Project Gutenberg's Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian, by Various
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Title: Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian
Author: Various
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5728]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on August 18, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
Produced by Nicole Apostola, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
STORIES BY FOREIGN AUTHORS
ITALIAN
A GREAT DAY ......... by EDMONDO DE AMICIS
PEREAT ROCHUS ....... by ANTONIO FOGAZZARO
SAN PANTALEONE ...... by GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
IT SNOWS .......... by ENRICO CASTELNUOVO
COLLEGE FRIENDS ..... yy EDMONDO DE AMICIS
NEW YORK
1898
CONTENTS
A GREAT DAY ....................... Edmondo de Amicis PEREAT ROCHUS ..................... Antonio Fogazzaro SAN PANTALEONE .................... Gabriele d'Annunzio IT SNOWS .......................... Enrico Castelnuovo COLLEGE FRIENDS ................... Edmondo de Amicis
A GREAT DAY
BY
EDMONDO DE AMICIS
The Translation by Edith Wharton.
The G--s were living in the country, near Florence, when the Italian army began preparations to advance upon Rome. In the family the enterprise was regarded with disapproval. The father, the mother, and the two grown daughters, all ardent Catholics and temperate patriots, talked of moral measures.
"We don't profess to understand anything about politics," Signora G--- would say to her friends; "I am especially ignorant; in fact, I am afraid I should find it rather difficult to explain WHY I think as I do. But I can't help it; I have a presentiment. There is something inside me that keeps saying: 'This is not the right way for them to go to Rome; they ought not to go, they must not go!' I remember how things were in forty-eight, and in fifty-nine and sixty; well, in those days I never was frightened, I never had the feeling of anxiety that I have now; I always thought that things would come right in the end. But now, you may say what you please, I see nothing but darkness ahead. You may laugh as much as you like... pray heaven we don't have to cry one of these days! I don't believe that day is so far off."
The only one of the household who thought differently was the son, a lad of twenty, just re-reading his Roman history, and boiling over with excitement. To mention Rome before him was to declare battle, and in one of these conflicts feeling had run so high that it had been unanimously decided not to touch upon the subject in future.
One evening, early in September, one of the official newspapers announced that the Italian troops had actually entered the Papal States. The son was bursting with joy. The father read the article, sat thinking awhile, and then, shaking his head, muttered: "No!" and again: "No!" and a third time: "No!"
"But I beg your pardon, father!" shouted the boy, all aflame.
"Don't let us begin again," the mother gently interposed; and that evening nothing more was said. But the next night something serious happened. The lad, just before going to bed, announced, without preamble, as though he were saying the most natural thing in the world, that he meant to go to Rome with the army.
There was a general outcry of surprise and indignation, followed by a storm of reproaches and threats. No decent person would willingly be present at such scenes as were about to be enacted; it was enough that, as Italians, they were all in a measure to blame for what had happened, without deliberately assuming the shame of being an eye-witness; there was nothing one could not forgive in a lad of good family, except (it was his mother who spoke) this craze to go and see A POOR OLD MAN BOMBARDED. A fine war! A glorious triumph, indeed!
When they had ended the lad set his teeth, tore in bits the paper clutched between his fingers, and, lighting a candle, flung out of the room, stamping his feet like an Italian actor representing an angry king.
Half an hour later he stole gently back to the dining-room. His father and mother sat there alone, sad and silent. He asked pardon of his father, who grumblingly shook hands; then he returned to his room, followed by his mother.
"Then we shall hear no more of these ideas?" she tenderly suggested, laying her hands on his shoulders.
He answered her with a kiss.
The next day he crossed the borders of the Papal States.
The discovery of his flight was received with tears, rage, and invectives. They would never consent to see him again; if he came back, they would not even rise from their seats to welcome him; they would not speak to him for a month; they would cut off his allowance; they had a hundred other plans for his discomfiture. With the mother it was only talk; but the father meant what he said. He was a good but hard man, averse to compromises, and violent in his anger; his son knew it and feared him. It was incomprehensible that the lad should have ventured upon such a step.
The news of the 20th of September only increased the resentment of his parents.
"He will see," they muttered. "Only let him try to come back!"
Their words, their gestures, the manner in which they were to receive him, were all thought out and agreed upon: he was to receive a memorable lesson.
On the morning of the 22d they were all seated in the dining-room, reading, when there was a great knock at the door, and the boy, flushed, panting, sunburnt, stood erect and motionless on the threshold.
No one moved.
"What!" cried the boy, extending his arms in amazement, "you haven't heard the news?"
No one answered.
"Hasn't any one told you? Has no one been out from Florence? Are you all in the dark still?"
No one breathed.
"We have heard," one of the girls at length faltered, after exchanging glances with her father, "that Rome was taken--"
"What! Is THAT all?"
"That is all."
"But what a victory! What a victory!" cried the son, with a shout that set them trembling. "So I am the one to tell you of it!"
They sprang up and surrounded him.
"But how is it possible?" he went on, with excited gestures--"how is it possible that you haven't heard anything? Have there been no rumors about the neighborhood? Haven't the peasants held a meeting? What is the municipality about? Why, it's inconceivable! Just listen--here, come close to me, so--I'll tell you the whole story; my heart's going at such a rate that I can hardly speak..."
"But what has happened?"
"Wait! You shan't know yet. You must hear the whole story first, from beginning to end. I want to tell you the thing bit by bit, just as I saw it."
"But WHAT is it?--the Roman festival?"
"The PLEBISCITE?"
"The King's arrival?"
"No, no, no! Something much more tremendous!"
"But tell us, tell us!"
"Sit down, lad!"
"But how is it that we haven't heard anything about it?"
"How can I tell? All I know is that bringing you the first news of it is the most glorious thing that's ever happened to me. I reached Florence this morning--they knew all about it there, so I rushed straight out here. I fancied that perhaps you mightn't have heard yet--I ... I'm all out of breath ..."
"But tell us, tell us quickly!" the mother and daughters cried, drawing their chairs around him. The father remained at a distance.
"You shall hear, mother--SUCH things!" the boy began. "Here, come closer to me. Well, you know what happened on the morning of the twenty-first? The rest of the regiments entered; there were the same crowds, the same shouting and music as on the day before. But suddenly, about midday, the noise stopped as if by common consent, first in the Corso, then in the other principal streets, and so, little by little, all over the city. The troops of people began to break up into groups, talking to each other in low voices; then they scattered in all directions, taking leave of each other in a way that made one think they meant to meet again. It seemed as though the signal had been given to prepare for something tremendous. Men said a hasty word to each other in passing and then hurried on, each going his own way. The whole Corso was in movement; people were rushing in and out of the houses, calling out from the street and being answered from the windows; soldiers dashed about as though in answer to a summons; cavalry officers trotted by; men and boys passed with bundles of flags on their shoulders and in their arms, all breathless and hurried, as if the devil were after them. Not knowing a soul, and having no way of finding out what it all meant, I tried to guess what was up from the expression of their faces. They all looked cheerful enough, but not as frantically glad as they had been; there was a shade of doubt, of anxiety. One could see they were planning something. From the Corso I wandered on through some of the narrower streets, stopping now and then to watch one of the groups. Everywhere I saw the same thing--crowds of people, all in a hurry, all coming and going, with the same air that I had already noticed in the Corso, of concealing from somebody what they were doing, although it was all being done in the open. Knots, bands, hundreds of men and women passed me in silence; they were all going in the same direction, as though to some appointed meeting-place."
"Where were they going?" the father and mother interrupted.
"Wait a minute. I went back to the Corso. As I approached it I heard a deep, continuous murmur of voices, growing louder and louder, like the noise of a great crowd. The Corso was full of people, all standing still and facing toward the Capitol, as though they expected something to come from that direction. From the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza di Venezia they were jammed so tight that nobody could budge. I heard whispers flying about: 'Now they're coming!'--'They're coming from over there!'-- 'Who's coming?'--'The main column--here's the main column!'--'Here it is!'--'No, it isn't!'--'Yes, it is!' All at once there was a stir in the crowd, and a big shout, 'Here they are!' and down the middle of the street a wide passageway seemed to open of itself, as though to make room for a procession. Every head was uncovered. I fought my way through from the outer edge of the crowd, to get a look at what was coming. I can feel the shiver down my back now! First, a lot of generals in full uniform, and gentlemen in civilian's dress, with the tri-colored scarf; in the midst of them, girls, women, and ragged, tattered men; workmen, peasants, women with babies, soldiers of all arms; smartly dressed ladies, students, whole families clutching hold of each other's hands, for fear of getting lost in the crowd; all jammed together, trampled upon, so that they could barely move; and with it all not a sound but a buzzing, monotonous murmur; silence on both sides of the street; silence in the windows. It was awfully solemn; half strange and half fearful. I felt as if I were in a trance."
"But where were they going to?" his parents and sisters interposed with growing impatience.
"Wait a bit!" he returned. "I fought my way into the thick of it, with the crowds on both sides of the street piling in on top of me. Lord, what a crush! They spread out like a torrent, pouring into every cranny, sweeping people on ahead of them, into shop-doors, into the court-yards of houses, wherever there was a yard of vacant space. As we went on, other streams of people kept surging into the Corso from all the side streets, which were just as closely packed; on we swept from the Capitol; and they said that there were thousands more in the Forum. Hordes kept pouring in from the Piazza di Spagna, from the Via del Babbuino, from the Piazza del Popolo. Every one had something in his hand: a wreath of flowers, a branch of olive or laurel, a banner, a rag tied to a stick. Some carried holy images uplifted above their heads; inscriptions, emblems, pictures of the Pope, of the King, of the Princes, of Garibaldi; never under the sun was there such a medley and confusion of people and things! And all the while only that low murmur, and the great multitude moving on with a calmness, a dignity that seemed miraculous. I felt as though I were dreaming!"
They gathered close round him without a word. "Suddenly I noticed that the crowd had turned to the left. Round we all went; very slowly, with the greatest difficulty, shoved, trampled on, knocked about; with our arms pinned to our sides, and hardly able to breathe, we fought our way, street by street, to the little square by the bridge of St. Angelo. The bridge itself was crammed with people; beyond it, there were more crowds, which seemed to stretch all the way to St. Peter's. The right bank of the Tiber swarmed like an ant-hill. Crossing the bridge was a hard job; it took us over a quarter of an hour. The poor devils on each side, in their fear of being pushed over the edge, clutched the parapet madly, and shouted with terror; I believe there were several accidents.
"Well, at last we got across. All the streets leading to the Piazza of St. Peter were choked with human beings. When we reached the foot of one of the two streets that run straight to St. Peter's we heard a great roar, like the noise of the sea in a gale; it seemed to come to us in gusts, now near by, now a long way off. It was the noise of the crowd in the square before St. Peter's. We rushed ahead more madly than ever; climbing over each other, carried along, pushed, swept, and dragged, till at last we reached the square. God, if you could have seen it!-- What a spectacle!--The whole huge square was jammed, black, swarming; no longer a square, but an ocean. All around the outer edge, between the four lines of columns, on the steps of the church, in the portico, on the great terraced roof, in the outer galleries of the dome, on the capitals of the columns, on the very pilasters; in the windows of the houses to the right of the square, on the balconies, on the leads, above, below, to the right and to the left, wherever a human being could find foothold, wherever there was some projection to cling to or to dangle from, everywhere there were heads, arms, legs, banners, shouts, gesticulations. The whole of Rome was there."
"Heavens! ... And the Vatican?" the women cried, in a tremble.
"All shut up. You know that a wing of the Vatican overlooks the square, and that the Pope's apartments are in that wing. Every window was closed; it looked like an abandoned palace; like a cold, rigid, impassive face, staring straight ahead with wide-open motionless eyes. The crowd looked up at it with a murmur.
"Over by the church steps I noticed a lot of officers and gentlemen moving about and giving orders, which seemed to be handed on through the crowd. The excitement was increasing. Every head in the square was uncovered; white heads of old men, brown heads of soldiers, fair heads of little children. The sun blazed down on it all. Thousands of shapes, colors, sounds, seemed to undulate and blend; banners, green boughs, fluttering rags, were tossed back and forth as though upon a dancing sea. The crowd seethed and quivered as if the ground underfoot were on fire.
"Suddenly there was a shout that swept over the whole square: 'The boys! The children! Let's have the children!'"
"Then, as if every one were following some concerted plan of action, all the children in the square were lifted up above the crowd, and the men and women who carried them fought a way through to the front of the Vatican. The bigger boys made their own way. Bands of ten and twenty of them, holding each other by the hand, wriggled between people's legs; hundreds of children, some on their own feet, some carried, some pushed, a whole world of little folk, hidden till then in the crowd, suddenly swarmed in one corner of the square; and how the women screamed! 'Take care!--Make room!--Look out for my child!'"
