Chapter VIII: Introduction (7)

“Are you that stranger that was to come to-day?”

“Yes, little one.” Affecting a caressing gentleness, in order to conciliate him, I held out my hand. The small boy retreated two paces, and showed symptoms of being about to throw the apple at my head.

“Will you keep your hands to yourself? What did you come up here for?”

I was beginning to feel annoyed, and did not answer.

“Yes, yes—father told you to come—I know that well enough; but mother didn’t want you, because she had to have all those fowls killed. Gostino is plucking them just now. But you’re going away this evening?... Won’t you answer? But I hope you are,—because, when mother saw you coming along the road, she wished you all sorts of bad luck.”...

The door opened, and there appeared, shod in slippers, the magnificent bulk of Signor Cosimo, who, smiling cordially, clapped his great hands on my shoulders, saying, three times over, “Bravo, bravo, bravo!” Then, turning to the small boy, he demanded—

“What are you doing here?”

“Just what I think fit!” replied the infant, who was thereupon expelled from the room with a tremendous box on the ear, after which his father turned to me and invited me to be seated.

My eye was at once caught by the grease-spots, and stains of wine and coffee, which adorned Signor Cosimo’s shirt and trousers. To tell the truth, I was uncomfortably affected by the sense of a want of consideration towards myself, but was soon appeased by his apologies for having kept me waiting, because he had gone upstairs to his own room, to “clean himself up a bit.”

“Oh! but.... Don’t mention it, Signor Cosimo!”

“Oh! bravo! bravo! bravo! But what a season, eh? Look here, you must be in need of some refreshment.... Gostino-o-o-o! What are they saying? What do they say in Florence about the crops?... Bravo! bravo! It is very good of you to have come; you have given us a regular treat!”

“Did you call, sir?”

“Go upstairs, Gostino, and ask your mistress to give you the keys of the sideboard, and bring this gentleman some refreshments.” Then to the child, who had returned in the wake of the servitor, “Go at once and get your face washed and make yourself fit to be seen.” With that, he boxed the small boy’s ears a second time, and turned him out of the room.

“And as to fruit, my dear sir, there’s nothing at all this year.”

“Ah!”

“Well, what is one to say? For the last three years it’s clear there has been witchcraft in it. Just imagine it. I used to put aside four hundred pounds in a year, and now ... sometimes fifty, sometimes sixty.... And then, what stuff it is! Every bit worm-eaten! I beg your pardon, but will you come down into the granary with me? But, no—I hear my brother coming down; we’ll wait for him.”

“Let us wait for him, by all means.”

“He’s a queer sort of customer, you know—a confirmed grumbler!—but, after all, a good sort at bottom. The other day, for instance, do you see——he suffers so much from——”

These preliminaries to the introduction were interrupted by the appearance of Don Paolo himself, who entered the room with a profound bow. I rose, and was going to meet him, but he protested.

“No, no, I won’t have it—don’t disturb yourself, sir. If you will excuse me, I will keep my hat on, as that is my custom. Sit down, sit down, pray.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Sor Cosimo resumed the conversation.

“You see, Paolo, this is the gentleman whom we were speaking of——”

“I know! I know! Bless you! can’t you make an end of it? How many times do you find it necessary to repeat a thing?”

“No—I wanted to tell you——”

“Have you sent for refreshments?”

“I told Gostino. He is just coming.”

“And so you’re from Florence, eh?” asked the chaplain, turning to me.

“At your service.”

“A wretched year, my dear sir! If it does not rain soon we shall never get any crops to speak of.... A year ago this very day I had taken fifty-six birds by ten o’clock; and this morning, before I came away to mass at eight, we had caught three miserable little things, and an accursed hawk that has half bitten my hand to pieces—look! Are they taking any at Florence?”

“To tell the truth, I have never asked.”

“Is the Prior of San Gaggio catching any this year?—is he catching any?”

“To my knowledge ... I could not say at all.”

“Ah! because last Friday he sent to tell me that he had not even had the decoy-cages made. He says that Father Lorenzo della Santissima Annunziata is not well. Is that true?”

“To tell the truth ... I do not know.”

“What!—do you know nothing, then?”

“I will tell you.... Let us rather speak of yourself. Signor Cosimo was telling me just now——”

“I must run out for a moment to the net. I say, Cosimo, what time is dinner?”

“Tell the women to get it at any hour that suits you.”

“Ah! here’s one of them,” said Don Paolo, who was just in the doorway. “What o’clock do we dine, Flavia?—at twelve?”

Signora Flavia, the wife of my host, bowed her head in assent as she entered the room, while the chaplain, an unsaluted guest, went off to his nets. She came to meet me, asked me how I was, said that she was pleased to hear it before I had time to answer “Well,” and planted herself in a chair to look at me. Sor Cosimo, upon Whom all the conversation seemed to devolve, remarked—

“See, Flavia, this is the gentleman who, as I was telling you the other evening——” Whereupon Sora Flavia began again, _da capo_.

“How are you?—Well?”

“Yes, madam.”

“And your wife?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“Remember me to her.” Then, looking at her husband as if to ask him whether she ought to say any more to me, she relapsed into silence, and fell to contemplating me again.

Fortunately Signor Cosimo relieved me from the embarrassment of choosing the subject of conversation by reverting to politics. The Tunis Question being then at its height, he naturally fell upon it tooth and nail, grew heated and excited, and blurted out, puffing and blowing, all his ideas touching foreign politics, concluding with the statement that if he and his brother the priest had been in the Cabinet, there would not be a Frenchman in Tunis.... At this point Signora Flavia interrupted him by asking me if there was any cotton in the material of my coat. I choked down a burst of laughter, and hazarded the answer that there was not.

