Filomena has the uncompromising honesty and straightforwardness of an
unspoilt soul. Her glance is not exactly pure, but free--how shall I
describe it? Full, grand, simple. With a _concha_ on her head, she would
look like a caryatid. If I compare her mentally with a feminine character
of another poet, Lamartine's Graziella, an Italian girl of the lower
classes, like herself, I cannot but think Graziella thin and poetised,
down to her name. The narrator, if I remember rightly, teaches her to
read, too; but Graziella herself does not desire it; it is he who
educates her. Filomena, on the contrary, with her anxiety to learn, is
an example and a symbol of a great historic movement, the poor, oppressed
Roman people's craving for light and knowledge. Of Italy's population of
twenty-six millions, according to the latest, most recent statistics,
seventeen millions can neither read nor write. She said to me to-day:
"What do you really think, sir, do you not believe that the Holy Ghost
is _una virtu_ and cannot be father of the child?" "You are right,
Filomena." "That is why I never pray." "Some day, when you are very
unhappy, perhaps you will pray." "I have been very unhappy; when I was
a child I used to suffer horribly from hunger. I had to get up at five
o'clock in the morning to work and got eight _soldi_ for standing all day
long in a vineyard in the sun and digging with a spade, and as corn was
dear and meat dear, we seven children seldom had a proper meal.
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