"Presently there was another shout: 'The women now! The women!' and another shuffling up and settling down of the crowd. Then a third shout, louder than any of the others: 'The army! The troops!' this time. Then came the most indescribable agitation, but underneath it all a sense of order and rapidity; none of the ordinary confusion and delay; every one helped, made way, co-operated; the whole immense multitude seemed to be under orders. Gradually the disturbance ceased, the noise diminished, the gesticulation subsided; and looking about one saw that all the soldiers, women, and children in the crowd had disappeared as if by magic.
"There they all stood, on the right side of the square, divided into three great battalions that extended from the door of St. Peter's to the centre of the colonnade, all facing the Vatican, packed together and motionless. The crowd burst into frantic applause."
"But the Vatican?" the whole family cried out for the third time.
"Shut up and silent as a convent; but wait. Suddenly the applause ceased, and every head turned backward, whispering: 'Silence!' The whisper travelled across the square and down the length of the two streets leading to it; gradually the sound died out, and the crowd became absolutely, incredibly silent: it was supernatural. All at once, in the midst of this silence, we heard a faint mysterious chirping; a vague, diffused sound of voices, that seemed to come from overhead. Gradually it grew louder, and there was an uncertain gathering of shrill, discordant tones, now close by, now far off, but growing steadier and more harmonious, until at length it was blent in a single tremulous silvery chant that soared above us like the singing of a choir of angels. Thousands of children were singing the hymn to Pius IX.--the hymn of forty-seven."
"Oh, God--oh, God!" cried the mother and daughters, with clasped hands.
"That song re-echoed in every heart; it touched something deep down and tender in every one of us. A thrill ran through the crowd; there was a wild waving of arms and hands, as though to take the place of speech; but the only sound was a confused murmur.
"'Holy Father,' that murmur seemed to say, 'look at them, listen to them! They are our children, they are your little ones, who are looking for you, who are praying to you, who implore your blessing. Yield to their entreaty; give them your blessing; grant that our religion and our country may dwell together as one faith in our hearts. One word from you, Holy Father, one sign from you, one glance even, promising pardon and peace, and every man of us shall be with you and for you, now and for ever! Look--these our children and your little ones!'
"Thousands of banners fluttered in the air, the song ceased, and a deep silence followed."
"Well?" they cried breathlessly.
"Still shut up," the lad answered. "Then the women began to sing. There was a deep thrill in the immense voice that rose; a something that throbs only in the breast of mothers; it seemed a cry rather than a hymn; it was sweet and solemn.
"At first the crowd was motionless; then a wave of excitement passed over it, and the hymn was drowned in a great clamor: 'These are our mothers, these are our wives and sisters; Holy Father, listen to them. They have never known hatred or anger; they have always loved and hoped; all they ask is that you should give them leave to couple your name with that of Italy on their children's lips. Holy Father, one word from you will spare them many cruel doubts and many bitter tears. Give them your blessing, Holy Father!"
The boy's listeners questioned him with look and gesture.
"Still closed," he answered; "still closed. But then a tremendous chant burst out, followed by a wild surging of the crowd: the soldiers were singing.--'These are our soldiers,' the people cried; 'they shall be yours, Holy Father. They come from the fields and the workshops; they will keep watch at your door, Holy Father, they will attend upon your steps. They were born under your rule, as children they heard your glorious cry for liberty, they fought the stranger in your name and in that of their king; in the hour of danger, you will find them close about your throne, ready to die for you. One word, Holy Father, and these swords, these breasts, this flesh and blood is yours! They ask your blessing on their country, Holy Father, they ask you to repeat your own glorious words!'...
"A window in the Vatican opened. The song ceased, the shouts died out-- silence. There was not a soul in the window. For a few seconds the immense multitude seemed to stop breathing. It seemed as though something moved behind the window--as though at the back of the room a shadow appeared and then vanished. Then we fancied that we caught a glimpse of people moving to and fro, and heard a vague sound. Every face was turned towards the window, every eye was fixed upon it. Suddenly, as if by inspiration, every arm in the multitude was stretched out towards the palace; mothers lifted their children above their heads, soldiers swung their caps on the points of their bayonets, every banner was shaken out, and a hundred thousand voices burst into one tremendous shout, 'Viva! Viva! Viva!' At the window of the Vatican something lightcolored appeared, wavered, fluttered in the air. God in heaven!" cried the boy, with his arms about his mother's neck, "it was the flag of Italy!"
The delight, the joy, the enthusiasm which greeted his words are indescribable. The lad had spoken with so much warmth, had been so carried away by his imagination, that he had not perceived that, gradually, as the story proceeded, he had passed from fact to fiction; and his eyes were wet, his voice shook, with the spell of his hallucination. His words carried conviction, and not a doubt clouded the happiness of his listeners. They laughed and cried and kissed each other, feeling themselves suddenly released from all their doubts and scruples, from all the miserable conflicts of conscience that had tortured them as Italians and as Catholics! The reconciliation between Church and State! The dream of so many years! What peace it promised, what a future of love and harmony! What a sense of freedom and security!
"Thank God, thank God!" the mother cried, sinking into a chair, worn out by her emotions. And then, in a moment or two, they were all at the lad again, clamoring for fresh details.
"Is it really true?"
"Haven't you dreamed it?"
"Go on, tell us everything. Tell us about the Pope, about the crowd, about what happened next"...
"What happened next?" the boy began again, in a tired voice. "I hardly know. There was such an uproar, such confusion, such an outburst of frenzy, that the mere recollection of it makes my brain reel. All I saw was a vortex of arms and flags, and the breath was almost knocked out of me by a thundering blow on the chest. After a while, I got out of the thick of it, and plunged into one of the streets leading to the bridge of St. Angelo. People were still pouring into the piazza from Borgo Pio with frantic shouts. I heard afterwards that the crowd tried to break into the Vatican; the soldiers had to keep them back, first breast to breast, then with blows, and then with their bayonets. They say that some people were suffocated in the press. No one knows yet what happened inside the Vatican; there was a rumor that the Pope had given his blessing from the window--but I didn't see him. I was almost dead when I got to the bridge. The news of what had taken place had already spread over the whole city, and from every direction crowds were still pouring towards the Vatican. Detachments of cavalry went by me at a trot; orderlies and aides-de-camps carrying orders dashed along the streets. Hearing their shouts, the people in the windows shouted back at them. Decrepit old men, sick people, women with babies in their arms, swarmed on the terraces, poured out of the houses, questioning, wondering, embracing one another... At last I got to the Corso. At that minute there was a tremendous report from the direction of the Pincio, another from Porta Pia, a third from San Pancrazio: all the batteries of the Italian army were saluting the Pope. Soon afterwards the bells of the Capitol began to ring; then, one after another, a hundred churches chimed in. The crowds of Borgo Pio surged frantically back towards the left bank of the Tiber, invading the streets, the squares, the houses, stripping the coverings from the papal escutcheons, carrying in triumph busts of Pius IX., portraits and banners. Thousands assembled with frantic cheers before the palaces of the Roman nobles who are known for their devotion to the Holy See. In answer to the cheers, the owners of the houses appeared on their balconies and unfurled the Italian flag.
"Wait a minute, I'm out of breath"...
As soon as he had recovered his breath he was assailed with fresh questions.
"Well, and what then? And the Vatican--? The Pope--?"
"I don't know.--But Rome that night... how can I ever tell you how beautiful, how great, how marvellous it was! The night was perfectly clear, and I don't believe such an illumination was ever seen since the world began. The Corso was on fire; the churches were jammed with people, and there was preaching in every one of them. The streets were full of music, dancing, and singing; people harangued the crowds in the cafes and the theatres.
"I wanted to see St. Peter's again. There had been a rumor that His Holiness needed rest, and Borgo Pio was as still as it is on the stillest night. The piazza was full of moonlight. A silent throng was gathered about the two fountains and on the steps of the church. Many were sitting down, many stretched at full length on the ground; the greater number had fallen asleep, worn out by the fatigue and excitement of the day; women, soldiers, children, lay huddled together in a confused heap. Hundreds of others were on their knees, and sentinels of all the different corps moved about here and there, with little flags and crosses fastened to the barrels of their guns. The ground was strewn with flags, foliage, flowers, and hats lost in the crush; the windows of the Vatican were lit up; there was not a sound to be heard, the crowd seemed to be holding its breath.
"I turned away, beside myself with the thought of all that I had seen, of the effect that it would produce in Italy, and all over the world; of what you would all say to it, and you most of all, father! I found myself at the station without knowing how I had got there. It was full of noise and confusion. I jumped on to the train, we started, and here I am. The news reached Florence last night; they say the excitement was indescribable; the King has left for Rome; the news is all over the world by this time!"
He sank into a chair and sat silent, as though his breath had failed him. Then he sprang up and rushed out to intercept the papers, which usually reached the villa at eleven o'clock in the morning.
In this way he succeeded in maintaining the blissful delusion until evening. The dinner was full of gayety, the lad continued to pour out detail after detail, and his listeners to heap benediction upon benediction.
Suddenly a hurried step was heard on the stairs, and the bell rang violently. The door opened, and a tall, pale priest, with a drawn mouth, appeared on the threshold. He was a recent acquaintance of the family, who felt no great sympathy for him, but who received him courteously more out of respect for his cloth than out of regard for his merits.
As he entered, all but the son sprang up and surrounded him with excited exclamations.
"Well, have you heard the news? Thank God, it's all ended! The hand of God is in it! What do you think of it all? Tell us, let us hear your opinion!"
"But what news?" asked the priest, looking from one to the other with astonished eyes.
In wild haste, and all speaking at once, they poured out the story of the festival, the forgiveness, the reconciliation.
The priest stared at them, with the look of a man who finds himself unexpectedly surrounded by lunatics; then, with a withering glance at the boy, and a smile of malignant triumph--
"Luckily," he said, "there is not a word of truth in it!"
"Not a word of truth in it?" they clamored, turning upon their informant.
The boy, unmoved by their agitation, returned the priest's look halfscornfully, half-sadly.
"Your reverence, don't say fortunately. Since you are an Italian, say rather, 'Alas, that it is not so!'"
For a moment the others stood aghast; then, angered, as people will be, rather against those who undeceive them than against those who delude them, they turned towards the priest, involuntarily echoing the boy's words: "He's right, your reverence! Say rather, 'Alas, that it is not so!'"
The priest pointed to his own breast with a long knotty finger.
"I?" he exclaimed bitterly, "never!"
At these words, the boy's father, rudely roused from his mood of tender exaltation, and bursting, after his wont, into sudden fury, stretched his arm towards the priest, with a cry that rang through the room like a pistol-shot: "Out of my house this instant!"
The priest stalked out, slamming the door. The lad's arms were about his father's neck; and the old man, laying his hands on his son's head, said gently: "I forgive you."
PEREAT ROCHUS
BY
ANTONIO FOGAZZARO
The Translation by A. L. Frothingham, Jr.
I.
"It is a fine case, Don Rocco," said Professor Marin, gathering up the cards and smiling beatifically, while his neighbor on the right raved furiously against poor Don Rocco. The professor continued to look at him with a little laugh on his closed mouth, and with a glance sparkling with benevolent hilarity; then he turned to the lady of the house, who was napping in a corner of the sofa.
"It is a fine case, Countess Carlotta!"
"I understand that well enough," said she, "and it seems to me time to end it; isn't that so, Don Rocco?"
"No, Don Rocco," said the professor seriously, "on reflection it certainly is a case for the ecclesiastical court."
"I should say it was at least that," said his neighbor on the right.
Don Rocco, red as a poppy, with his two fingers in his snuff-box, kept silence, his head bent forward and his brows knit in a certain contrite way peculiar to him, facing the tempest with his bald spot, and looking slyly between one wink and another at the unfortunate cards. When he heard the words "ecclesiastical court" repeated by his companion, whom he held in considerable fear, it seemed to him that matters were becoming quite amusing, so he forced a little smile and took a pinch of snuff between his fingers.
"Oh, you laugh!" returned the implacable professor. "I hardly know whether, having played at terziglio and having brought such ill luck on your partner, you can say Mass in peace to-morrow morning."
"Oh! I can, I can," muttered Don Rocco, knitting his brows still more and raising a little his good-natured countryman's face. "We all make mistakes, all of us. Even he, over there, not to mention yourself, sometimes."
His voice had the tone of a peaceful animal badgered beyond all patience. The professor was laughing with his eyes. "You are quite right," said he.
The game was over, the players got up.
"Yes," said the professor with quizzical seriousness, "the case of Sigismondo is more complicated."
Don Rocco closed his beady little eyes in a smile, bending his head with a peculiar mixture of modesty, complacency, and confusion, and mumbled:
"Even that case can be unravelled."
"You see," added the professor, "I am well informed. It is a case, Countess, which Don Rocco must unravel at the next meeting of the ecclesiastical court."
