Andivius Hedulio | Page 7

as I told you. They
should be here now."
"Goggling country bumpkins?" he conjectured.
"Not a bit like that," I countered, "though you would scarcely call them
cultured. There is no art connoisseur among them. They care little for
books, but they are educated gentlemen and can talk of other subjects
besides vine-growing and cattle breeding. They have all been to Rome,

the Ducconians are the only stay-at-home, stick-in-the-mud family in
this valley. You will find all your fellow-diners keenly interested in
anything you can tell them about the latest fashions and the latest
gossip from Rome. They think and talk of the doings of Rome's fast set
much more than you do."
"They have nothing to do with the feud?" he queried.
"Three of them," I explained, "are on the Vedian side, three on the
Satronian side, though they are always polite to each other. But it is a
frigid politeness and I was anticipating the dinner tonight as a frightful
trial. I fancy your presence will ensure its passing off comfortably.
Entedius Hirnio will be here, too. His estates are beyond Vediamnum
and he has never taken sides in the feud any more than Ducconius or
my family."
"Do you ever see Ducconius?" he asked.
"Oh, never," said I, "we take care never to recognize each, other, I
assure you. We cannot help meeting occasionally, but I never see him
and he never sees me. We meet mostly on the road. The lower part of
this valley-road where he overtook you is as much his right-of-way as
mine, up to where the road forks and is crossed by the Bran Brook. You
can see the bridge from here."
Tanno shaded his eyes with his hand.
"That is all his land over there, on the other side of the Bran Brook," I
continued. "Further up the valley the brook has three feeders. The Flour
rises back of my land on the Vedian estate. The Chaff brook is all mine
and the Bran rises in his woodlands."
"Will he appeal the case or reopen it now your uncle is dead?" Tanno
queried.
"There is no possibility of appeal," I said, "or of reopening. The case is
closed and I have won it forever. And all thanks to Agathemer. But for
Agathemer, Ducconius would have won the final hearing as he had

won all the intermediate appeals. His defeat after so many victories has
embittered him more than if we had won every time and he hates me
worse than ever.
"The only unpleasant feature for me is that the tenant of the farm so
long in dispute cannot be ousted. He was heart and soul with
Ducconius all through the period of the suit. His daughter is married to
one of Ducconius' tenants and his younger son has taken one of
Ducconius' farms since three of his tenant-families died off year before,
last with the plague. This makes old Chryseros Philargyrus by no
means a pleasant tenant for me."
"Old Love-Gold Love-Silver," Tanno commented, "is that a nickname
or is it really his name?"
"Really his name," I affirmed. "His mother was so extravagant and
wasteful that his father named him Chryseros Philargyrus as a sort of
antidote incantation, in the hope that it might prove a good omen of his
disposition and predispose him to parsimony. He certainly has turned
out sufficiently close-fisted to justify the choice."
"I don't understand your talk about tenantry," said Tanno. "Do you
mean you cannot change a bailiff on a farm which, you have won
incontestably on final appeal in a suit at law?"
"He is no bailiff," I answered him. "He is a free man, just as much as
you or I. Sabinum is not like Latium or Etruria or Campania, where the
free tenantry has vanished, or like Bruttium or Spain, where there never
was any free tenantry. The free tenantry have survived in Sabinum
more completely than in any part of the world. I have only one bailiff
here and he manages only the villa-farm with a very moderate gang of
slaves under him. I do not own any more slaves on my estate. The
slaves on the farms are all owned by my tenants and there are eight
farms besides the villa- farm; counting Chryseros, there are nine tenant
farmers. Each owns slaves enough to work his farms. All the estates
about here are managed in that way: Aemilian, Vedian, Satronian,
Entedian and all the rest, big or little. We are rather proud of the system
and very proud of our tenants."

"It must be a fine system," Tanno sneered. "I have been wondering
what kept you away from Home, I suppose it has been the beautifully
smooth and marvellously easy working of your farm-tenant system."
"It works just as well as