Oh! I well know who you are, for in my father's time I once walled up a window at the Palazzo Boccanera." Then he complaisantly allowed himself to be questioned, telling Pierre, who was surprised, that although they were certainly not happy they would have found life tolerable had they been able to work two days a week.

And one could divine that he was, at heart, fairly well content to go on short commons, provided that he could live as he listed without fatigue.
His narrative and his manner suggested the familiar locksmith who, on being summoned by a traveller to open his trunk, the key of which was lost, sent word that he could not possibly disturb himself during the hour of the siesta.

In short, there was no rent to pay, as there were plenty of empty mansions open to the poor, and a few coppers would have sufficed for food, easily contented and sober as one was.
"But oh, sir," Tomaso continued, "things were ever so much better under the Pope.

My father, a mason like myself, worked at the Vatican all his life, and even now, when I myself get a job or two, it's always there.

We were spoilt, you see, by those ten years of busy work, when we never left our ladders and earned as much as we pleased.