"There is no such meeting going on here," said the countess. "Let it alone."
But it was not so easy to wrest a victim from the clutches of the professor.
"Let us then say no more about it," said he quietly. "But listen, Don Rocco; I am not of your opinion on that point. As for me, pereat mundus."
Don Rocco frowned furiously.
"I haven't spoken with any one," said he.
"Don Rocco, you have gossiped, and I know it," answered the professor. "Have patience, Countess, and give us your opinion."
Countess Carlotta did not care to enter upon the question, but the professor continued imperturbably to set forth the case of Sigismondo as it had been promulgated by the Episcopal tribunal.
A certain Sigismondo, fallen suddenly ill, asked for a confessor. Hardly was he alone with the priest when he hastened to tell him that some other person was on the point of committing a homicide, which he had himself instigated.
Hardly had he said these words when he lost voice and consciousness. The priest doubted whether Sigismondo had spoken in confession or not; and he could not prevent the crime, could not save this human life in peril, unless he made use of what he had heard in confidence. Should he do this or should he let a man be killed?"
"It is Don Rocco's opinion," concluded the professor, "that the priest should act as a policeman."
Poor Don Rocco, tortured in his conscience between the feeling that he ought not to discuss the question in a secular conversation and a feeling of reverence for his bantering friend who was an ecclesiastic of mature age and a professor in the Episcopal seminary of P---, was twisting himself about and mumbling excuses.
"No...the fact is...I say...it seems to me..."
"I am surprised, Don Rocco, that you should think it worth while to make excuses," said the lady. "It amazes me that you should take seriously the jests of the professor."
But the professor protested, and with subtle questions pushed Don Rocco to the wall and began to squeeze out of him, little by little, the peculiar combination of right instincts and crooked arguments which he had in his head, showing him with the greatest charm of manner the fallacy of all his bad reasons and of all his good sense, and leaving him in a stupor of contrite humility. But the game lasted only a short while, because the countess dismissed the company with the excuse that it was after eleven o'clock. However, she asked Don Rocco to remain.
It was the Countess Carlotta who had chosen him, a few years before, as rector of the Church of St. Luke, which was her property. She took with him a sort of Episcopal air which was peacefully accepted by the thankful priest, as simple in spirit as he was humble-hearted.
"You would do better, my dear Don Rocco," said she when they were alone, "to bother yourself less with such affairs as that of Sigismondo, and a little more with your own."
"But why?" asked Don Rocco, surprised. "I do not know what you mean."
"Of course; the whole village knows it, but you are in complete ignorance."
Her eyes added quite clearly, "Poor simpleton." Don Rocco remained silent.
"When does Lucia return?" asked she. This Lucia was the servant of Don Rocco, to whom he had given permission to go home for five days.
"On Sunday," he answered. "To-morrow evening. Oh!" he suddenly exclaimed, smiling with satisfaction at his own keenness. "Now I understand, now I see what you mean. But it is not so, it is not so at all."
He had at last understood that it was a question of certain rumors current in the village on a love affair of his servant with a certain Moro, a bad specimen, well known at the police court, who combined craft with malevolence and strength in a most diabolical manner. Some believed that he was not entirely bad, but that necessity and the ill-treatment of an unjust master had led him to wrongdoing; but every one feared him.
"It is not true at all, is it?" answered she. "Then I don't know what the village will say when certain novelties will happen to the servant of the priest."
Don Rocco became red as fire and frowned most portentously.
"But it is not true at all," said he, brusquely and shortly. "I questioned her myself as soon as I heard the gossip. It is nothing but the maliciousness of people. Why, the man does not even see her!"
"Oh! Don Rocco," said the lady. "You are good, good, good. But as the world is not made that way, and as there is a scandal, if you don't make up your mind to send the creature away, I must decide on something myself."
"You will do what you like," answered the priest dryly. "Have I not got to consider what is right?"
The countess looked at him, and said, with a sudden solemnity, "Very well. You will reflect on this to-night, and to-morrow you will give me your final answer."
She rang the bell to have a lantern brought for Don Rocco, as the night was very dark. But, to her great surprise, Don Rocco carefully extracted one from the back pocket of his cloak.
"What made you do that?" exclaimed she. "You have probably got a spot on my chair!"
She got up, notwithstanding the assurances of Don Rocco, and taking one of the candles which still burned on the card table, she stooped down to look at the chair.
"There!" she said, "put your nose over that! It is spotted and ruined!"
Don Rocco came also, and, knitting his brows, bent down over a large spot of oil, a black island on the gray cloth, muttering most seriously, "Oh, yes!" and remaining absorbed in his gaze.
"Now, go!" said the lady. "What is done is done."
It seemed in fact, as if he were awaiting her permission to raise his nose from the repentant stool.
"Yes, I'll go now," he answered, lighting his lantern, "because I am alone at home at present, and I am even afraid that I left the door open."
Very suddenly he said "Good-night," and disappeared without even looking at the countess.
She was astonished. "Dear me, what a boor!" she said.
II.
It was a damp, cloudy night in November. Little Don Rocco was limping along towards his hermitage of St. Luke with awkward steps, his arms in parentheses, and his back arched, knitting his brows at the road-bed as he went along. He was ruminating over the dark words of Signora Carlotta, and their importance was gradually piercing his obtuse brain. He was also ruminating over the next assembly of the ecclesiastical court, over the pereat mundus and the subtle reasonings of the professor, of which he had understood so little; not to speak of the exposition of the Gospels for the next day, which he had not yet fully prepared. All this would often get inextricably confused in his mind. Certainly poor innocent Lucia must not be condemned, pereat mundus. Signora Carlotta was almost a padrona to him; but what about that other great padrone? Nemo potest duobus dominis servire; thus, beloved brethren, says the Gospel for the day.
Poor Don Rocco, as usual, had also lost at terziglio; and this gave a somewhat gray cast to his ideas, notwithstanding his proverbial carelessness of every mundane interest. That hole in his pocket, that continuous dropping, made him reflect. Would it not have been better for him to give the same amount in alms?
"There is this good thing about it," he thought, "that it is a terrible bore, and that they all badger me. I certainly do not play for pleasure."
He passed on the left of the road a dark clump of trees, ascending slowly in the darkness towards three large cypresses of unequal height, standing out black against the sky. There, between the old cypresses, stood the little country church of St. Luke, attached to a small convent which had had no inmates for a hundred years. The little hillock garlanded with vines had no other structures. From the convent, and from the grassy knoll, on which stood the little cypress-overhung church, the main road could not be seen, but only other knolls gay with vineyards, villas, and country houses, islands on an immense plain, extending from the hills further away as far as the Alps and blending eastward in the mists of the invisible sea. The simple chaplain of Countess Carlotta lived alone in the convent, like a priest of silence, content with his meagre prebend, content to preach with might and main in the little church, to be called during the day to bless the beans, and at night to assist the dying, to cultivate the vine with his own hands; content with everything, in fine; even with his servant, an ugly old maid of about forty, at whose discretion he ate, drank, and dressed himself most resignedly, without exchanging more than a dozen words with her throughout the year.
"If I send her away," he said to himself, as he passed between the high hedges of the lane that led up from the main road to St. Luke, "it will damage and dishonor her. I cannot conscientiously do it, because I am sure that it isn't true. And with that Moro, of all men!"
The clock in the bell-tower struck eleven. Don Rocco began to think of his sermon, of which only three-quarters was written, and he rushed down from the church square to the door which led into his courtyard under the bell-tower at the end of a steep and stony lane. As he opened the gate and passed across the yard he was brought suddenly to a standstill. A faint light was shining from the windows of his sitting-room, the former refectory of the monks, on the lower floor.
Don Rocco had left at four o'clock to pay his visit to the Countess Carlotta, and had not returned in the meanwhile. He could not have left the lamps lighted. Therefore Lucia must have returned before the time she had set; that must certainly be the reason. He did not fatigue his brain by making any other suppositions, but entered.
"Is it you, Lucia?" he called. No answer. He passed through the vestibule, approached the kitchen, and stood motionless on the doorsill.
A man was sitting under the chimney-cap with his hands stretched out over the coals. He turned toward the priest and said, most unconcernedly:
"Don Rocco, your humble servant."
By the light of the smoky petroleum lamp which stood on the table, Don Rocco recognized the Moro. He was conscious of a feeling of weakness in his heart and in his legs. He did not move nor answer.
"Make yourself at home, Don Rocco," continued the Moro imperturbably, as if he were doing the honors of his own house. "You had better take a seat here also, for it is cold to-night and damp."
"Yes, it is cold," answered Don Rocco, infusing a forced benevolence into his tones; "it is damp."
And he put his lantern down on the table.
"Come here," said his companion. "Wait till I make you comfortable." He got a chair and placed it on the hearthstone near his own.
"There now," said he.
Meanwhile Don Rocco was getting his breath again, and carrying on, with a terrible knitting of his brows, most weighty reflections.
"Thanks," he answered, "I will go to put away my cloak and come back at once."
"Lay your cloak down here," replied the Moro, not without some haste and a new tone of imperiousness not at all pleasing to Don Rocco.
He silently placed his cloak and hat on the table and sat down under the chimney-cap beside his host.
"You will excuse me if I have made a little fire," he continued. "I have been here at least a half-hour. I thought you were at home studying. Isn't to-day Saturday? And are you not obliged to say to-morrow morning the few customary absurdities to the peasants?"
"You mean the exposition of the Gospel," answered Don Rocco with warmth, for on that ground he knew no fear.
"A hint is all you need!" said the Moro. "Excuse me, I am a peasant myself, and talk crudely, maybe, but respectfully. Will you give me a pinch of snuff?"
Don Rocco held out the snuff-box to him.
"Is this da trozi?" said he with a wink. This word, as well as the expression "by-paths tobacco," was used in speaking of the tobacco which was smuggled into the State.
"No," answered Don Rocco, rising. "Perhaps I have a little of that upstairs."
"Never mind, never mind," the Moro hastened to say. "Give here." And sticking three fingers into the snuff-box he took up about a pound of snuff and breathed it in little by little, as he gazed at the fire. The dying flame illumined his black beard, his earthy complexion, and his brilliant, intelligent eyes.
"Now that you are warmed," Don Rocco made bold to say after a moment's silence, "you may go home."
"Hum!" said the man, shrugging his shoulders. "I have a little business to transact before I leave."
Don Rocco squirmed in his chair, winking hard, and frowning heavily.
"I suggested it because it is so late," he mumbled, half churlishly, half timidly. "I also have something to do."
"The sermon, eh?--the sermon, the sermon!" the Moro repeated mechanically, looking at the fire, and ruminating. "See here," he concluded, "suppose we do this. There are pens, paper, and inkstand in the sitting-room. Sit down there and write your stuff. Meanwhile, if you will allow me, I will take a mouthful, as it is sixteen hours since I have eaten. When we have finished we will talk."
At first Don Rocco was not disposed to agree, but he was as halting in his secular utterances as he was fiery in his sacred eloquence. He could only squirm and give out a few low, doubtful grunts; after which, as the other man kept silence, he got up from his chair with about as much difficulty as if he had been glued to it.
"I will go to find out," said he, "but I am afraid I shall find very little, the servant--"
"Don't trouble yourself," interrupted the Moro. "Let me attend to it. You go and write." He left the hearth, lighted another lamp and carried it into the neighboring sitting-room, which had windows facing the south on the courtyard, while the kitchen windows were at the back of the old convent on the north side, where the cellar and the well were placed. Then he came back quickly, and under the eyes of the astonished priest took down a key that was hanging in the darkest corner of the kitchen, opened a closet against the wall, put up his hand without hesitating and took down a cheese of goats' milk, the existence of which Don Rocco had not even suspected; he took bread from a cupboard, and a knife from a drawer in the table.
Now it happened for only the third or fourth time in the whole life of Don Rocco that the famous frown entirely disappeared for a few moments. Even the eyelids stopped winking.
"You look surprised, Don Rocco," said the Moro complacently, "because I am at home in your house. But just keep on writing. You will understand later. We must also keep the fire going," he added, when the priest, having slowly recovered from his amazement, passed into the sittingroom.
The Moro took the iron bellows, a sort of arquebuse barrel, turned one end toward the coals, and blew into the other in so unusual a way as to produce a strident whistle. Then he started on his supper.
What possessed him! At one moment he was devouring his food, at another he would raise his head and remain transfixed, while at another he would walk up and down the kitchen violently knocking the chairs and table. He seemed like an imprisoned wild beast which every now and then raises its fangs from the bone, listens and looks, seizes it again, leaves it, rushes around its cage in a rage and goes back to gnaw.
