Last year,
too, I was hungry often, for it was as the proverb says: 'If I eat, I
cannot dress myself, and if I dress myself I cannot eat.' (What a sad and
illuminating proverb!) Sir, if there were any Paradise, you would go
there, for what you do for me. If I can only read and write, I can earn
twice as much as I otherwise could. Then I can be a _cameriera_,
and bring my mistress a written account of expenditure every week."
Filomena knows that Saredo is a professor at the University. But she
does not know what a professor or a University is. She puts her question
like this: "Probably my idea of what a university is, may not be quite
correct?"
No one comes now. An invalid is very interesting at first, and arouses
sympathy. If he continue ill too long, people unconsciously think it
impossible for him to get well, and stay away. So the only resource left
me all day is to chat with Filomena, to whom Maria has entrusted the
nursing of me. Every evening I read with her; yesterday she had her
fourth lesson, and could almost read straight off. Her complexion and
the lower part of her face are like a child's; her undeveloped mental
state reveals itself, thus far, in her appearance. I told her yesterday,
as an experiment, that there were five continents and in each of them
many countries, but she cannot understand yet what I mean, as she has no
conception of what the earth looks like.
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