Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/21

 All men in Grosseto this autumn day were talking of that one theme: Saturnino of Santa Fiora—il gran' Saturnino!

So they murmured with one accord, leaving business, and bargains, to crowd together and tell the tale over a thousand times and in a thousand different ways, and agree amongst each other, cordially and with many an oath, that to have captured Saturnino and slung him across a horse's back, with heels tied together like any sheep's, was a sin and shame in the executive.

For Saturnino had been their hero, looming as large as gods loom in the mist of myths. 'He was a man!' they muttered one to another: and then the natives of the little city seized the strangers who came down for the first time from the Lucchese hills, and told them wondrous tales in passionate high-vibrating voices, and cried a hundred times:

'Do your mountains breed the like? Nay, not they. There is but one Saturnino. Never would he hurt the poor. Nay, not a poor soul in the land but had him for a friend. And a dutiful man too has he always been. When he came down into the towns, straightway would he go to the church and be shriven, and to the Madonna he would