This was the more remarkable inasmuch as Don Agostino was evidently of a very different social grade from even the most well-to-do among his flock. At first sight, a stranger would have thought that there could not be much in common between him and the peasants and farmers who stood in a little crowd at the doors of his church on a _festa_ while he said mass, and still less with the women and children who knelt within the building. There was, however, the most important thing of all in common between them, and that was sympathy--human sympathy--so simple a thing, and yet so rare.
This, again, was remarkable; for no one could glance at Don Agostino's countenance without at once realizing that it belonged to a man who was probably intellectual and certainly refined. It would not be imagined, for instance, that there could be any fellow-feeling between him and the woman a few yards down the street who, indifferent as to the scantiness of the garments by way of clothing a well-developed bust, was leaning out of a window screaming objurgations at a small boy for chasing the strayed pig. Nevertheless, Don Agostino would doubtless have entered into the feelings of both the woman and the boy--and, probably, also into those of the pig--had he noticed the uproar, which, his thoughts being concentrated for the moment on the saying of his office, he did not do.
He had been at Montefiano some years now, and the stories current at the time of his arrival in the place as to the reason why he had been sent there from Rome were wellnigh forgotten by his parishioners. At first they held aloof from him suspiciously, as from one who was not of their condition in life, and who had only been sent to Montefiano because--well, because of some indiscretion committed at Rome. Some said it was politics, others that it was women, and others, again, that it was neither the one nor the other. All agreed that an _instruito_ like Don Agostino, with his air of a _gran signore_, and money behind that air, too, was not sent to a place like Montefiano for nothing.
Don Agostino, however, had not troubled himself as to what was said or thought, but had taken up his duties with that unquestioning obedience which spiritual Rome has incorporated with the rest of her heritage from the Cæsars. He neither offered any explanations nor made any complaints concerning the surroundings to which he found himself relegated. For two or three years after his first coming to Montefiano strangers had sometimes visited him, and once or twice a cardinal had come from Rome to see him--but that was ten years ago and more, and now nobody came. Probably, the Montefianesi said, the Vatican had forgotten him; and they added, with a shrug of the shoulders, that it was better for a priest to be forgotten in Montefiano than remembered in a cup of chocolate in Rome.