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The man was middle-aged,
ignorant but shrewd, and very greedy. Artois made friends with him,
and casually, over a glass of /moscato/, talked about his affairs and
the land question in Sicily. The peasant became communicative and, of
course, loud in his complaining. His land yielded nothing. The price
of almonds had gone down. The lemon crop had been ruined by the
storms. As to the vines--they were all devoured by the phylloxera, and
he had no money to buy and plant vines from America. Artois hinted
that he received a good rent from the English lady for the cottage on
Monte Amato. The contadino acknowledged that he received a fair price
for the cottage and the land about it; but the house, he declared,
would go to rack and ruin with no one ever in it, and the land was
lying idle, for the English lady would have everything left exactly as
it had been when she lived there with her husband. Artois seized upon
this hint of what was in the peasant's mind, and bemoaned with him his
situation.


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