He was an iron-grey, thin,
disreputable-looking priest, very talkative and loud and queer. He
seemed like an old ne'er-do-well in priests' black, and he talked
loudly, almost to himself, as drunken people do. At once _he_ must show
the Fiori how to cut up the tree, he must have the axe from Paolo. He
shouted to Maria for a glass of wine. She brought it out to him with a
sort of insolent deference, insolent contempt of the man and traditional
deference to the cloth. The priest drained the tumblerful of wine at one
drink, his thin throat with its Adam's apple working. And he did not pay
the penny.
Then he stripped off his cassock and put away his hat, and, a ludicrous
figure in ill-fitting black knee-breeches and a not very clean shirt, a
red handkerchief round his neck, he proceeded to give great extravagant
blows at the tree. He was like a caricature. In the doorway Maria was
encouraging him rather jeeringly, whilst she winked at me. Marco was
stifling his hysterical amusement in his mother's apron, and prancing
with glee. Paolo and Giovanni stood by the fallen tree, very grave and
unmoved, inscrutable, abstract.
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