Meanwhile, Don Rocco was leaning over his paper, wondering still at what he had seen, unable in his unsuspiciousness to draw any inferences, listening to the steps and the noises in the next room with a torpid uneasiness that had about the same resemblance to fear as the intelligence of Don Rocco himself had to understanding. "'You will understand later,'" he repeated to himself. "What am I to understand? That he knows where the money is?" He kept it in a box in his bedchamber, but there were only two ten-franc pieces, and Don Rocco reflected with satisfaction that the new wine was not yet sold, and that that money at least was safe from the clutches of the Moro.
It did not appear as if the latter threatened violence. "At the worst I should lose twenty francs," concluded Don Rocco, seeking refuge in his philosophical and Christian indifference to money. He mentally abandoned the twenty francs to their destiny and sought to concentrate his thoughts on the sacred text: Nemo potest duobus dominis servire. At the same moment he seemed to hear, between the hasty steps of the Moro, a heavy, dull thud from a greater distance, as of a door being broken open; then the bang of a chair knocked down in the kitchen; then still another distant noise. The Moro entered the sitting-room and violently closed the door behind him.
"Here I am, Don Rocco," said he. "Have you also finished?"
"Now is the time," thought the priest, who immediately forgot everything but the presence of this man.
"Not finished yet," he answered. "But I will finish after you have gone. What do you wish?"
The Moro took a seat opposite him and crossed his arms on the table.
"I am living a bad life, sir," said he. "The life of a dog and not of a man."
At this Don Rocco, although he had resigned himself to the worst, felt his heart expand. He answered severely, and with his eyes cast down: "You can change, my son, you can change."
"That's why I am here, Don Rocco," said the other. "I want to make confession. Now, at once," he added when he saw that the priest remained silent.
Don Rocco began to wink and to squirm somewhat.
"Very well," said he, still with his eyes cast down. "We can talk about it now, but the confession can come later. You can return for it tomorrow. It requires a little preparation. And it must be seen whether you have received proper instruction."
The Moro immediately fired off, with all placidity and sweetness, three or four sacrilegious oaths against God and the sacraments, as if he were reciting an Ave, and drew the conclusion that he knew as much about it as a member of the clergy.
"There, there, you see!" said Don Rocco, squirming more than ever. "You are beginning badly, my son. You want to confess, and you blaspheme!"
"Oh, you mustn't notice little things like that," answered the Moro. "I assure you that the Lord doesn't bother about it. It is a habit, so to speak, of the tongue, nothing more."
"Beastly habits, beastly habits," pronounced Don Rocco, frowning and looking into his handkerchief, which he held under his nose with both hands.
"In fine, I am going to confess," insisted the man. "Hush, now, don't say no! You will hear some stiff ones."
"Not now, really not now," protested Don Rocco, rising. "You are not prepared at present. We will now thank the Lord and the Virgin who have touched your heart, and then you will go home. To-morrow you will come to holy Mass, and after Mass we will meet together again."
"Very well," answered the Moro. "Go ahead."
Don Rocco got down on his knees near the lounge and, with his head turned, seemed to wait for the other to follow his example.
"Go ahead," said the Moro. "I have a bad knee and will say my prayers seated."
"Very well; sit here on the sofa, near me, where you will be more comfortable; accompany my words with your heart, and keep your eyes fixed on that crucifix in front of you. Come, like a good fellow, and we will pray the Lord and the Virgin to keep you in so good a state of mind that you may have the fortune to make a good confession. Come, like a good, devout fellow!"
Having said this, Don Rocco began to recite Paters and Aves, often devoutly raising his knitted brows. The Moro answered him from his seat on the sofa. He seemed to be the confessor and the priest the penitent.
Finally, Don Rocco crossed himself and got up.
"Now sit right here while I confess," said the Moro, as if there were nothing against it. But Don Rocco caught him up. Had they not already arranged that he should confess the next day? But the other would not listen with that ear, and continued hammering away at his request with obstinate placidity.
"Let us stop this," he said, all at once. "Pay attention, for I am beginning!"
"But I tell you that it is not possible and that I will not have it," replied Don Rocco. "Go home, I tell you! I am going to bed at once."
He started to leave; but the Moro was too quick for him, rushed to the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket.
"No, sir! you don't go out of here! Might I not die to-night? Wouldn't I, if the Lord just blew on me like this?"
And he blew on the petroleum lamp and put it out.
"And if I go to hell," he continued in a sepulchral voice, in the dark, "you will go there too!"
The poor priest, at this unexpected violence, in the midst of this darkness, lost his presence of mind. He no longer knew where he was, and kept saying, "Let us go, let us go," trying to find the sofa, beating the air with his extended hands. The Moro lighted a match on his sleeve, and Don Rocco had a glimpse of the table, of the chairs, and of his strange penitent, before it became darker than ever.
"Could you see? Now I shall begin; with the biggest sin. It is fifteen years since I have been to confession, but my biggest sin is that I have made love to that ugly creature, your servant."
"Body of Bacchus!'" involuntarily exclaimed Don Rocco.
"If I am familiar with the kitchen," continued the Moro, "it is because I must have come here fifty times of an evening when you were not here, to eat and drink with Lucia. Perhaps you have even found that some few francs were missing..."
"I know nothing about it; no, I know nothing about it!" mumbled Don Rocco.
"Some of those few small bills in your box, first compartment to the left at the bottom."
Don Rocco gave forth a low exclamation of surprise and pain.
"Now, as for me, I have gotten through stealing," continued he; "but that witch would carry off even your house. She is a bad woman, a bad woman! We must get rid of her. Do you remember that shirt that you missed last year? I have it on now and she gave it to me. I cannot give it back because..."
"Never mind, don't bother, never mind," interrupted Don Rocco. "I'll give it to you."
"Then there were some glasses of wine, but I didn't drink them all myself. And then there is the silver snuff-box with the portrait of Pius Ninth."
"Body of Bacchus!" exclaimed Don Rocco, who thought he still had in his box that precious snuff-box given him by an old colleague. "That also?"
"I drank it; yes, sir, it took me fifteen days. Do not get excited, for we are in confession."
"What's that?"
It was a noise against the gate of the courtyard. A hard knock or a stone.
"It is evil-doers," said the Moro. "Rascally night-birds. Or perhaps some sick person. I'll go at once to find out."
"Yes, yes," said Don Rocco hastily.
"I will go and return to-morrow," continued the other, "for I see that you certainly do not care to confess me to-night."
He took out some matches and re-lighted the lamp, saying:
"Listen, Don Rocco, I want to be an honest man and work; but I must change my residence, and for the first few days how can I get along? You understand what I mean."
Don Rocco scratched his head.
"You are to come to-morrow morning of course," he said.
"Naturally! But I have a few debts here; and going around in broad daylight, I should like to show my face without being ashamed."
"Very well," responded Don Rocco, frowning considerably, but in a benevolent tone. "Wait a moment."
He took a lamp, left the sitting-room, and returned immediately with a ten-franc bill.
"Here you are," said he.
The man thanked him and left, accompanied by the priest, who carried the lamp as far as the middle of the courtyard and waited there until the Moro called to him from outside the gateway that no one was there. Then Don Rocco went to close the gate, and re-entered the house.
He could not go to bed at once. He was too agitated. Body of Bacchus! he kept repeating to himself. Body of Bacchus! One could hardly have imagined so extraordinary a case, and for it to happen to him, of all men! His head felt as confused as when he played at tresette and did not understand the game and every one badgered him. What a chaos there was in that head of good and of bad, of bitterness and of consolation! The more extraordinary did the thing appear to him, with the greater faith, with the more timorous reverence, did he refer it all to the hand of God. In thinking over his entrance into the kitchen, and that man seated at the hearth, memory gave him a stronger spasm of fear than the reality had, and it was immediately succeeded by mystic admiration of the hidden ways of the Lord. Certainly Lucia's fault was a bitter one, but how clearly the design of Providence could be seen in it! It led a man to the house of the priest; through sin to grace. What a great gift he had received from God, he the last of the priests of the parish, one of the last of the diocese! A soul so lost, so hardened in evil! He felt scruples at having allowed himself to be moved too strongly by the deception of his servant, the loss of the snuff-box. Kneeling by his bed, he recited, amid rapid winks, an interminable series of Paters, Aves, and Glorias, and prayed the Lord, St. Luke, and St. Rocco to help him in properly directing this still immature confession. Heavens! to come to confession with a string of oaths and to accuse others more than himself! To Don Rocco the heart of the Moro appeared under an image which pleased him, it seemed so new and clear. A healthy fruit with a first spot of decay; only in his case the image was reversed.
When he had gone to bed and was lying on his side, ready to sleep, it occurred to him that the next day Lucia would arrive. This thought immediately suggested another, and made him turn right over flat on his back.
It brought up, in fact, a grave problem. Had the Moro spoken of Lucia in confession or not? Don Rocco remembered that he had made no remark when the man, having blown out the light, declared that he wished to confess. Neither had he done so later when the man said: "Don't get excited, for we are in confession." Therefore, there was at least a grave doubt that this had been a real confession; and even if the penitent had afterwards interrupted it, this did not in the least detract from its sacramental character, had it existed; and, consequently, what about Lucia? And his answer to the Countess Carlotta? Body of Bacchus! It seemed the case of Sigismondo. Don Rocco cast a formidable frown at the ceiling.
He remembered the pereat mundus, and the arguments of that well of science, that extraordinary man, the professor. It would be impossible now to send away Lucia. And finally the dark words of Countess Carlotta were quite clear to him. He himself must leave: pereat Rochus.
The hour was striking in the clock tower. The voice of the clock was dear to him by night. His rugged heart softened somewhat, and Satan saw his chance to show him the peaceful little church surrounded by the cypresses, his own, all his own, and a certain fig tree that was dear to him under the bell-tower; he made him feel the sweetness of the cells rendered holy by so many pious souls of old, the sweetness of living in that quiet niche of St. Luke, so well suited to his humble person, in the exercise of a ministry of deed and of word, without worldly aims and without responsibility of souls. Satan further showed him the difficulty of finding a good place; reminded him of the needs of his old father and his sister, poor peasants, one of them now too old and the other too infirm to gain their livelihood by working. And Satan finally turned casuist and sought to prove that, without betraying the secret, he could still send away the servant on some pretext, or even with none. But at this suggestion of profiting by the confession Don Rocco raised such a frightful frown that the devil fled without waiting for more. Let him keep Lucia, then, and let her see to it that she followed the sacred text: Nemo potest duobus dominis servire. Just see how the words of holy writ fitted the occasion! Don Rocco sought to mentally stitch together the last sentences of his sermon, but it was too fatiguing an attempt for him. He might have succeeded, however, had he not fallen asleep in the midst of a most difficult passage.
III.
He slept little and arose at dawn. Before going down he stepped to the window to consult the weather. In stepping back his eyes fell on the entrance to the cellar. It was open.
Don Rocco went down to the cellar, and came out again with a most unusual expression. The wine was no longer there. Neither wine nor cask. But outside there were fresh marks of wheels.
Don Rocco followed these as far as the main road. There they disappeared. There remained but a short curve from the edge to the middle of the road into the labyrinth of all the other wheel tracks. Don Rocco did not think at that time to go in search of the authorities in order to make a complaint. Ideas came to him very slowly, and perhaps this particular one would not be due before midday.
On the contrary he returned, wrapped in meditation, to St. Luke. "Those blows," said he to himself, "that stone thrown! It is fortunate that the Moro was with me then; otherwise, he would have been suspected." He went back to the cellar entrance, examined minutely the fractured door, contemplated the place where the cask had stood, and, scratching his head, went into the church to repeat some prayers.
IV.
At Mass there was a crowd. Both before and after it there was a great deal of talk of the theft. Everybody wanted to see the empty cellar, the broken door, the traces of the wheels.
Two bottles which had escaped the thieves disappeared into the pockets of one of the faithful. No one understood how the priest could have avoided noticing something; because he did assert without further explanation that he had heard nothing. The women were sorry for him, but the men for the most part admired the deed and laughed at the poor priest, who had the great fault, in their eyes, of being abstemious and not knowing how to mingle with people with that easy-going fraternity which comes only from emptying the wine glass together.
They laughed, especially during the sermon, at the deep frown on the priest's face, which they attributed to the empty cellar.
