyond Collepardo - seven hours' labour,
and seven hours' march there and back. The rest of the time he sleeps
like a log...."
Children from these hill-places often accompany their parents into the
plains to work; more commonly they go in droves of any number under the
charge of some local man. They are part of that immense army of
hirelings which descends annually, from the uplands of Tuscany to the
very toe of Italy, into these low-lying regions, hardly an inch of which
is fever-free.
