CHAPTER XII.

T was too late that day to go anywhere else, but the next morning

Pippo set forth again. He went

to each of the gentlemen of the district who formed the Giunta; there were seven of them. Two of them, as said, were noblemen, two were small gentry; one was a doctor, one was a lawyer, and one was the money-lender Zauli. Pippo tried the nobles first; one was at his estates in another province, and the other, who was at home, said he was very sorry, but he could not interfere; he had no power to

alter the law; he was kind, however, and told his maestro di casa to send the old man into the kitchen to have a meal; the small gentry said much the same, a little more disagreeably; the lawyer said that they were determined to make their laws respected; and when the old man timidly asked why the law had been made, and suggested that they would be very much better un-made again, grew angry, and told Pippo he was impudent, which was, indeed, the last thing that Pippo ever dreamed of being. The doctor said much the same thing as the lawyer, and as for going to Zauli, Pippo knew that would be of no good; as soon will you get peaches off an ant-eaten tree as mercy out of the heart of a money-lender.

In Pippo's eyes, and in those of most in Santa Rosalia, Simone Zauli was as a great swollen dragon, gorged on the bodies and

the souls of other men, and he was the only incarnation that they knew of usury.

Jaded, footsore, very heart-sick, Pippo trotted through the ankle-deep dust, carrying his boots in his hands; he had thought it only respectful to enter the gentlemen's houses with his boots on, but that was no reason why he should wear them out on the common highway. He was very tired when he got home; for one way and another, up and down hill, and to and fro, he had walked five and twenty miles, if one. But he ate his bit of supper in silence, and went to bed. In bed another hope dawned on him; a faint one, but still something on which to act.

He said nothing to his daughter, for he held the old-fashioned opinion that women had no head for anything, and had best be told naught, but next morning put on his

festa coat and waistcoat, took his straw hat and went through the clouds of dust in the shaky diligence to Pomodoro.

"They do say he is a liberal one and has a heart for the poor,' thought Pippo, and boldly went and asked for Signore Luca Finti, who had taken a lodging in the town, for people were now saying that the new deputy, who was a bachelor, was thinking of nothing less than asking for the hand of Teresina Zauli, an ugly wench, indeed, brown, clumsy, with a bearded lip, and a chignon like a melon, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, but worth her weight in gold, and owning all the jewels, too, of a dead countess, whose affairs her good father had managed; the countess, being a poorwitted and sad-spirited lady. Teresina Zauli had given her heart to a brave young bailiff who was floridly handsome as a dahlia

flower, but that was not the match her father meant for her, and she had soon resigned herself to the idea of being a deputy's wife, and living in Rome, and going to the Quirinal when a state ball was given, as Luca Finti's wife would do unquestionably.

The note of the new deputy being all things to all men, and familiar good-nature to the entire population, the little old dusty figure of Pippo was shown into the chamber where the deputy was taking a light breakfast of stuffed onions and a risotto of liver and brains. Signore Finti, thinking the old man came to beg, buttoned up his pockets, but saluted him with a sweet smile and words so bland that Pippo thought at a bound: 'he will get me let off the fines.'

He was benignity and kindness itself, for this Luca Finti was to everyone; but when he found what the errand was he grew a