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And Brother Carmelo, the porter, in the long hours when he had nothing to do, wearying of sitting on the low wall of the cloister knocking his sandals one against the other, put together a bit of a frock for him out of the rags of cassocks which they'd flung on to the fig-tree to scare away the sparrows. His mother, his brother and his sister protested that if he became a friar it was all over with them, and they gave up the money that had gone for his schooling as lost, for they'd never get another halfpenny out of him. But he, who had it in his blood to be a friar, shrugged his shoulders and answered, "You mean to tell me a fellow can't follow the vocation God has called him to?"

Father Giammaria had taken a fancy to him [Pg 18] because he was as light as a cat in the kitchen, and the same at all the menial jobs, even in serving at mass, as if he'd never done anything else all his life long, with his eyes lowered and his lips sewed together like a seraph. Now that he no longer served at mass he still kept his lowered eyes and his sewed-up lips, when it was a question of some shady business with the gentry, or when there was occasion for him to bid in the auction of the communal lands, or to take his oath before the Magistrate.