you might mend my stockings for me, Maria Maddalena: I have no woman to look after me," he said simply. And she thought to herself:
"Can this be the terrible priest? That shows I am still dreaming."
And then she tried to make him betray himself:
"If you are dead you have no need of stockings," she said.
"How do you know I am dead? I am very much alive, on the contrary, and sitting here. And before long I am going to drive both you and your son out of my parish. It was a bad thing for you, coming here, you had better have brought him up to follow his father's trade. But you are an ambitious woman, and you wanted to come back as mistress where you had lived as a servant: so now you will see what you have gained by it!"
"We will go away," she answered humbly and sadly. "Indeed, I want to go. Man or ghost, whatever you are, have patience for a few days and we shall be gone."
45