No one mentioned the Moro. Neither did he appear at St. Luke, either at the Mass or afterwards; so that poor Don Rocco was full of scruples and remorse, fearing that he had not conducted the affair properly. But quite late the police arrived, examined everything, and questioned the priest. Had he no suspicions? No, none. Where did he sleep? How did it happen that he had not heard? Really, he did not know himself; there had been people in the house. At what time? Some time between eleven and one o'clock. One of the police smiled knowingly, but Don Rocco, innocent as a child, did not notice it. The other one asked if he did not suspect a certain Moro, knowing, as they did, that shortly before eleven o'clock he had been seen going up to St. Luke. At once Don Rocco showed great fervor in protesting that the man was certainly innocent, and, somewhat pressed by questions, brought forth his great reason: it was precisely the Moro who had visited him at that hour, on his own business. "Perhaps it was not on the business that you think," said the policeman. "If you knew what I think!" Don Rocco did not know, and in his humble placidity did not wish to know. He never bothered himself with the thoughts of others. It was sufficiently difficult for him to get a little lucidity into his own. They asked him a few more questions, and then left, carrying with them the only object that they found in the cellar, a corkscrew, which the scrupulous Don Rocco was not willing, through the uncertainty of his memory, to claim as belonging to him, although he had paid his predecessor twice the value of it. And now his cellar and his conscience were equally clear.
Towards dusk on the same day Don Rocco was reading the office, walking up and down for a little exercise without going far from the house. Who could tell? Perhaps that man might yet come. Every now and then Don Rocco would stop and listen. He heard nothing but the voices of wagondrivers on the plain below, the noise of wheels, the barking of dogs. Finally there was a step on the little path that led down through the cypress trees; a step slow but not heavy, a lordly step, with a certain subdued creak of ecclesiastical shoes; a step which had its hidden meaning, expressing to the understanding mind a purpose which, though not urgent, was serious.
The gate opened, and Don Rocco, standing in the middle of the courtyard, saw the delicate, ironical face of Professor Marin.
The professor, when he perceived Don Rocco, came to a stand, with his legs well apart, his hands clasped behind his back, silently wagging his head and his shoulders from right to left, and smiling with an inexpressible mixture of condolence and banter. Poor Don Rocco on his side looked at him, also silent, smiling obsequiously, red as a tomato.
"The whole business, eh?" finally said the professor, cutting short his mimicry and becoming serious.
"Yes, the whole business," answered Don Rocco in sepulchral tones. "They didn't leave a drop."
"Thunder!" exclaimed the other, stifling a laugh; and he came forward.
"It is nothing, nothing at all, you know, my son," said he with sudden good nature. "Give me a pinch. It is nothing," he continued, taking the snuff. "These are things that can be remedied. The Countess Carlotta has made so much wine that, as I say, for her a few casks more, a few casks less... You understand me! She is a good woman, my son, the Countess Carlotta; a good woman."
"Yes, good, good," mumbled Don Rocco, looking into his snuff-box.
"You are a lucky man, my dear," continued Marin, slapping him on the shoulder. "You are as well off here as the Pope."
"I am satisfied, I am satisfied," said Don Rocco, smiling and smoothing out his brows for a moment. It pleased him to hear these words from an intimate friend of the Countess Carlotta.
The professor gazed around admiringly as if he saw the place for the first time. "It is a paradise!" said he, letting his eyes pass along the dirty walls of the courtyard and then raising them to the fig tree picturesquely hidden under the bell-tower in the high corner between the gateway and the old convent.
"Only for that fig tree!" he added. "Is it not a beauty? Does it not express the poetry of the southern winter, tepid and quiet? It is like a word of sweetness, of happy innocence, tempering the severity of the sacred walls. Beautiful!"
Don Rocco looked at his fig tree as if he saw it for the first time. He was fond of it, but he had never suspected that it possessed such wonderful qualities.
"But it gives little figs," said he, in the tone of a father who hears his son praised in his presence and rejoices, but says something severe lest he become puffed up, and also to hide his own emotion. Then he invited the professor to make himself at home in the house.
"No, no, my dear," answered the professor, silently laughing at that phrase about the little figs. "Let us take a short stroll: it is better."
Passing slowly across the courtyard, they came out into the vineyard, whose festoons crowned both declivities of the hill, and they passed along the easy, grassy ascent between one declivity and the other.
"It is delicious!" said the professor.
Between the immense cold sky and the damp shadows of the plain the last glimpses of light were softly dying away on the grayish hill, on the red vines, all at rest. The air was warm and still.
"Is all this yours?" asked the professor.
Don Rocco, perhaps through humility, perhaps through apprehension of what the immediate future might bring, kept silence.
"Make up your mind to stay here, my son," continued he. "I know very well, believe me, there is not another place as fortunate as this in the whole diocese."
"Well, as for me!..." began Don Rocco.
Professor Marin stopped.
"By the way!" said he, "Countess Carlotta has spoken to me. Look here, Don Rocco! I really hope that you will not be foolish!"
Don Rocco gazed savagely at his feet.
"Goodness!" continued the professor. "Sometimes the countess is impossible, but this time, my dear son, she is right. You know that I speak frankly. You are the only one here who does not know these things. It is a scandal, my son! The whole village cries out against it."
"I have never heard, I have not..." mumbled Don Rocco.
"Now I tell you of it myself! and the countess has told you more than once."
"You know what I answered her last night?"
"They were absurd things that you said to her."
At this blow Don Rocco shook himself a little, and with his eyes still lowered spoke up eagerly in his own defence.
"I answered according to my convictions, and now I cannot change."
He was humble-hearted, but here was a question of justice and truth. To speak according to truth, according to what one believes to be the truth, is a duty; therefore, why did they persecute him?
"You cannot change?" said the professor, bending over him and fixing on his face two squinting eyes. "You cannot change?"
Don Rocco kept silent.
The professor straightened up and started on his walk again.
"Very well," he said, with ostentatious quiet. "You are at liberty to do so."
He suddenly turned to Don Rocco, who was following him with heavy steps.
"Gracious!" he exclaimed with annoyance, "do you really think that you have in your house a regular saint? Do you take no account of the gossip, of the scandal? To go against the whole country, to go against those who give you your living, to go against your own good, against Providence, for that creature? Really, if I did not know you, my dear Don Rocco, I would not know what to think."
Don Rocco squirmed, winking furiously, as if he were fighting against secret anguish, and breathless, as if words were trying to break forth involuntarily.
"I cannot change; it is just that," said he when he got through his grimaces. "I cannot."
"But why, in the name of heaven?"
"Because I cannot, conscientiously."
Don Rocco finally raised his eyes. "I have already told the countess that I cannot go against justice."
"What justice! Your justice is blind, my dear. Blind, deaf, and bald. And if you said a foolish thing yesterday do you wish to repeat it again to-day? And if you do not believe what is said of Lucia are there lacking reasons for sending away a servant? Send her away because she does not take the spots off your coat, because she does not darn your stockings. Anything! Send her away because she cooks your macaroni without sauce, and your squash without salt."
"The real reason would always be the other one," answered Don Rocco gloomily.
Even Professor Marin could not easily answer an argument of this kind. He could only mumble between his teeth: "Holy Virgin, what a pig-head!"
They reached the few consumptive cypresses along the ridge that led from the hill to another still higher hill. There they stopped again; and the professor, who was fond of Don Rocco on account of his simple goodness, and also because he could make him the butt of amiable banter, made him sit down by his side on the grass, and attempted a final argument, seeking in every way to extract from him his reasons for continuing so long to believe in the innocence of Lucia; but he did not succeed in getting at any result. Don Rocco kept always referring to what he had said the evening before to Countess Carlotta, and repeated that he could not change.
"Then, good-bye St. Luke, my son," said the resigned Marin.
Don Rocco began to wink furiously, but said not a word.
"The Countess Carlotta was expecting you today," said the professor, "but you did not go to her. She therefore charged me to tell you that if you did not immediately consent to send away Lucia on the first of December, you will be free for the new year, and even before if you wish."
"I cannot leave before Christmas," said Don Rocco timidly. "The parish priest always needs assistance at that time."
The professor smiled.
"What do you suppose?" said he. "That Countess Carlotta hasn't a priest ready and waiting? Think it over, for there is still time."
Don Rocco communed with himself. It rarely happened that he went through so rapid a process of reasoning. Granted, that this woman was a cause for scandal in the country, and that the countess had another priest at her disposal, the decision to be taken was obvious.
"Then," he answered, "I will leave as soon as possible. My father and my sister were to come and visit me one of these days. So that now it will be I who will visit them instead."
He even had in his heart the idea of taking this woman away from the village with him. His people had no need of a servant, and he, if he delayed finding a place, would not be able to keep her. But certain reasonable ideas, certain necessary things, never reached his heart, and reached his head very late, and when they did Don Rocco would either give himself a knock on the forehead, or a scratch behind, as if it bothered him.
In returning to St. Luke the professor told how the police were in search of the Moro, who was suspected as an accomplice in a recent highway murder, certain authors of which had fallen that very morning into the hands of justice. Don Rocco heard this not without satisfaction; for he now was able to explain why the man had not come. "Who knows," he made bold to say, "that he may not have gone away, and that he may not return? And then all this gossip will come to an end. Do you not think so?"
"Yes, my dear," answered the professor, who understood the point of his discourse, "but you know the Countess Carlotta. Henceforth whether the Moro goes or remains is of no consequence to her. Lucia must be dismissed."
Don Rocco said no more, neither did the professor. The former accompanied the latter as far as the church cypresses, stood looking after him until he disappeared at the end of the lane, and then returned, sighing, to his house. Later, when, bending under the weight of his cloak, he was passing, lamp in hand, through the entry leading to the choir of St. Luke, his doubt of the previous night came up again violently. "Had it really been a confession?" He stopped in the shadow of the deserted entry, looking at the lamp, giving vent for a moment to the sweet, tempting thoughts of the inert spirit. "Were he to take some pretext to send the woman away, to live and die in peace in his St. Luke." All at once his heart began to beat fiercely. These were thoughts from the devil. In the same way as perhaps in ancient times and in the same place some monk, tormented by heated nocturnal visions of love and of pleasure, may have done, Don Rocco made hastily the sign of the cross, hastened to the choir, and became immersed in a devout reading of the prayer-book.
V.
Ten days after, at the same hour, Don Rocco was praying before the altar of the Virgin, under the pulpit.
He was on the eve of leaving St. Luke for ever. He had agreed with the Countess Carlotta to give as an excuse a brief absence, a visit of a couple of weeks to his old father; and to write afterwards that for family reasons he could not return, and then this had happened that the poor old peasant, before learning of the new state of affairs, had written, asking for assistance; and Don Rocco had been obliged to sell some furniture as well to save cost of transportation as in order not to arrive home with empty hands. He was returning with the intention of remaining as short a time as possible, and of going away as chaplain wherever it pleased the Curia to which he had directed his request.
No certain information had been secured, either of the wine or of the thieves; but suspicions were rife against a woman who kept an inn, a new favorite of the Moro, who was thought to have received the wine. The Moro was said by some to have fled, by others to have gone into hiding. It seemed as if the police were of the second opinion. They came and went, searching everywhere, but always uselessly.
Lucia had returned, and for several days had behaved in an unusual and peculiar manner. She neglected her work, was brusque with her master, and wept without apparent motive. One evening she went out, saying that she intended going to the parish church to say her prayers. At nine o'clock Don Rocco, as she had not returned, went philosophically to bed, and never knew at what time she came into the house. On the contrary, he congratulated himself the next day on the happy change that had taken place in her, owing to her religious exercises, because she seemed no longer as she had been, but was quiet, attentive, active, spoke with satisfaction of the approaching departure, the position which Don Rocco hoped to find for her with a certain arch-priest, a friend of his; a promotion for her. She seemed to be possessed of an entirely novel ascetic zeal. As soon as Don Rocco retired for the night, she would go to church to spend there hour after hour.
And now, Don Rocco had taken his last supper in the monastic refectory, was reading his breviary for the last time in the little church of St. Luke, as rustic, simple, and religious as he, from its pavement to the black beams of its roof. His heart was heavy, poor priest, thus to leave his nest without honor; to carry humiliation and bitterness to his father and his sister, whose only hope and pride he was! He had every reason to frown as he looked at his breviary.
When he had finished reading, he took his seat on a bench. It was painful to him to take leave of his church. It was his last evening! He stood there with fixed eyes, his eyelids moving regularly, discouraged, cast down, like a stricken beast awaiting the axe. He had passed some hours of the afternoon among his vines, those planted three years before, which had already given him their first fruit. The large cypresses, the splendid view of the plain and of the other hillsides, inspired him with not a single dream; his peasant's heart grew tender toward the beautiful vines, the fertile furrows. Though blushing and ashamed of it, he had taken a sprig of a vine and an ear of corn to carry away as mementos. This was his poetry. Of the church he could carry away nothing. But he left there his heart, a little everywhere; on the altar that had witnessed his first exposition of the Gospel, on the ancient altar front that inspired him with devotion as he said Mass, on the beautiful Madonna, whose mantle had been modestly raised around her neck by his care, on the tomb of a bishop to whom, two centuries before, the peace of St. Luke had seemed preferable to worldly splendors. Who could tell whether he would ever have again a church so his own-- entirely his own? He could not seem to rise, he felt an inner sense of dissolution, of which he had never dreamed. His eyelids kept on winking as if bidding away importunate tears. In fact, he did not weep, but his little eyes shone more than usual.
At half-past nine Lucia entered the church through the choir to look after her master. "I am coming at once, at once, go back," said Don Rocco.
He believed himself alone in the church, but had he bent his head back he might have seen something unusual. Very slowly a human head showed itself in the pulpit by the light of the petroleum lamp and looked down upon the priest. It had the diabolic eyes of the Moro set in a shaven ecclesiastical face. The head rose up in the shadow, two long arms made in the air a violent gesture of impatience. At the same time Don Rocco repeated to the woman who stood hesitating: "Go back, go back, I am coming at once."
She went out.
Then the priest got up from his bench and went up to the high altar. The human figure in the pulpit came down again, and went rapidly into hiding. Don Rocco turned around so as to stand in cornu epistolae, toward the empty benches, imagined them full of people, of his people of every Sunday, and a spirit of eloquence entered into him.
"I bless you all," said he in a strong voice. "I wish that you were all present, but that is not possible, because I must not let any one know. I bless you all, and ask you to pardon me if I have been wanting. Gloria Dei cum omnibus vobis."
The temptation was too strong for a certain person to resist. A cavernous voice resounded through the empty church:
"Amen."
Don Rocco remained breathless, with his hands in the air.
"Hurry up," said the servant, returning. "Do you not remember that you must leave out your cloak and your clothes?"
Poor Don Rocco was not well found in clothes, for he carried on his back omnia bona sua, and there was sewing to be done and spots to be taken out, according to Lucia, before the journey of the next morning. Don Rocco descended from the altar without answering and went all through the church, lowering the lamp between all the benches and confessionals.
"What is it; what are you looking for?" asked the servant, anxiously coming along behind him. For a while Don Rocco did not answer.
"I said a few words of prayer," he said finally, "and I heard some one answer 'Amen.'"
"You fancied so." replied Lucia. "It must have been a trick of the imagination."
"No, no," said Don Rocco. "I really heard the 'Amen.' It seemed to be a voice from under the earth. A great big voice. It did not seem that of a man, but rather of a bull."
"It may have been the bishop," suggested the woman. "Isn't there a bishop buried here? Such things have been heard of."
Don Rocco kept silent. In his simplicity, in his innate disposition to faith, he was inclined to willingly believe anything supernatural, especially if connected with religion. The more astonishing it was, the more did he in sign of reverence knit his brows and drink it in devoutly.
"Now let us go," said the woman. "It is late, you know, and I have considerable work to do."
"Let us at least recite a pater, an ave, and a gloria to St. Luke," said Don Rocco. "It is the last evening that I say my prayers here. I must leave a salute." He spoke of a pater, and an ave, and a gloria; but he strung along at least a dozen, finding as many reasons to salute other saints of his particular acquaintance. One was to promote the eternal salvation of the two devotees, one their temporal salvation, one the grace to conquer temptations, one a suitable position, one a good death, and another a good journey. The last pater was recited by Don Rocco with remarkable fervor for the complete conversion of a sinful soul. Had the priest been less absorbed in his paters he might, perhaps, have heard after the fourth or fifth some smothered ejaculations of that humorous bishop who had perpetrated the "Amen." But he heard only Lucia answering him with much devotion, and was touched to the heart by it.
A few moments after he was still meditating, in the dark, in the wretched little bed of his cell, on the salutary and evident effects of the divine grace which he had sought in the sacraments. He meditated also on the action of the Moro, on the ray of light that had shone into that dark conscience, harbinger, if nothing less, of better and lasting light. And in his mystic imagination he saw the design of Providence which recompensed him for a sacrifice which he had suffered for duty's sake. It was a blessing to think of that, to know that he was losing all his few earthly possessions for such a recompense. He offered up also the sorrow of his father and his sister, his own humiliation, the straitened circumstances in which he should find himself. He saw in front of his bed, through the window, the vague, far-off brightness of the sky, his hope, his end. Little by little his eyes closed, in a delicious sense of confidence and peace. He slept profoundly.
VI.
He was not yet entirely awake when the clock of St. Luke struck halfpast seven. Immediately after the bells also rang, because Don Rocco had the day before notified the boy accustomed to serve him at Mass that he would meet him at about eight o'clock. He jumped out of bed, and went to get the clothes that Lucia was to have placed outside the door. Nothing there. He called once, twice, three times. No answer. Perplexed, he returned to his room and called out of the window: "Lucia! Lucia!" Perfect silence. Finally the little sacristan appeared. He had not seen Lucia. He had come to get the keys of the church, had found the gate of the courtyard open, as well as the door of the house; no one in the kitchen, no one in the sitting-room. Not finding the keys, he had entered the church by the inner entry. Don Rocco sent him to the sitting-room to get his clothes, as it was there that Lucia usually worked in the evening. The boy returned to say that there were no clothes there. "How? There are no clothes?" Don Rocco ordered him to stand on guard before the entrance of the house and went down to look for them himself, in his shirt. Half-way down the stairs he stopped and sniffed. What an abominable odor of pipe was this? Don Rocco, with darkened brow, went on. He went directly to the sitting-room, looked, searched; there was nothing. He returned to the kitchen, his heart beating. A horrid smell, but no clothes. Yes, under the table there was a little pile of soiled things; a jacket, a pair of drawers, a peasant's hat. Don Rocco gathered up, unfolded, and examined them with portentous frowns. It seemed to him that he had seen these things somewhere before. His brain did not yet understand anything, but his heart began to understand and to beat more strongly than before. He took hold of his chin and his cheeks with his left hand, squeezed them hard, trying to squeeze from them the where, the how, and the when. And lo! his eyes rested on the wall, and he finally perceived something there which was not there the day before. There was written in charcoal on the right: "Many salutations." And on the left:
"The wine is good."
"The servant is good."
"The cloak is good."
"Don Rocco is good."
He read, raised his hand to his head, read again--read again, seemed to lose his eyesight, felt a sensation of cold, of torpidity spreading from his breast throughout his body. Some one called out in the courtyard, "Where is that Don Rocco?" With difficulty he went up to his room again, cast himself on his bed, almost without knowing what he was doing, almost without thought or sensation.
Below they were looking and calling for him. Professor Marin was there, and some few other persons who had come to attend the Mass. No one could understand how the door of the church was still closed. The professor went into the house, called Lucia, called Don Rocco, without receiving any answer. He finally reached the room of the priest and stood still on the doorsill, amazed to see him in bed. "Well," said he, "Don Rocco! in bed? And what about Mass?"
"I cannot," answered Don Rocco in a low voice, immovable on his back like a mummy.
"But what is it?" replied the other, approaching the bed with sincere alarm. "What is the matter with you?"
This troubled face, this affectionate tone, softened poor Don Rocco's heart, petrified by pain and surprise. This time two real tears fell from his palpitating eyelids. His mouth, closed tight, was twisting and trembling, but still resisted. Seeing then that he answered not a word, the professor ran to the stairs and called down that the physician should be sent for.
"No, no," Don Rocco forced himself to say without moving. His voice was filled with sobs. The professor heard him only as he was returning to the bed.
"No?" said he. "But what, then, is the matter? Speak."
Meanwhile three poor women and a beggar, who had come to listen to Mass, entered quite frightened into the room, surrounding the two, and in their turn questioning Don Rocco. He kept silent like a Job, seeking to master himself. Perhaps his annoyance at all these curious faces hanging over his own helped him. "Go away," said he finally to the last comers. "There is no need of the doctor, no need of anything, go away!"
The four faces withdrew somewhat, but continued looking at him fixedly with an expression, perhaps, of increased alarm.
"Go away, I tell you!" continued Don Rocco.
They went out silently and stopped outside to listen and spy.
"Well, then," said the professor, "what are your feelings?"
"Nothing."
"But, then, why are you in bed?"
Don Rocco turned with his face to the wall. The tears were coming back again now. He was unable to speak.
"But in the name of heaven," insisted the professor, "what is it?"
"I am getting over it, I am getting over it," sobbed Don Rocco.
The professor did not know what to do nor what to think. He asked him whether he wanted water, and the old beggar went down at once to get a glassful and gave it to Marin. Don Rocco did not want it in the least, but kept on repeating: "Thanks, thanks, I am getting over it," and drank it obsequiously.
"Well, then?" continued the professor.
"You are right," answered Don Rocco.
"About what?"
"About the woman."
"Lucia? Right! And by the way, where is Lucia? Not here? Run away?"
Don Rocco nodded. Marin looked at him stupefied and repeating, "Run away? Run away?" The other four came back into the room echoing, "Run away? Run away?"
"But listen!" said the professor. "Are you staying in bed for this reason? Are you humiliating yourself in this way? Come on and get dressed."
Don Rocco looked at him, reddened up to the top of his head, narrowed his tear-wet eyes in a smile, which meant: "Now it will be your turn to laugh."
"I have no clothes," he said.
"What?"
The professor added to this word a gesture which meant, "Did she carry them away?" Don Rocco responded also by a mere nod; and seeing that his friend with difficulty restrained a burst of laughter, he also tried to laugh.
"Poor Don Rocco," said the professor, and added, still with a laugh in his throat, heartfelt words of sympathy, of comfort, and asked for every detail of what had happened. "Oh, if you had only listened to me!" he concluded. "If you had only sent her away!"
"Yes," said Don Rocco, accepting even this with humiliation. "You are right. And now what will the countess say?"
The professor sighed.
"What can I say, my son? She will say nothing. This also has happened, that your successor wrote yesterday that he had definitively gotten rid of his present engagements and was at the disposal of the countess."
Don Rocco was silent, heart-broken. "I must look at the time," said he, after a moment's silence, "because at half-past nine they will come here with a horse to take me away. It will be necessary to ask the archpriest or the chaplain to lend me a suit of clothes."
"Let me, let me!" exclaimed the professor, full of zeal. "I will go home and send it to you immediately. You will give it back to me at your leisure, when you are able." A lively gratitude cleared the face and moved the eyelids of Don Rocco.
"Thanks!" said he, fixing his eyes humbly on the end of his nose. "Thank you very much!"
"Body of Bacchus!" he added to himself, as the professor was going down the stairs. "He is a span higher than I am, that just occurs to me!"
But it certainly did not occur to him to call him back.
VII.
At half-past nine Don Rocco appeared in the doorway of his house to start on his exodus. The overcoat of the professor danced around his heels and swallowed up his hands down to his finger tips. The stove-pipe hat, of enormous size, came down to his ears. The professor followed right behind him, laughing silently. In the courtyard some people attracted by the report of what had happened were laughing. "Oh, Don Rocco, see what he looks like!" said the women. And one of them would tell him about some action of Lucia, and another about another, things of all kinds which he had never suspected. "Enough, enough," he answered, disturbed in his conscience at all this malicious gossip. "It is now all over, all over."
He went on, followed by them all, gave a last look at the fig tree near the bell-tower, and passing between the cypresses in front of the church, turned back toward the door, devoutly raised his hat, and bent his knee.
The little wagon was awaiting him on the main road. The driver, seeing him in this costume, laughed no less heartily than the rest.
Then Don Rocco took leave of all, again thanked the professor, sent his respects to the countess, and reduced to silence those who were still heaping abuse on Lucia. When he had taken his seat the beggar approached him and put his right hand upon one of his shoes. "Is this yours?" said he.
"Yes, yes, the shoes are," answered the priest with a certain satisfaction, as the horse started.
The beggar carried to his forehead the hand that had touched the shoe of Don Rocco, and said with solemnity:
"In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."
SAN PANTALEONE
BY
GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
The Translation by George McLean Harper.
I.
The great sandy piazza, glittered as if strewn with powdered pumice. Its whitewashed houses held a strange metallic glow, like the walls of an immense furnace cooling off. The glare of the clouds, reflected from the stone pillars of the church at its far end, gave them the appearance of red granite. The church windows blazed as with inward fire. The sacred images had assumed life-like colors and attitudes, and the massive edifice seemed lifted now, in the splendor of the new celestial phenomenon, to a prouder domination than ever, above the houses of Radusa.
Groups of men and women, gesticulating and talking loudly, were pouring from the streets into the square. Superstitious terror grew in leaps and bounds from face to face. A thousand awful images of divine punishment rose out of their rude fancies; and comments, eager disputes, plaintive appeals, wild stories, prayers, and cries were mingled in a deep uproar, as of a hurricane approaching. For some time past this bloody redness of the sky had lasted through the night, disturbing its tranquillity, illumining sullenly the sleeping fields, and making dogs howl.
"Giacobbe! Giacobbe!" shouted some, waving their arms, who till then had stood in a compact band around a pillar of the church portico, talking in low tones, "Giacobbe!"
There came out through the main door, and drew near to those who called him, a long, emaciated man, apparently consumptive, whose head was bald at the top, but had a crown of long reddish hair about the temples and above the nape of the neck. His little sunken eyes, animated with the fire of a deep passion, were set close and had no particular color. The absence of his two upper front teeth gave to his mouth when speaking, and to his sharp chin with its few scattered hairs, the strangeness of a senile faun. The rest of his body was a wretched structure of bones illconcealed by his clothes. The skin on his hands, his wrists, the back of his arms, and his breast was full of blue punctures made with a pin and india-ink, the souvenirs of sanctuaries visited, pardons obtained, and vows performed.
When the fanatic approached the group at the pillar, a swarm of questions arose from the anxious men. "Well, then? what did Don Console say? Will they send out only the silver arm? Would not the whole bust do better? When would Pallura come back with the candles? Was it one hundred pounds of wax? Only one hundred? And when would the bells begin to ring? Well, then? Well, then?"
The clamor increased around Giacobbe. Those on the outskirts of the crowd pushed toward the church. From all the streets people poured into the square till they filled it. And Giacobbe kept answering his questions, whispering, as if revealing dreadful secrets and bringing prophecies from far. He had seen aloft in the bloody sky a threatening hand, and then a black veil, and then a sword and a trumpet.
"Go ahead! Go ahead!" they urged him, looking in each other's faces, and seized with a strange desire to hear of marvels, while the wonder grew from mouth to mouth in the crowd.
II.
The vast crimson zone rose slowly from the horizon to the zenith and bade fair to cover the whole vault of heaven. An undulating vapor of molten metal seemed pouring down on the roofs of the town; and in the descending crepuscule yellow and violet rays flashed through a trembling and iridescent glow. One long streak brighter than the others pointed towards a street which opened on the river-front, and at the end of this street the water flamed away between the tall slim poplar-trunks, and beyond the stream lay a strip of luxuriant country, from which the old Saracen towers stood out confusedly, like stone islets, in the dark. The air was full of the stifling emanations of mown hay, with now and then a whiff from putrefied silkworms in the bushes. Flights of swallows crossed this space with quick, scolding cries, trafficking between the river sands and the eaves.
An expectant silence had interrupted the murmur of the multitude. The name Pallura ran from lip to lip. Signs of angry impatience broke forth here and there. The wagon was not yet to be seen along the river-road; the candles had not come; Don Consolo therefore was delaying the exposition of the relics and the acts of exorcism; the danger still threatened. Panic fear invaded the hearts of all those people crowded together like a flock of sheep, and no longer venturing to raise their eyes to heaven. The women burst out sobbing, and at the sound of weeping every mind was oppressed and filled with consternation.
Then at last the bells began to ring. As they were hung low, their deep quivering strokes seemed to graze the heads of the people, and a sort of continuous wailing filled the intervals.
"San Pantaleone! San Pantaleone!"
It was an immense, unanimous cry of desperate men imploring aid. Kneeling, with blanched faces and outstretched hands, they supplicated.
"San Pantaleone!"
Then, at the church door, in the midst of the smoke of two censers, Don Consolo appeared, resplendent in a violet chasuble, with gold embroidery. He held aloft the sacred arm of silver, and conjured the air, shouting the Latin words:
"Ut fidelibus tuis aeris serenitatem concedere digneris. Te rogamus, audi nos."
At sight of the relic the multitude went delirious with affectionate joy. Tears ran from all eyes, and through glistening tears these eyes beheld a miraculous gleam emanate from the three fingers held up as if in the act of benediction. The arm appeared larger now, in the enkindled air.
The dim light awoke strange scintillations in the precious stones. The balsamic odor of incense spread quickly to the nostrils of the devotees.
"Te rogamus, audi nos!"
But when the arm was carried back and the tolling stopped, in that moment of silence a tinkling of little bells was heard near at hand coming from the river road. Then of a sudden the crowd rushed in that direction and many voices cried:
"It is Pallura with the candles! It is Pallura coming! Here's Pallura!"
The wagon came screeching over the gravel, drawn at a walk by a heavy gray mare, over whose shoulders hung a great shining brass horn, like a half-moon. When Giacobbe and the others made towards her, the pacific animal stopped and breathed hard. Giacobbe, who reached the wagon first, saw stretched out on its floor the bloody body of Pallura, and screamed, waving his arms towards the crowd, "He is dead! He is dead!"
III.
The sad news spread like lightning. People crowded around the wagon, and craned their necks to see, thinking no longer of the threats in the sky, because struck by the unexpected happening and filled with that natural ferocious curiosity which the sight of blood awakens.
"He is dead? What killed him?"
Pallura lay on his back upon the boards, with a broad wound in the middle of his forehead, with one ear torn, with gashes on his arms, his sides, and one thigh. A warm stream flowed down to his chin and neck, staining his shirt and forming dark, shining clots on his breast, his leathern belt, and even his breeches. Giacobbe hung over the body; all the rest waited around him; an auroral flush lighted up their perplexed faces; and at that moment of silence, from the river-bank arose the song of the frogs, and bats skimmed back and forth above the heads of the crowd.
Suddenly Giacobbe, straightening up, with one cheek bloody, cried:
"He is not dead. He still breathes."
A hollow murmur ran through the crowd, and the nearest strained forward to look. The anxiety of those at a distance commenced to break into clamor. Two women brought a jug of water, another some strips of linen. A youth held out a gourd full of wine.
The wounded man's face was washed; the flow of blood from his forehead was checked; his head was raised. Then voices inquired loudly the cause of this deed. The hundred pounds of wax were missing; only a few fragments of candles remained in the cracks of the wagon-bed.
In the commotion their minds grew more and more inflamed, exasperated, and contentious. And as an old hereditary hatred burned in them against the town of Mascalico, on the opposite bank of the river, Giacobbe said venomously, in a hoarse voice:
"What if the candles have been offered to San Gonselvo?"
It was like the first flash of a conflagration! The spirit of churchrivalry awoke all at once in these people brutalized by many years of blind, savage worship of their own one idol. The fanatic's words flew from mouth to mouth. And beneath the tragic dull-red sky, the raging multitude resembled a tribe of mutinous gypsies.
The name of the saint broke from all throats, like a war-cry. The most excited hurled curses towards the river, and waved their arms and shook their fists. Then all these faces blazing with anger, and reddened also by the unusual light,--all these faces, broad and massive, to which their gold ear-rings and thick overhanging hair gave a wild, barbaric character,--all these faces turned eagerly towards the man lying there, and grew soft with pity. Women, with pious care, tried to bring him back to life. Loving hands changed the cloths on his wounds, sprinkled water in his face, set the gourd of wine to his lips, made a sort of pillow under his head.
"Pallura, poor Pallura, won't you answer?" He lay supine, his eyes closed, his mouth half open, with brown soft hair on his cheeks and chin, the gentle beauty of youth still showing in his features contracted with pain. From beneath the bandage on his forehead a mere thread of blood trickled down over his temples; at the corners of his mouth stood little beads of pale red foam, and from his throat issued a faint broken hiss, like the sound of a sick man gargling. About him attentions, questions, feverish glances multiplied. The mare from time to time shook her head and neighed in the direction of the houses. An atmosphere as of an impending hurricane hung over the whole town.
Then from the square rang out the screams of a woman, of a mother. They seemed all the louder for the sudden hushing of all other voices, and an enormous woman, suffocated in her fat, broke through the crowd and hurried to the wagon, crying aloud. Being heavy and unable to climb into it, she seized her son's feet, with sobbing words of love, with such sharp broken cries and such a terribly comic expression of grief, that all the bystanders shuddered and averted their faces.
"Zaccheo! Zaccheo! My heart, my joy!" screamed the widow unceasingly, kissing the feet of the wounded man and dragging him to her towards the ground.
The wounded man stirred, his mouth was contorted by a spasm, but although he opened his eyes and looked up, they were veiled with damp, so that he could not see. Big tears began to well forth at the corners of his eyelids and roll down over his cheeks and neck. His mouth was still awry. A vain effort to speak was betrayed by the hoarse whistling in his throat. And the crowd pressed closer, saying:
"Speak, Pallura! Who hurt you? Who hurt you? Speak! Speak!"
Beneath this question was a trembling rage, an intensifying fury, a deep tumult of reawakened feelings of vengeance; and the hereditary hatred boiled in every heart.
"Speak! Who hurt you? Tell us! Tell us!"
The dying man opened his eyes again; and as they were holding his hands tightly, perhaps this warm living contact gave him a momentary strength, for his gaze quickened and a vague stammering sound came to his lips. The words were not yet distinguishable. The panting breath of the multitude could be heard through the silence. Their eyes had an inward flame, because all expected one single word.
"Ma--Ma--Mascalico--"
"Mascalico! Mascalico!" shrieked Giacobbe, who was bending over him, with ear intent to snatch the weak syllables from his dying lips.
An immense roar greeted the cry. The multitude swayed at first as if tempest-swept. Then, when a voice, dominating the tumult, gave the order of attack, the mob broke up in haste. A single thought drove these men forward, a thought which seemed to have been stamped by lightning upon all minds at once: to arm themselves with some weapon. Towering above the consciousness of all arose a sort of bloody fatality, beneath the great tawny glare of the heavens, and in the electric odor emanating from the anxious fields.
IV.
And the phalanx, armed with scythes, bill-hooks, axes, hoes, and guns, reunited in the square before the church. And all cried: "San Pantaleone!"
Don Consolo, terrified by the din, had taken refuge in a stall behind the altar. A handful of fanatics, led by Giacobbe, made their way into the principal chapel, forced the bronze grille, and went into the underground chamber where the bust of the saint was kept. Three lamps, fed with olive oil, burned softly in the damp air of the sacristy, where in a glass case the Christian idol glittered, with its white head surrounded by a broad gilt halo; and the walls were hidden under the wealth of native offerings.
When the idol, borne on the shoulders of four herculean men, appeared at last between the pillars and shone in the auroral light, a long gasp of passion ran through the waiting crowd, and a quiver of joy passed like a breath of wind over all their faces. And the column moved away, the enormous head of the saint oscillating above, with its empty eye-sockets turned to the front.
Now through the sky, in the deep, diffused glow, brighter meteors ploughed their furrows; groups of thin clouds broke away from the hem of the vapor zone and floated off, dissolving slowly. The whole town of Radusa stood out like a smouldering mountain of ashes. Behind and before, as far as eye could reach, the country lay in an indistinctly lucent mass. A great singing of frogs filled the sonorous solitude.
On the river-road Pallura's wagon blocked the way. It was empty, but still soiled, here and there, with blood. Angry curses broke suddenly from the mob. Giacobbe shouted:
"Let us put the saint in it!"
So the bust was placed in the wagon-bed and drawn by many arms into the ford. The battleline thus crossed the frontier. Metallic gleams ran along the files. The parted water broke in luminous spray, and the current flamed away red between the poplars, in the distance, towards the quadrangular towers. Mascalico showed itself on a little hill, among olive trees, asleep. The dogs were barking here and there, with a persistent fury of reply. The column, issuing from the ford, left the public road and advanced rapidly straight across country. The silver bust was borne again on men's shoulders, and towered above their heads amid the tall, odorous grain, starred with bright fireflies.
Suddenly a shepherd in his straw hut, where he lay to guard the grain, seized with mad panic at sight of so many armed men, started to run up the hill, yelling, "Help! Help!" And his screams echoed in the olive grove.
Then it was that the Radusani charged. Among tree-trunks and dry reeds the silver saint tottered, ringing as he struck low branches, and glittering momentarily at every steep place in the path. Ten, twelve, twenty guns, in a vibrating flash, rattled their shot against the mass of houses. Crashes, then cries, were heard; then a great commotion. Doors were opened; others were slammed shut. Window-panes fell shattered. Vases fell from the church and broke on the street. In the track of the assailants a white smoke rose quietly up through the incandescent air. They all, blinded and in bestial rage, cried, "Kill! kill!"
A group of fanatics remained about San Pantaleone. Atrocious insults for San Gonselvo broke out amid waving scythes and brandished hooks:
"Thief! Thief! Beggar! The candles! The candles!"
Other bands took the houses by assault, breaking down the doors with hatchets. And as they fell, unhinged and shivered, San Pantaleone's followers leaped in, howling, to kill the defenders.
The women, half-naked, took refuge in corners, imploring pity. They warded off the blows, grasping the weapons and cutting their fingers. They rolled at full length on the floor, amid heaps of blankets and sheets.
Giacobbe, long, quick, red as a Turkish scimitar, led the persecution, stopping ever and anon to make sweeping imperious gestures over the heads of the others with a great scythe. Pallid, bare-headed, he held the van, in the name of San Pantaleone. More than thirty men followed him. They all had a dull, confused sense of walking through a conflagration, over quaking ground, and beneath a blazing vault ready to crumble.
