The only furniture in the cabin was a table made of a plank, two rude benches, and one small cupboard; the bed was only dried leaves and moss. There were a pipkin, two platters, and a big iron pot which swung by a cord and a hook over the stones where the fire, when lighted, burned. They were enough; he would not have known what to do with more if he had had more. He was only there from May to October; and in the fragrant summers of Italian chestnut woods, privation is easily borne. The winter life was harder and more hateful; yet it never occurred to him to do else than to go to Maremma; his father and grandfather had always gone thither, and as naturally as the chestnuts ripen and fall, so do the men in autumn join the long lines of shepherds and drovers and women and children and flocks and herds which wind their way down the mountain slopes and across the level wastes of plain and marsh to seek herbage and work for the winter-time. It never entered the head of Caris, or of the few who knew him or worked with him, to wonder how he and his had come thither. They were there as the chestnut-trees were, as the broom was, as the goats and squirrels and wood-birds were there. The peasant no more wonders about his own existence than a stone does. For generations a Lascaris had lived in that old stone hut which might itself be a relic of an Etruscan tomb or temple. No one was concerned to know further. The peasant does not look back; he only sees the road to gain his daily meal of bread or chestnuts. The past has no meaning to him, and to the future he never looks. That is the reason why those who want to cultivate or convince him fail utterly. If a man cannot see the horizon itself, it is of no use to point out to him spires or trees or towers which stand out against it. The world has never understood that the moment the labourer is made to see, he is made unhappy, being ill at ease and morbidly envious and ashamed, and wholly useless. Left alone, he is content in his own ruminant manner, as the buffalo is when left untormented amidst the marshes, grazing at peace and slumbering amidst the rushes and the canes.