“Then it is very dear, is it not?”

“Yes; I think it was seven francs a mètre.”

“Ah! they measure by mètres, do they? It must be good stuff, though. Just look, Cosimo; you ought to have one made like it——”

“Yes, yes; just like you—always interrupting! We’ll speak of that afterwards.”... Then, turning to me again—

“Because, if France——” He was just about to recommence the attack on Tunis when the door opened to admit his sister Olimpia, a maiden lady of fifty or so, the same whose literary reputation had made so great an impression on the peasants.

She had on a faded light blue dress, wore a crinoline, and carried a puce-coloured mantilla over her arm. On her head she had a broad-brimmed straw hat of a dingy yellow, adorned with a wreath of real ivy, and two small locks of well-greased hair fell in soft folds on the slightly roughened skin of her cheeks. In one hand she carried her parasol and a bunch of lavender; in the other a book, in which she kept her finger to mark the place. She advanced with ostentatious ease of manner, and bowed, half-shutting her eyes.

“Sir,” she said, “you are welcome to this modest habitation.”

“A delicious habitation, Signorina, where I should be very sorry to be troublesome.” She again half-shut her eyes, and smiled on me. Retiring backwards, as gracefully as she could, she went and sat down with her back to the window. She was evidently well acquainted with the clumsy artifices of a very mature young lady.

I was contemplating her with the utmost attention, when I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder, and Sor Cosimo said to me—

“You ought to hear what poetry this girl writes! Have you got it here, Olimpia—that sonnet you made last Sunday?”

“That ode, you mean—come!”

“Well, well—sonnet or ode—it’s the same thing. But if you could hear it—with rhymes, and all! I tell you! Come, let us hear it!”

“Afterwards, Cosimo, afterwards!”

Heaven preserve me! Turning to Signorina Olimpia, who still kept her finger in her book, I asked—

“What are you reading, may I ask?”

“I am just glancing over Leopardi.”

“Ah! ah!” And Sor Cosimo broke in—

“Fine! fine!—ah! very fine!”

“Are you acquainted with his works, Sor Cosimo?”

“Oh! most certainly! She read it to us last Sunday at dessert, and made us all cry like babies.”

“No, Cosimo, you do not understand. The gentleman means this book that I have here.”

“Ah! what! Well, well!... I was speaking of the sonnet. But you shall hear it afterwards.... And you must repeat that one too that you wrote when Calamai’s son was made a priest. Oh! _that!_ And then.... But don’t imagine, sir, that she has only one. She has a whole drawer full, and you may say that, if one is fine, others are not so bad.... Well, you shall hear.”

I was eager to hear her opinion of Leopardi, and asked—

“What do you think of this book, Signorina?”

“I will tell you,” she replied. “To say the truth, I have scarcely got at the bottom of it as yet, ... but, if I must speak sincerely, it seems to me there is not much interest in it.”

“Ah!”

“Don’t you think so too?”

“Well—yes—in a manner of speaking, yes!”

“If you will allow me to say so, no story is ever finished properly. You find Consalvo—that, now, is stolen from Tasso, the scene of Clorinda and Tancred.... Well, you find Consalvo. What then? Consalvo dies, and, at least as far as I have got, one hears no more of her. And the same thing with the characters. There is that one of that Nerina; it would be fine enough, but, good heavens! it is so little developed ... and one does not know what to make of it...! Do you agree with me?”

“Well ... to tell the truth ...”

“You see, Cosimo, whether or not I was right when we were discussing the subject the other evening with Signora Amalia.”

“I should think so, indeed!” exclaimed Sor Cosimo, testifying his approval by a great guffaw of laughter. “Do you mean to say you would compare yourself with that conceited creature? Let her go for seven years to school with the Sisters of St. Francis de Sales, as you have been, and then come and talk to us....”

* * * * *

The amazing literary criticisms of Sor Cosimo and his sister completely took away my breath. I was relieved from the necessity of answering by the appearance of Gostino with a bottle and a tray of glasses.

“I am sure you’ll like this wine, sir; you’ll see!” said Gostino as he poured me out some wine.

“Come, come, Gostino!” said Signorina Olimpia.

“Look sharp, Gostino,” continued Sor Cosimo; “go and fetch two more bottles—one of ’62 (you’ll find it on the table at the end of the cellar), and the other of ’59 (the year of the Revolution), and you shall see”—he turned to me again—“you shall see you have never tasted any like this!”

“But ... that’s enough, Signor Cosimo!”

“Come, come; no compliments. While it’s coming you’ll take another drop of this, won’t you?”

“Thanks, but I could not.... I am not accustomed....”

“Sir—I’m going to have another glass too—as the friar took a wife, for company’s sake.... Shall I pour you some out? You can throw it away afterwards, if you like—but I must pour if out”

“Very well, then; since you wish it so, another sip.... Enough,—that’s enough!”

“No, sir—the glass full, or none!”

Gostino returned with the other bottles, and then they all fell upon me, beginning with Signora Flavia, and not excluding Gostino, beseeching me to try those also. Signor Cosimo nudged my elbow, Gostino poured out the wine, and the two ladies entreated me with eloquent glances not to do them the wrong of refusing this attention.

