In winter the same people assembled round the olive press. In spring the elder flowered in the courtyard, the flies and the bees buzzed in the luminous air. The same figures moved in the streets. Uncle Barchitto, the madman, with his staring blue eyes, his long beard, and flowing hair, like a Jesus become old and a beggar, continued his harmless extravagances. Maestro Pane rapped on the table and talked to himself in a loud voice. Efès and Nanna reeled and stuttered. The ragged children played with the dogs, and the cats, and the chickens, and the baby pigs. The women squabbled. The young men sang melancholy love songs in the serene moonlit nights. Rebecca's lament shook the air like the cry of the cuckoo across the sadness of a barren landscape. As the sun sometimes shines out from an unexpected quarter of a cloudy sky, so the florid figure of Signor Carboni sometimes appeared in this district of dismal poverty. Then the women came to their doors smiling and saluting; the men who did no work, and passed their time stretched out indolently in the sunshine, sprang to their feet and blushed; the children ran after him and kissed his hand which he carried carelessly behind his back. In hard winters he gave _polenta_ (maize) and oil to the whole neighbourhood. People came to him for small loans which they never repaid. Everywhere in the dirty wind-swept lanes he met boys and girls who called him Godfather, and men and women whom he addressed as Gossip. He could not keep count of his god-children, and Uncle Pera declared that many called him Gossip merely to get his money. "They all hope he'll educate their sons," said the old gardener, warming himself at the olive press furnace, his cudgel across his knees. "Well, there's one he's going to educate," said the miller, looking proudly at Anania who was gazing out of the window. "Not even one. The _padrone_ is vain, but he isn't going to ruin himself." "Oh, shut up, you old grasshopper," said the miller; "you're just like the devil--the older you get the more disagreeable you are!" "Why doesn't the _padrone_ educate his own bastards?" said the old man, hawking and coughing. Anania, who was looking out of the window felt a shudder run through him as if he had been struck. The miller coughed in his turn and wished Anania would go away, but he could not restrain himself from reply. "Dead, dirty, malignant rat!" he exclaimed, "how dare you speak of the master so?" "Do you suppose it's not known?" said the old man taking up his cudgel as if to defend himself; "that boy who works for Franziscu Carchide--he's a son of Jesus Christ, is he? What I say is why doesn't the _padrone_ educate that boy?" "He's the son of a priest," said the miller in a loud voice. "He isn't. He's the _padrone_'s son. Look at him! He's the image of Margherita." "Well," said the miller, defeated, "that boy's as bad as the devil. What's the good of educating him? You can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear."