noon
The dining-room , on the ground floor , long and low , with a vaulted ceiling , whitewashed , and a pavement of worn red tiles , was a clean , bare room , that -LRB- pervaded by a curious , dry , not unpleasant odour -RRB- seemed actually to smell of bareness , as well as of cleanliness . There was a table , there was a dresser , there were a few unpainted deal chairs , rush-bottomed -LRB- exactly like the chairs in the church , in all Italian churches -RRB- , and there was absolutely nothing else , save a great black and white Crucifix attached to the wall . But , by way of compensation , its windows opened southwards , flooding it with sunshine , and commanding the wonderful perspective of the valley , -- the blue-grey hills , the snow-peaks , the blossoming low-lands , and the far-away opalescence that you knew to be the lake . At noon the parroco , his niece Annunziata , and his boarder met to dine . The parroco was a short , stout , florid , black-haired , hawk-nosed , fierce-looking , still youngish man , if five-and-forty may be reckoned youngish , with a pair of thin lips and powerful jaws which , for purposes of speech , he never opened if he could help it . Never , -- till Sunday came : when , mounting the pulpit , he opened them indeed , and his pent-up utterance burst forth in a perfect torrent of a sermon , a wild gush of words , shouted at the topmost stress of a remarkably lusty voice , arresting for a minute or two by reason of the sheer physical energy it represented , and then for a long half hour exquisitely tiresome . But on week-days he maintained a prodigious silence , and this -LRB- as , though fierce-looking , he was n't in the least really fierce -RRB- it would often be John 's malicious study to tempt him to break .