It impressed his wife, who now saw it for the first time, as a spot which might inspire religious contemplation, by that sense of altitude, not suggested by distant views, by that deep sky behind the village, by its solitude, its silence.

Noemi was thinking with profound pity of poor far-away Jeanne.
III.

The innkeeper at Jenne was a worthy, gravely courteous man, in spectacles, who, having been to America, could be said to know the world, but who seemed to have escaped its corrupting influences.

To the new-comers he spoke of Benedetto favourably, on the whole, but with a certain diplomatic reserve.

He did not call him "the Saint," he called him "Fra Benedetto." The Selvas learned from him that Benedetto occupied a cabin belonging to the innkeeper himself, in payment of which he tilled a small piece of ground.