But from all sides began to come the defenders, the Mascalicesi, strong and dark as mulattos, sanguinary foes, fighting with long spring-bladed knives, and aiming at the belly and the throat, with guttural cries at every blow.
The melee rolled away, step by step, towards the church. From the roofs of two or three houses flames were already bursting. A horde of women and children, wan-eyed and terror-stricken, were fleeing headlong among the olive trees. Then the hand-to-hand struggle between the males, unimpeded by tears and lamentations, became more concentrated and ferocious.
Under the rust-colored sky, the ground was strewn with corpses. Broken imprecations were hissed through the teeth of the wounded; and steadily, through all the clamor, still came the cry of the Radusani:
"The candles! The candles!"
But the enormous church door of oak, studded with nails, remained barred. The Mascalicesi defended it against the pushing crowd and the axes. The white, impassive silver saint oscillated in the thick of the fight, still upheld on the shoulders of the four giants, who refused to fall, though bleeding from head to foot. It was the supreme desire of the assailants to place their idol on the enemy's altar.
Now while the Mascalicesi fought like lions, performing prodigies on the stone steps, Giacobbe suddenly disappeared around the corner of the building, seeking an undefended opening through which to enter the sacristy. And beholding a narrow window not far from the ground, he climbed up to it, wedged himself into its embrasure, doubled up his long body, and succeeded in crawling through. The cordial aroma of incense floated in the solitude of God's house. Feeling his way in the dark, guided by the roar of the fight outside, he crept towards the door, stumbling against chairs and bruising his face and hands.
The furious thunder of the Radusan axes was echoing from the tough oak, when he began to force the lock with an iron bar, panting, suffocated by a violent agonizing palpitation which diminished his strength, blind, giddy, stiffened by the pain of his wounds, and dripping with tepid blood.
"San Pantaleone! San Pantaleone!" bellowed the hoarse voices of his comrades outside, redoubling their blows as they felt the door slowly yield. Through the wood came to his ears the heavy thump of falling bodies, the quick thud of knife-thrusts nailing some one through the back. And a grand sentiment, like the divine uplift of the soul of a hero saving his country, flamed up then in that bestial beggar's heart.
V.
By a final effort the door was flung open. The Radusani rushed in, with an immense howl of victory, across the bodies of the dead, to carry the silver saint to the altar. A vivid quivering light was reflected suddenly into the obscure nave, making the golden candlesticks shine, and the organ-pipes above. And in that yellow glow, which now came from the burning houses and now disappeared again, a second battle was fought. Bodies grappled together and rolled over the brick floor, never to rise, but to bound hither and thither in the contortions of rage, to strike the benches, and die under them, or on the chapel steps, or against the taper-spikes about the confessionals. Under the peaceful vault of God's house the chilling sound of iron penetrating men's flesh or sliding along their bones, the single broken groan of men struck in a vital spot, the crushing of skulls, the roar of victims unwilling to die, the atrocious hilarity of those who had succeeded in killing an enemy,--all this re-echoed distinctly. And a sweet, faint odor of incense floated above the strife.
The silver idol had not, however, reached the altar in triumph, for a hostile circle stood between. Giacobbe fought with his scythe, and, though wounded in several places, did not yield a hand's breadth of the stair which he had been the first to gain. Only two men were left to hold up the saint, whose enormous white head heaved and reeled grotesquely like a drunken mask. The men of Mascalico were growing furious.
Then San Pantaleone fell on the pavement, with a sharp, vibrant ring. As Giacobbe dashed forward to pick him up, a big devil of a man dealt him a blow with a bill-hook, which stretched him out on his back. Twice he rose and twice was struck down again. Blood covered his face, his breast, his hands, yet he persisted in getting up. Enraged by this ferocious tenacity of life, three, four, five clumsy peasants together stabbed him furiously in the belly, and the fanatic fell over, with the back of his neck against the silver bust. He turned like a flash and put his face against the metal, with his arms outspread and his legs drawn up. And San Pantaleone was lost.
IT SNOWS
BY
ENRICO CASTELNUOVO
The Translation by Edith Wharton.
The thermometer marks barely one degree above freezing, the sky is covered with ominous white clouds, the air is harsh and piercing; what can induce Signor Odoardo, at nine o'clock on such a morning, to stand in his study window? It is true that Signor Odoardo is a vigorous man, in the prime of life, but it is never wise to tempt Providence by needlessly risking one's health. But stay--I begin to think that I have found a clue to his conduct. Opposite Signor Odoardo's window is the window of the Signora Evelina, and Signora Evelina has the same tastes as Signor Odoardo. She too is taking the air, leaning against the window-sill in her dressing-gown, her fair curls falling upon her forehead and tossed back every now and then by a pretty movement of her head. The street is so narrow that it is easy to talk across from one side to the other, but in such weather as this the only two windows that stand open are those of Signora Evelina and Signor Odoardo.
There is no denying the fact: Signora Evelina, who within the last few weeks has taken up her abode across the way, is a very fascinating little widow. Her hair is of spun gold, her skin of milk and roses, her little turned-up nose, though assuredly not Grecian, is much more attractive than if it were; she has the most dazzling teeth in the most kissable mouth; her eyes are transparent as a cloudless sky, and--well, she knows how to use them. Nor is this the sum total of her charms: look at the soft, graceful curves of her agile, well-proportioned figure; look at her little hands and feet! After all, one hardly wonder that Signor Odoardo runs the risk of catching his death of cold, instead of closing the window and warming himself at the stove which roars so cheerfully within. It is rather at Signora Evelina that I wonder; for, though Signer Odoardo is not an ill-looking man, he is close upon forty, while she is but twenty-four. So young, and already a widow--poor Signora Evelina! It is true that she has great strength of character; but six months have elapsed since her husband's death, and she is resigned to it already, though the deceased left her barely enough to keep body and soul together. Happily Signora Evelina is not encumbered with a family; she is alone and independent, and with those eyes, that hair, that little upturned nose, she ought to have no difficulty in finding a second husband. In fact, there is no harm in admitting that Signora Evelina has contemplated the possibility of a second marriage, and that if the would-be bridegroom is not in his first youth--why, she is prepared to make the best of it. In this connection it is perhaps not uninstructive to note that Signor Odoardo is in comfortable circumstances, and is himself a widower. What a coincidence!
Well, then, why don't they marry--that being the customary denouement in such cases?
Why don't they marry? Well--Signor Odoardo is still undecided. If there had been any hope of a love-affair I fear that his indecision would have vanished long ago. Errare humanum est. But Signora Evelina is a woman of serious views; she is in search of a husband, not of a flirtation. Signora Evelina is a person of great determination; she knows how to turn other people's heads without letting her own be moved a jot. Signora Evelina is deep; deep enough, surely, to gain her point. If Signor, Odoardo flutters about her much longer he will! singe his wings; things cannot go on in this; way. Signor Odoardo's visits are too frequent; and now, in addition, there are the conversations from the window. It is time for a decisive step to be taken, and Signor Odoardo is afraid that he may find himself taking the step before he is prepared to; this very day, perhaps, when he goes to call on the widow.
The door of Signor Odoardo's study is directly opposite the window in which he is standing, and the opening of this door is therefore made known to him by a violent draught.
As he turns a sweet voice says:
"Good-bye, papa dear; I'm going to school."
"Good-bye, Doretta," he answers, stooping to kiss a pretty little maid of eight or nine; and at the same instant Signora Evelina calls out from over the way:
"Good-morning, Doretta!"
Doretta, who had made a little grimace on discovering her papa in conversation with his pretty neighbor, makes another as she hears herself greeted, and mutters reluctantly, "Good-morning."
Then, with her little basket on her arm, she turns away slowly to join the maid-servant who is waiting for her in the hall.
"I am SO fond of that child," sighs Signora Evelina, with the sweetest inflexion in her voice, "but she doesn't like me at all!"
"What an absurd idea!...Doretta is a very self-willed child."
Thus Signor Odoardo; but in his heart of hearts he too is convinced that his little daughter has no fondness for Signora Evelina.
Meanwhile, the cold is growing more intense, and every now and then a flake of snow spins around upon the wind. Short of wishing to be frozen stiff, there is nothing for it but to shut the window.
"It snows," says Signora Evelina, glancing upward.
"Oh, it was sure to come."
"Well--I must go and look after my household. Au revoir--shall I see you later?"
"I hope to have the pleasure--"
"Au revoir, then."
Signora Evelina closes the window, nods and smiles once more through the pane, and disappears.
Signor Odoardo turns back to his study, and perceiving how cold it has grown, throws some wood on the fire, and, kneeling before the door of the stove, tries to blow the embers into a blaze. The flames leap up with a merry noise, sending bright flashes along the walls of the room.
Outside, the flakes continue to descend at intervals. Perhaps, after all, it is not going to be a snowstorm.
Signor Odoardo paces up and down the room, with bent head and hands thrust in his pockets. He is disturbed, profoundly disturbed. He feels that he has reached a crisis in his life; that in a few days, perhaps in a few hours, his future will be decided. Is he seriously in love with Signora Evelina? How long has he known her? Will she be sweet and good like THE OTHER? Will she know how to be a mother to Doretta?
There is a sound of steps in the hall; Signor Odoardo pauses in the middle of the room. The door re-opens, and Doretta rushes up to her father, her cheeks flushed, her hood falling over her forehead, her warm coat buttoned up to her chin, her hands thrust into her muff.
"It is snowing and the teacher has sent us home."
She tosses off her hood and coat and goes up to the stove.
"There is a good fire, but the room is cold," she exclaims.
As a matter of fact, the window having stood open for half an hour, the thermometer indicates but fifty degrees.
"Papa," Doretta goes on, "I want to stay with you all day long to-day."
"And suppose your poor daddy has affairs of his own to attend to?"
"No, no, you must give them up for to-day."
And Doretta, without waiting for an answer, runs to fetch her books, her doll, and her work. The books are spread out on the desk, the doll is comfortably seated on the sofa, and the work is laid out upon a low stool.
"Ah," she cries, with an air of importance, "what a mercy that there is no school to-day! I shall have time to go over my lesson. Oh, look how it snows!"
It snows indeed. First a white powder, fine but thick, and whirled in circles by the wind, beats with a dry metallic sound against the windowpanes; then the wind drops, and the flakes, growing larger, descend silently, monotonously, incessantly. The snow covers the streets like a downy carpet, spreads itself like a sheet over the roofs, fills up the cracks in the walls, heaps itself upon the window-sills, envelops the iron window-bars, and hangs in festoons from the gutters and eaves.
Out of doors it must be as cold as ever, but the room is growing rapidly warmer, and Doretta, climbing on a chair, has the satisfaction of announcing that the mercury has risen eleven degrees.
"Yes, dear," her father replies, "and the clock is striking eleven too. Run and tell them to get breakfast ready."
Doretta runs off obediently, but reappears in a moment.
"Daddy, daddy, what do you suppose has happened? The dining-room stove won't draw, and the room is all full of smoke!"
"Then let us breakfast here, child."
This excellent suggestion is joy to the soul of Doretta, who hastens to carry the news to the kitchen, and then, in a series of journeys back and forth from the dining-room to the study, transports with her own hands the knives, forks, plates, tablecloth, and napkins, and, with the man-servant's aid, lays them out upon one of her papa's tables. How merry she is! How completely the cloud has vanished that darkened her brow a few hours earlier! And how well she acquits herself of her household duties!
Signor Odoardo, watching her with a sense of satisfaction, cannot resist exclaiming: "Bravo, Doretta!"
Doretta is undeniably the very image of her mother. She too was just such an excellent housekeeper, a model of order, of neatness, of propriety. And she was pretty, like Doretta, even though she did not possess the fair hair and captivating eyes of Signora Evelina.
The man-servant who brings in the breakfast is accompanied by a newcomer, the cat Melanio, who is always present at Doretta's meals. The cat Melanio is old; he has known Doretta ever since she was born, and he honors her with his protection. Every morning he mews at her door, as though to inquire if she has slept well; every evening he keeps her company until it is time for her to go to bed. Whenever she goes out he speeds her with a gentle purr; whenever he hears her come in he hurries to meet her and rubs himself against her legs. In the morning, and at the midday meal, when she takes it at home, he sits beside her chair and silently waits for the scraps from her plate. The cat Melanio, however, is not in the habit of visiting Signor Odoardo's study, and shows a certain surprise at finding himself there. Signor Odoardo, for his part, receives his new guest with some diffidence; but Doretta, intervening in Melanio's favor, undertakes to answer for his good conduct.
It is long since Doretta has eaten with so much appetite. When she has finished her breakfast, she clears the table as deftly and promptly as she had laid it, and in a few moments Signor Odoardo's study has resumed its wonted appearance. Only the cat Melanio remains, comfortably established by the stove, on the understanding that he is to be left the