I resisted for a little, but had to give way at last; and then my evil genius inspired me with the notion of praising the quality of the wine, and remarking that not only must the grapes have been exquisite, but the casks and cellars first-rate also. I regretted the words the moment they were out of my mouth.

“I’m going to show you them,” said Sor Cosimo immediately.

He took my arm, and, leaving the ladies in the dining-room, dragged me off to the cellar, with Gostino to light the way—now warning me of a step, and again requesting me to stoop where the ceiling was low, and at last showing himself more astonished than I could possibly be at the beauty of a cobwebbed vault, with a few casks along one wall, and two smaller barrels in a corner.

As it was necessary for me to be astonished, and to admire something, I began to praise the solid construction of the house, which I inferred from an inspection of the basement walls.

“Well, you shall see it now!”

From the cellar we ascended to the ground floor, which I had to review in detail—dining-room, ironing-room, kitchen, oven, larder, cupboards.... Then the new staircase—the first one was where the store-room is now.... Then the study, which his brother the priest had wished to have on the site of the stable they had had pulled down, but that was too damp.... Then up to the first floor—drawing-room, sitting-rooms, bed-rooms, and everything,—in fact, before I knew what I was about, I beheld Sora Olimpia trying on her puce-coloured mantle before the looking-glass.... “Look out of the window—now isn’t that a view? There’s the kitchen-garden. We’ll go there afterwards, but first you must see the second floor.”

We went up to the second floor, where he led me round for some twenty minutes, explaining in detail the destination of every apartment, together with the most noteworthy events which had taken place in the same—from the large room where the silkworms lived to the dark den where the chaplain kept the bullfinches he was teaching to pipe....

At the foot of the stairs we met Don Paolo returning from his quail nets, puffing and blowing, and grumbling at the Provost’s hurry to get to church. “Was he afraid of not finishing mass in time to get back to dinner, the great glutton? Do, for any sake, go on, Cosimo; do me the kindness—bad luck to this sort of work!—and tell them to be getting ready in the meantime, and I’ll come in ten minutes—if they don’t like that, they may sing mass by themselves....”

“Do you see?” whispered Sor Cosimo to me, “that’s his way. If he doesn’t catch any birds he becomes a regular beast. Come, let us go on; the ladies will follow by themselves.”

“They have already started, sir,” said Gostino.

“All the better; come along.”

I should have been thankful to sit down and rest for a minute, but had to follow Sor Cosimo, who, in order to get away from his brother, set off at such a pace that it was difficult to keep up with him.

Mountains stand firm, and men move on. When Sor Cosimo, hurrying into the door of the canon’s house, left me under the church-porch, my eye fell on a well-dressed man whose face somehow seemed familiar. As we passed each other, in walking up and down, I saw that his eyes were fixed on me, and that he was smiling, as if about to address me. I was just about to speak to him, as we met for the third time, when he uttered my name, and I suddenly recalled his.

“After nineteen years! How in the world did you get here?”

“I’m the parish doctor. And you?”

“I only came out for the day.”

“You’ll come and dine with me?”

“I am engaged.”

“To whom?”

“We’ll speak of that afterwards. Now tell me about yourself.... How are you getting on?”

“As well as a country doctor ever does.”

“And with the peasants.”

“Badly.”

“Why?”

“Because, being a gentleman, I am not a beast like themselves.”

“I understand. And how about the local authorities?”

“No better. I am not on good terms with the Syndic; and, by-the-bye, I must be off before he comes.”

“The reason?”

“I was imprudent enough to contradict him in public—in the chemist’s shop, when, speaking of books on etiquette, he mentioned Monsignor della Casa and _Flavio_ Gioja!”[16]

“Who is this portent of erudition?”

“The wealthiest, the most cultured, the most respectable person in the commune—a certain Signor Cosimo.”

“My host!”

“Are you staying at his house?”

“I am!”

“How in the world—— But never mind now,—after dinner you must come to me and tell me about everything, and we shall be together till you leave. I have a great deal to talk to you about—I’ll drive you down to the station.... Now let us go in.”

“Here you see my masters,” he said, with a smile, as we came to a halt in a corner at the upper end of the church. “They are all up there. Do you know any of them?”

“Only Signor Cosimo’s family.”

“I’ll tell you the names of some—they are quite worth your attention. They wouldn’t be bad sort of people if it were not for the intolerable airs they give themselves on the strength of their ignorance. All well known, though!—all honest folks,—and all of them very much admired, because the rest of the parish are greater asses than they. Do you see the priest who is celebrating? That is the Provost of Siepole. A profound theologian—a thriving dealer in oil—confessor to the nunnery—a great eater.... He doesn’t like me, but he puts up with me ever since I cured him of an indigestion which he brought on by eating salted cheese and beans.”

“He’s not young,” I observed.

“Over sixty. The one at his right is his chaplain, who is at daggers drawn with me, and gives it out all over the country that I am a lunatic, because I once refused to make him out a false certificate of illness. I think there is not much love lost between the two, for family reasons.... And yet they are never apart; the chaplain’s chief occupation is to water down his superior’s oaths. Every time the Provost takes a trick at cards he says ‘_Giuraddio_,’ and the chaplain qualifies it with ‘_Bacco_.’ So they go on, for the sake of saving appearances and their souls; but sometimes the Provost feels it as an insult to his dignity, and takes it ill, and then he snubs the chaplain, and in his wrath the oaths come dropping out like the beads off a broken rosary, while the chaplain goes on counteracting them with his ‘_Bacco! bacco!_’ quite unmoved, and ready to face martyrdom rather than yield. He is the best shot about here, and could beat the whole village at _briscola_. The poor people adore him, because he says mass in ten minutes, is easy at confession, and has no scruples about thrashing any man that tries to play tricks on him.

“The little thin man on this side is an unattached priest—a good fellow—miserably poor, and in wretched health. He contrives to worry along somehow and support an elder sister and two grand-children of hers, whom he teaches himself. He is master, father, and uncle to them, all in one; and ekes out his means by the help of four or five other pupils, whom he picks up wherever he can at a franc a month. No one knows how he does it, but he pays his way, and keeps an honoured name as a good citizen and blameless priest; and, above all, he is such a _rara avis_ as not to call down the curse of heaven on his country.[17]... In the village, as you may easily understand, people either don’t trouble their heads about him, or else they despise him.

“That other is Sor Cosimo’s brother, whom you know.... I’ll tell you something about him too; but hush!... every one is kneeling down....”

The silence was followed by the usual shuffling of feet, tinkling of medals, and indispensable volley of previously suppressed coughs. The air was becoming more and more unendurably close. The doctor recommenced his remarks in an undertone.

“And Sor Cosimo’s brother ... he is nicknamed ‘Thickskull’, and yet...” Here he leaned over and whispered in my ear....

“Never!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “Every day?”

“On my word of honour!”

Here Sor Cosimo smiled at me from the other side of the church, and waved his hand at the organ, as if to say, “What an instrument we have, and what an organist! You hear—eh?”

“That man beside Sor Cosimo, with the great black silk scarf round his neck,” my friend went on, “is Stelloni the miller, a member of the School Board. Sor Cosimo nominated him, because—considering the antipathy which Stelloni has shown towards all schools from his childhood up—he was able to assure the Council that he would never be one to advocate _unnecessary_ expense! In fact, Stelloni, true to his principles, has never set foot inside a schoolhouse. He says it is from a desire not to compromise himself, knowing, as he does, that things are not managed in the way he would approve of; low and unmannerly people say it is because he is afraid of having to question the children. He’s a good-natured sort of fellow, though, and hates no one in the world except the schoolmaster—that pale young man standing over there by the pillar,—because he once corrected a grammatical mistake in a composition by the miller’s son. Stelloni felt a kindly compassion for the master as long as the point remained doubtful; but when it was established beyond question that the master was right, his compassion turned to implacable hatred, and now he would be glad of any excuse for turning him out into the road to starve.

“That little thin old man, at the end of the row on the right, is one of the richest landowners in the place; a retired lawyer, and Sor Cosimo’s predecessor as Syndic. His ruling passion is that of running his head against stone walls, and systematically contradicting, at every meeting of the Council, everything that Sor Cosimo proposes. He has immortalised himself by means of two inscriptions which he had put up—with his own name in capital letters—during his term of office: one on the public well, when he had the pump put up,—the other you see opposite you—when he had the ciborium in the Chapel of the Seven Sorrows re-gilt at his own expense. He got himself elected Syndic in order to get the new government road run past the gates of his villa. Afterwards, when he found this impossible, and also failed to get the title of ‘Cavaliere,’ he retired in a rage. Now he relieves his feelings by taking the opposition side in the Council;—he turns off one tenant every year, and imprecates the wrath of Providence on the Government at every possible opportunity—even when the frost ruined his early tomatoes.”

“And you are in the hands of these people?” I remarked.

“I am in the hands of these people.”

... At the moment of going to table, Sor Cosimo said to me, with a wink, “We must keep up our spirits to-day—bravo! bravo!” Signora Flavia repeated, for the sixth time, her fear that I should find it penitential fare at best, seeing that they had made no alteration in their usual Sunday’s dinner.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, ostensibly because I was hurt by these apologies, but in reality because I felt I could not stand much more. Signorina Olimpia preceded us, curtseying backwards, after having presented me with a roguish glance and a little bunch of jessamine; and we entered the dining-room, prepared for a great occasion, as was evident from the odorous presence of table-linen fresh from the quinces and lavender of the store-closet.

“Here we are,” Sor Cosimo began again. “We have no ceremony here—a little soup, a bit of boiled meat, a sweet thing or two, and that’s all!” He crossed himself and said grace.

The small boy whose acquaintance I had made in the morning, had, on entering the room, remained open-mouthed for a time; but when he had taken in all the preparations, and more especially a side-table covered with pastry, sweets and bottles, he could control himself no longer, and turning to me, yelled, bringing down both his fists on the table—

“Oh! I say, this is jolly! Look what a lot of nice things there are to-day, because you’re here!”

Sor Cosimo aimed a kick at him under the table, which fortunately missed its mark; and immediately a frozen silence fell upon the guests.

The women sighed,—the men glared upon that boy with looks which ought to have reduced him to ashes on the spot,—and I turned to Signor Cosimo and asked him, with an air of innocent bewilderment, what his son had said. My stratagem was perfectly successful, and every one’s face had brightened up when Gostino appeared in his shirt sleeves, bringing in the soup. Signora Flavia called him to her, and whispered something in his ear. At the next course Gostino returned in his shooting-jacket, and with his hat on. Signora Flavia called him again; and when he next appeared, with the boiled meat, he had left his hat behind, and cast a questioning glance at his mistress, as much as to say, “Is it right now?” She nodded an affirmative, but Sor Cosimo signified to him, by another glance, that he ought to have known these things without being told. Gostino signified, in reply, by a shrug of his shoulders, that they had been bothering him unnecessarily, and requested me to take another piece of chicken.

