beggar at the church door, the naked urchin of the gutter--these, though
they live with swine and are of them, have the souls of children new and
clean from God. Neither malice nor forethought of evil, nor craft, nor
hatred, nor clamour, nor the great and crowning sin is in their hearts.
A kind word, a touch, a kiss redeems them. Thus they, whom the tyrants
of Italy have enslaved, are in truth the very marrow of Italy, without
whom she would never have done anything in this world. And the sorrowful
verity is that slaves they must remain if Italy is to live on. For
prosperity, which fattens their bodies, chokes and poisons their souls.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

AN UNEXPECTED MESSENGER LIFTS ME UP


Destitute as we were of anything but the sinews of our backs and arms,
we were forced, if we would live, to work our way to Arezzo; and it
often fell out that the piece-work we engaged to do kept us long in one
place. Near Sinalunga, in particular, in a green pastoral country, we
hired ourselves out to a peasant to hoe his vines, and were busy there
for nearly three weeks. I cannot say that I was discontented; indeed, I
have always found that the harder my labour is and the straiter my lot,
the less room I have for discontent. With this peasant, his family, his
pigs, hens and goats, Belviso and I lived, in a hovel which, had it not
been roofed over, might have been a cote or a pigsty. The man's name was
Masuccio, his wife's Gioconda; between them they had a brood of nine
children--a grown daughter of fourteen, three stout lads, four brats,