This politeness on Gostino’s part was the signal for attack. The wine had begun to revive the spirits of the company, and had affected Sor Cosimo more than the rest. A tenant came in to say that at Don Paolo’s net in the garden they had taken seven bullfinches, by which means he too was cheered up; and now I found myself overwhelmed by the avalanche of attentions these good people bestowed on me. They heaped my plate with eatables, and pressed on me one dish after another, new ones appearing every time I imagined dinner was at an end. I must take some spinach, because it was a rarity at this time of year; I must taste that other dish, because Signorina Olimpia had made the sauce herself. And all the time Gostino was behind my chair, reproaching me for eating nothing, and Signora Flavia was lamenting that the dinner was not to my taste....

At last it was at an end....

And the conversation during dinner? There was none! There was a continual, dull succession of “Take some——”—“Thank you”—“You’re not eating”—“You’re not drinking”—and of roars of laughter whenever they had hit upon a new device for cramming me to death.

“The poems, Olimpia, the poems!” yelled Signor Cosimo at last. “The sonnet for Calamai!”

I turned at once to Signorina Olimpia, to read in her eyes the gravity of the calamity which threatened me, and I saw there an expression which made me sorry for her. Signora Flavia had the same look, and even in the face of that irrepressible child I thought I read something like fear. They all gazed at Sor Cosimo in a piteously questioning manner, and then simultaneously turned towards the place at the end of the table, at his right.

At that point the master of the house called Gostino, in a tone of vexation, and the latter appeared, in company with two tenants, who, seizing Don Paolo under the arms, dragged him like a log out of the room. I jumped up to offer my assistance, but Sor Cosimo stopped me, telling me, with a look of mingled pain and humiliation, that I was not to be frightened—it was quite a customary thing.

“In an hour or two he’ll be all right—heart complaint. The attacks come on when he has over-eaten himself a little....”

“But why does he not try to moderate himself?”

Sor Cosimo shrugged his shoulders.

“Does it often happen?” I inquired.

“Every day, poor uncle!” replied Signorina Olimpia. “Ah! it is indeed a great inconvenience!”

“And what does the doctor say?”

“Ah!” exclaimed Sor Cosimo. “Precisely!—you know him, that—that——” He had no epithet wherewith to qualify the doctor. “The doctor laughs.... I’ll tell you what he says—he laughs; and when I sent for him the second time, after one of these attacks, ... and when it was I who had got him his appointment, you understand? _I_ got it for him! Well, he had the audacity to say to that poor fellow, ‘Chaplain, if I were you, I’d put a little water in it next time!’ There, do you understand now what the doctor says? But he has never set foot in my house since, and I hope.... Where are you going to give us coffee, Flavia, here, or in the garden?”

The matter being referred to me, I voted at once for the garden, eager to get a mouthful of fresh air, and all the more as it was a lovely day.... There was a ring at the gate bell, and Gostino having opened, I saw five persons advancing up the avenue—three priests and two laymen, all red in the face as turkey-cocks, and talking at the very top of their voices. Sor Cosimo took me by the arm, and drawing me forward, introduced me to the Provost of Siepole and his chaplain, then to the parish priest of the village, and lastly to the assessor Stelloni and the communal secretary.

* * * * *

The talk went on, chiefly on personal and local topics, beginning with the small-pox, which, according to Stelloni, was being “promulgated” in the neighbouring villages, and ending with Sor Cosimo’s fountain, which he regretted he could not turn on for our edification, as Don Paolo kept the key of the mechanism in his own chest of drawers.

Signora Flavia looked at us absently, with sleepy eyes, which she opened wide every time she heard an extra loud clatter of crockery from the kitchen, where Gostino was washing up. Signorina Olimpia, perhaps disgusted with a conversation which was unworthy of her, was wandering round the garden, casting loving looks at her flowers, till at last, stopping before a monthly rose with two bees on it, she exclaimed: “Dear insects,

“Sucking, for one brief moment,
Now this, now the other flower,
Alas! she said——”

“Always a poetess, Signorina Olimpia!” cried the Provost, “always a poetess! Are those your own verses, madam, are they yours?”

“Come now, Olimpia, out with it, before it is too late,” urged Sor Cosimo. “The sonnet to Calamai—we must have that at once, for it’s a beauty!”

“It is a wonder!” observed the Provost. “Do you know, I have it by heart; I could say it off, as though it were before me in print. It is the only one of yours I have heard.”

“Rejoice, O youthful boy...”

Signorina Olimpia was preparing to repeat the much-desired sonnet when Don Paolo appeared in the doorway of the house, looking as though he had gone to sleep in his clothes and were just out of bed, and stopped on the threshold, looking fixedly on the ground. They all went up to him, to congratulate him and ask how he felt....

“The heart, gentlemen! the heart!” He put both hands to the left side of his chest, half closing his eyes and twisting his mouth, as if to indicate a spasm which was taking away his breath. Then he asked—

“Have they done anything more at the nets, Cosimo?”

“Five more, Don Paolo!” shouted Gostino from the kitchen.

“Five! Then we’ve made it fifteen to-day!” cried Don Paolo, reviving as if by magic. “Gostino, my hat and stick!”

Sor Cosimo cast a glance at us to signify that we ought to go to the nets as well, and that this attention would be extremely grateful to his brother. The clergy, however, were brave enough to refuse, alleging that it would soon be time for vespers. The remaining four of us started—Sor Cosimo, the Secretary, Stelloni, and myself—to the great delight of Don Paolo, who led the way with somewhat uncertain steps, telling me that he had reserved a fine cock bullfinch for the Prior of San Gaggio, and hoped I would do him the favour of taking it to him.

It was now three, and the train left at six. I made various attempts to get away and keep my engagement with my old friend, but no excuse would serve. To say that I had an appointment with the doctor after what I had heard would have been like dealing my hosts a slap in the face, and every stratagem which I devised was vain. I said I wanted to go into the village for cigars, as I had none left; Stelloni offered me half of his. I said I wished to write a post-card; the Secretary informed me I should find the post-office closed, and Sor Cosimo added that he would give me one, and I should write it when we returned from the nets, so that there was nothing for it but to give in.

We had to hurry back, as no one would have dreamed of beginning vespers without Sor Cosimo and Stelloni in the choir. The ladies had a new set of refreshments ready for us when we reached the house; Gostino came to ask when the horse would be wanted, and we set off for the church at increased speed.

* * * * *

Returning from church, I saw the doctor in the distance. He signed to me that he hoped we should meet at Florence, and I went on, feeling like a traitor going to execution, who sees his friends in the crowd and cannot speak to or take leave of them....

Gostino had already harnessed the horse, and seeing this I uttered a sigh of satisfaction. Truly, I was in a pitiable state. I could scarcely stand, tired out with the dawdling but continued motion of the whole day; my digestion was upset, for obvious reasons; my head was on fire, and heavy as lead.... Oh, for my own house! But the sigh was abruptly cut short when, just as I was settling myself in the gig, Signora Flavia came calmly up and began to say, while the rest of the household stood motionless to listen—

“See now, as you are so obliging, would you do us a kindness? I have written out all the things, so that you will not forget anything.” And she read out, by the twilight—

“1. _To take Sora Amalia’s spectacles to that spectacle-maker at the Canto Alla Paglia_, and have the broken glass mended. Gostino has them in his pocket, and will give them to you at the station.

“2. Five mètres, or else seven yards, just as you think best, of stuff like that of your coat; to be sent on Thursday by the carrier——”

“Have you written down the bird-seed, Flavia?”

“I have put down everything. Now be quiet ... by the carrier who puts up just outside the Porta San Frediano, where there is a board with ‘Stabling and coach-house.’”

“And about the wine?” asked Sor Cosimo.

“Here it is. To tell Scatizzi, the wine-seller in Borgognissanti—of course you know him—that if he wants another cartload of the same wine, now is the time.”

“But you’ve forgotten the bird-seed and the bullfinch, after all!” said Don Paolo impatiently.

“Here—now comes your turn.

“4. Three pounds of bird-seed from the man in the little alley which runs from the Via Calzaioli into the Ghetto. Have you put the measure into the box, Gostino?”—

“Yes, ma’am; but please make haste, or we shall be late.”

“5. A bullfinch to be taken to the Prior of San Gaggio.”

“Have you taken it, Gostino?”

“Yes, Master Paolo. He’s tied under the gig.”

“And you’ll remember me to him?” said Don Paolo, “and tell him that I caught fifteen to-day, and he is to send and tell me how his nets are doing.”

“And here,” said Signora Flavia, pointing to a huge bundle tied up at the back of the gig, “I have put together a little country green-stuff for you, as you said you liked it.”

“But I ... really ... Thank you, Signora Flavia, many thanks.”

“And this,” said Signorina Olimpia, approaching, “will you keep this in remembrance of me?” She handed me a sheet of paper folded in four, shook my hand three times over, and wished me a pleasant journey.... The farewells were said, and we were off....

When we had left the village behind us I cast my eye over Signorina Olimpia’s souvenir, and relieved my feelings by one of those hearty laughs which make one feel like a new creature. It was an autograph copy of the sonnet on the ordination of Calamai’s son.

_Renato Fucini._

_THE THEOREM OF PYTHAGORAS._

“The forty-seventh proposition!” said Professor Roveni, in a tone of mild sarcasm, as he unfolded a paper which I had extracted, very gingerly, from an urn standing on his desk. Then he showed it to the Government Inspector who stood beside him, and whispered something into his ear. Finally, he handed me the document, so that I might read the question with my own eyes.

“Go up to the blackboard,” added the Professor, rubbing his hands.

The candidate who had preceded me in the arduous trial, and had got out of it as best he could, had left the school-room on tiptoe, and, in opening the door, let in a long streak of sunshine, which flickered on wall and floor, and in which I had the satisfaction of seeing my shadow. The door closed again, and the room was once more plunged into twilight. It was a stifling day in August, and the great sun-blinds of blue canvas were a feeble defence against the glass, so that the Venetian shutters had been closed as well. The little light which remained was concentrated on the master’s desk and the blackboard, and was, at any rate, sufficient to illuminate my defeat.

“Go to the blackboard and draw the figure,” repeated Professor Roveni, perceiving my hesitation.

Tracing the figure was the only thing I knew how to do; so I took a piece of chalk and conscientiously went to work. I was in no hurry; the more time I took up in this graphic part, the less remained for oral explanation.

But the Professor was not the man to lend himself to my innocent artifice.

“Make haste,” he said. “You are not going to draw one of Raphael’s Madonnas.”

I had to come to an end.

“Put the letters now. Quick!—you are not giving specimens of handwriting. Why did you erase that G?”

“Because it is too much like the C I have made already. I was going to put an H instead of it.”

“What a subtle idea!” observed Roveni, with his usual irony. “Have you finished?”

“Yes, sir,” said I; adding under my breath, “More’s the pity!”

“Come,—why are you standing there moonstruck? Enunciate the theorem!”

Then began my sorrows. The terms of the question had escaped my memory.

“In a triangle ...” I stammered.

“Go on.”

I took courage and said all I knew.

“In a triangle ... the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the squares of the other two sides.”

“In any triangle?”

“No, no!” suggested a compassionate soul behind me.

“No, sir!” said I.

“Explain yourself. In what sort of a triangle?”

“A right-angled triangle,” whispered the prompting voice.

“A right-angled triangle,” I repeated, like a parrot.

“Silence there, behind!” shouted the Professor; and then continued, turning to me, “Then, according to you, the big square is equal to each of the smaller ones?”

Good gracious! the thing was absurd. But I had a happy inspiration.

“No, sir, to both of them added together.”

“To the sum then,—say to the sum. And you should say _equivalent_, not equal. Now demonstrate.”

I was in a cold perspiration—icy cold—despite the tropical temperature. I looked stupidly at the right-angled triangle, the square of the hypothenuse, and its two subsidiary squares; I passed the chalk from one hand to the other and back again, and said nothing, for the very good reason that I had nothing to say.

No one prompted me any more. It was so still you might have heard a pin drop. The Professor fixed his grey eyes on me, bright with a malignant joy; the Government Inspector was making notes on a piece of paper. Suddenly the latter respectable personage cleared his throat, and Professor Roveni said in his most insinuating manner, “Well?”

I did not reply.

Instead of at once sending me about my business, the Professor wished to imitate the cat which plays with the mouse before tearing it to pieces.

“How?” he added. “Perhaps you are seeking a new solution. I do not say that such may not be found, but we shall be quite satisfied with one of the old ones. Go on. Have you forgotten that you ought to produce the two sides, DE, MF, till they meet? Produce them—go on!”

I obeyed mechanically. The figure seemed to attain a gigantic size, and weighed on my chest like a block of stone.

“Put a letter at the point where they meet—an N. So. And now?”

I remained silent.

“Don’t you think it necessary to draw a line down from N through A to the base of the square, BHIC?”

I thought nothing of the kind; however, I obeyed.

“Now you will have to produce the two sides, BH and IC.”

Ouf! I could endure no more.

“Now,” the Professor went on, “a child of two could do the demonstration. Have you nothing to observe with reference to the two triangles, BAC and NAE?”

As silence only prolonged my torture, I replied laconically, “Nothing.”

“In other words, you know nothing at all?”

“I think you ought to have seen that some time ago,” I replied, with a calm worthy of Socrates.

“Very good, very good! Is that the tone you take? And don’t you even know that the theorem of Pythagoras is also called the Asses’ Bridge, because it is just the asses who cannot get past it? You can go. I hope you understand that you have not passed in this examination. That will teach you to read _Don Quixote_ and draw cats during my lessons!”

The Government Inspector took a pinch of snuff; I laid down the chalk and the duster, and walked majestically out of the hall, amid the stifled laughter of my school-fellows.

Three or four comrades who had already passed through the ordeal with no very brilliant result were waiting for me outside.

“Ploughed, then?”

“Ploughed!” I replied, throwing myself into an attitude of heroic defiance; adding presently, “I always said that mathematics were only made for dunces.”

“Of course!” exclaimed one of my rivals.

“What question did you have?” asked another.

“The forty-seventh proposition. What can it matter to me whether the square of the hypothenuse is or is not equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides?”

“Of course it can’t matter to you—nor to me—nor to any one in the world,” chimed in a third with all the petulant ignorance of fourteen. “If it is equal, why do they want to have it repeated so often? and if it is not, why do they bother us with it?”

“Believe me, you fellows,” said I, resuming the discussion with the air of a person of long experience, “you may be quite certain of it, the whole system of instruction is wrong; and as long as the Germans are in the country, it will be so!”

So, being fully persuaded that our failure was a protest against the Austrian dominion, and a proof of vivid and original genius, we went home, where, for my part, I confess I found that the first enthusiasm soon evaporated.

My ignominious failure in this examination had a great influence on my future. Since it was absolutely impossible for me to understand mathematics, it was decided that very day that I was to leave school, especially as the family finances made it necessary for me to begin earning something as soon as might be.

It was the most sensible resolution that could have been come to, and I had no right to oppose it; yet, I confess, I was deeply saddened by it. My aversion to mathematics did not extend to other branches of learning, in which I had made quite a respectable show; and besides, I loved the school. I loved those sacred cloisters which we boys filled with life and noise,—I loved the benches carved with our names,—even the blackboard which had been the witness of my irreparable defeat.

I blamed Pythagoras’ theorem for it all. With some other question—who knows?—I might just have scraped through, by the skin of my teeth, as I had done in past years. But, as Fate would have it, it was just that one!

I dreamt about it all night. I saw it before me—the fatal square with its triangle atop, and the two smaller squares, one sloping to the right, and the other to the left, and a tangle of lines, and a great confusion of letters; and heard beating through my head like the strokes of a hammer—BAC = NAF; RNAB = DEAB.

It was some time before I was free from that nightmare and could forget Pythagoras and his three squares. In the long run, however, Time, who with his sponge wipes out so many things from the book of memory, had nearly effaced this; when, a few weeks ago, the ill-omened figure appeared to me in one of my son’s exercise-books.

“Has this curse been transmitted to my descendants?” I exclaimed. “Poor boy! What if the theorem of Pythagoras should be as fatal to him as it has been to me?”

I thought I would question him about it on his return from school.

“So,” I began gravely, “you have already reached the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid in your geometry?”

“Yes, father,” he replied simply.

“A difficult theorem,” I added, shaking my head.

“Do you think so?” he asked with a smile.

“Oh! you want to boast and make me think you find it easy?”

“But I do find it easy.”

“I should like to see you try it”—the words slipped out almost involuntarily. “It’s no use—I can’t bear vanity and boasting.”

“At once,” replied the dauntless youth. And action succeeded words. He took a piece of paper and a pencil, and quickly traced the cabalistic figure.

“As for demonstrations,” he began, “there are plenty to choose from. Is it all the same to you which I take?”

“Yes,” I replied mechanically. In fact it _had_ to be all the same to me. If there had been a hundred demonstrations I should not have known one from the other.

“Then we’ll take the most usual one,” my mathematician went on; and proceeded to produce the lines which Professor Roveni, of respected memory, had made me produce twenty-seven years before, and, with the accents of the sincerest conviction, prepared to prove to me that the triangle BAC was equal to the triangle NAF, and so on.

“And now,” said my son, when he had finished, “we can, if you wish, arrive at the same conclusion in another way.”

“For pity’s sake!” I exclaimed in terror, “since we have reached the journey’s end, let us rest.”

“But I am not tired.”

Not even tired! Was the boy an embryo Newton? And yet people talk about the principle of heredity!

“I suppose you are at the top of your class in mathematics,” I said, not untouched by a certain reverential awe.

“No, no,” he replied. “There are two better than I. Besides, you know very well that everybody—except downright asses—understands the forty-seventh proposition.”

“_Except downright asses!_” After twenty-seven years I heard, from the lips of my own son, almost the very identical words which Professor Roveni had used on the memorable day of the examination. And this time they were heightened by the savage irony of the added “_You know very well!_”

I wished to save appearances, and added in haste—

“Of course I know that. I was only in fun. I hope you would not be such a fool as to be proud of a small thing like that.”

Meanwhile, however, my Newton had repented of his too sweeping assertion.

“After all,” he went on, with some embarrassment, “there are some who never attend to their lesson, and then ... even if they are not asses....”

It seemed to me that he was offering me a loophole of escape, and with a sudden impulse of candour—

“That must be the way of it,” I said. “I suppose I never paid attention.”

“How! You?” exclaimed my boy, reddening to the roots of his hair. Yet ... I would bet something that, at the bottom of his heart, he was longing to laugh.

I put my hand over his mouth.

“Hush,” I said; “we will not pursue our inquiries into detail.”

Well, the Theorem of Pythagoras has, as you see, cost me a new and very serious humiliation. In spite of this, I no longer keep up the old grudge. There will never be any confidence between us, but I consider it as a family friend whom we must not treat with rudeness, though he may not be personally congenial to ourselves.

_Enrico Castelnuovo._

_AN ECCENTRIC ORDERLY._

Of originals there is a great variety under the canopy of heaven; and I have enjoyed the acquaintance of several, but among them all I never met his match.

He was a Sardinian peasant, twenty years old, unable to read or write, and a private in an infantry regiment.

The first time I saw him, at Florence, in the office of a military journal, he inspired me with a certain sympathy. I soon understood, however, from his looks and some of his answers, that he was a character. His very appearance was paradoxical: seen in front, he was one man; looked at in profile, he was another. Of the full face there was nothing particular to remark; it was a countenance like any other; but it seemed as though in the act of turning his head he became a different man, and the profile had something irresistibly ludicrous about it. The point of his chin and the tip of his nose seemed to be trying to meet, and to be hindered by an enormous thick-lipped mouth which was always open, and showed two rows of teeth, uneven as a file of national guards. His eyes were scarcely larger than pin-heads, and disappeared altogether among the wrinkles into which his face was puckered when he laughed. His eyebrows were shaped like two circumflex accents, and his forehead was scarcely high enough to keep his hair out of his eyes. A friend of mine remarked to me that he seemed to be one of Nature’s practical jokes. And yet his face expressed intelligence and good-nature; but an intelligence which was, so to speak, sporadic, and a good-nature entirely _sui generis_. He spoke, in a harsh, hoarse voice, an Italian for which he had every right to claim the inventor’s patent.

“How do you like Florence?” I asked, seeing that he had arrived in that city the day before.

“It’s not bad,” he replied.

Coming from a man who had previously only seen Cagliari, and one or two small towns in Northern Italy, the answer seemed to savour of a certain austerity.

“Do you like Florence or Bergamo best?”

“I arrived yesterday—I couldn’t say yet.”

The following day he made his entry into my quarters.

During the first week I was more than once within an ace of losing all patience, and sending him back to the regiment. If he had contented himself with understanding nothing, I could have let that pass, but the misfortune was, that partly through the difficulty he had in understanding my Italian, partly through the unaccustomed nature of his tasks, he understood about half, and did everything the wrong way. Were I to relate how he carried my razors to the publisher, and my manuscripts ready for the press to the razor grinder; how he left a French novel with the shoemaker, and a pair of boots to be mended at a lady’s house, no one who had not seen him would believe me. But I cannot refrain from relating one or two of his most marvellous exploits.