Chapter IX: Introduction (8)

At eleven in the forenoon—which was the time when the morning papers were cried about the streets—it was my custom to send him out for some ham for my breakfast. One morning, knowing that there was an item in the paper that I wished to see, I said to him hurriedly, “Quick! the ham, and the _Corriere Italiano_.” He could never take in two distinct ideas at once. He went out, and returned shortly afterwards with the ham wrapped up in the _Corriere_.

One morning he was present when I was showing one of my friends a splendid military atlas, which I had borrowed from the library; and he heard me remark to the latter: “The mischief is that one cannot see all these maps at a glance, and has to examine each one separately. To follow the whole course of a battle I should like to have them nailed up on the wall in their proper order, so as to form a single diagram.” On coming in that evening—I shudder still when I think of it—all the maps in that atlas were neatly nailed to the wall; and, to add to my sufferings, he appeared before me next morning, with the modestly complacent smile of the man who expects a compliment.

But all this is nothing to what I underwent before I had succeeded in teaching him to put my rooms in order—I do not say as I wanted them—but in a manner remotely suggesting the presence of a rational being. For him, the supreme art of putting things to rights consisted in piling them one on top of the other, and his great ambition was to build them up into structures of the greatest possible altitude. During the first few days of his tenure of office my books formed a semicircle of towers, which trembled at the lightest breath; the washhand basin, turned upside down, sustained a daring pyramid of plates, cups, and saucers, at the top of which my shaving-brush was planted; and my hats, new and old, rose, in the form of a triumphal pillar, to a dizzy height. As a consequence there occurred—usually at dead of night—ruinous collapses, which made a noise like a small earthquake, and scattered my property to such an extent that, if it had not been for the walls of the room, no one knows where it would have brought up. To make him understand that my tooth-brush did not belong to the genus hair-brush, and that the pomade-jar was not the same as the vessel which contained Liebig’s extract, required the eloquence of Cicero and the patience of Job.

I have never been able to understand whether my attempts to treat him kindly met with any response on his part. Once only he showed a certain solicitude for my personal welfare, and this was exhibited in a manner quite peculiar to himself. I had been ill in bed for about a fortnight, and neither got worse nor showed any signs of recovery. One evening he stopped the doctor—an exceedingly touchy man—on the stairs, and asked him, abruptly, “But, once for all, are you going to cure him, or are you not?” The doctor lost his temper, and fairly blew him up. “It’s only that it’s lasting rather long,” was my orderly’s sole response.

It is difficult to give any idea of the language he spoke—a mixture of Sardinian, Lombard, and Italian, with idioms all his own; elliptical sentences, mutilated and contracted words, verbs in the infinitive flung about haphazard. The whole was like the talk of a man in delirium. At the end of five or six months, by dint of attending the regimental schools, he learnt, to my misfortune, to read and write after a fashion. While I was out of the house he used to practise writing at my table, and would write the same word a couple of hundred times over. Usually it was a word he had heard me pronounce when reading, and which, for some reason or other, had made an impression on him. One day, for instance, he was struck by the name of Vercingetorix. When I came home in the evening I found _Vercingetorix_ written on the margins of the newspapers, on the backs of my proofs, on the wrappers of my books, on my letters, on the scraps in the waste-paper basket—in every place where he could find room for the thirteen letters beloved of his heart. Another day the word _Ostrogoths_ touched his soul, and on the next my rooms were invaded by the _Ostrogoths_. In like manner, a little later, the place was full of _rhinoceroses_.

On the other hand, I was so far a gainer by this extension of knowledge on his part, that I was no longer obliged to mark with crosses, in differently coloured chalks, the notes I gave him to deliver to various people. There was no way of making him remember the names; but he got to know my correspondents as the blue lady, the black journalist, the yellow Government official, etc.

Speaking of writing, I discovered a habit of his, much more curious than the one I have mentioned. He had bought himself a note-book, into which he copied, from every book that fell into his hands, the author’s dedication to his parents or relations, taking care always to substitute for the names of the latter those of his father, his mother, and his brothers, to whom he imagined he was thus giving a brilliant proof of affection and gratitude. One day I opened this book and read, among others, the following:—“Pietro Tranci (the Sardinian peasant, his father), born in poverty, acquired, by study and perseverance, a distinguished place among men of learning, assisted his parents and brothers, and worthily educated his children. To the memory of his excellent father this book is dedicated by the author, Antonio Tranci”—instead of Michele Lessona.

On another page he had copied the dedication of Giovanni Prati’s poems, beginning as follows:—“To Pietro Tranci, my father, who, announcing to the Subalpine Parliament the disaster of Novara, fell fainting to the ground and died within a few days, I consecrate this song,” etc., etc.

What astonished me most in one who had seen so little was an absolute lack of the feeling of wonder. During the time he was at Florence he saw the festivities at Prince Humbert’s marriage, the opera, and the dancing at the Pergola (he had never been inside a theatre in his life), the Carnival, and the fantastic illumination of the Celli Avenue. He saw a hundred other things which were quite new to him, and which ought, one would think, to have surprised him, amused him, made him talk. Nothing of the sort. His admiration never went beyond the formula, “Not bad!” Santa Maria del Fiore—not bad! Giotto’s tower—not bad! the Pitti Palace—not bad! I really believe that if the Creator in person had asked what he thought of the universe he would have replied that it was not bad.

From the first day of his stay to the last his mood never changed; he continually preserved a kind of cheerful seriousness: always obedient, always muddle-headed, always most conscientious in understanding things the wrong way, always plunged in a kind of apathetic beatitude, always with the same extravagance of eccentricity. On the day when his term of service expired he scribbled away for several hours in his note-book with the same calm as on other days. Before leaving he came to say good-bye to me. There was not much tenderness in our parting. I asked him if he was sorry to leave Florence. He answered, “Why not?” I asked him if he was glad to return home. He replied with a grimace which I did not understand.

“If you ever want anything, sir,” he said at the last moment, “write to me, and I shall always be pleased to do anything I can for you.”

“Many thanks,” I replied.

And so he left the house, after being with me over two years, without the slightest sign either of regret or pleasure.

I looked after him as he went downstairs.

Suddenly he turned round.

“Ah!” thought I, “now we shall see! His heart has been awakened. He is coming back to take leave in a different sort of way!”

Instead of which—

“Lieutenant,” he said, “your shaving-brush is in the drawer of the biggest table, sir!”

With that he disappeared.

_Edmondo de Amicis._

_A PROVINCIAL ORACLE._

... The newly-married couple settled in a small country town, where they were not long in gaining the hearts of all the inhabitants. The more sensible and influential people in the place thought the advent of such wealthy residents a great piece of good fortune. “They will be of so much advantage to the place,” was the remark made in the chemist’s shop of an evening. It soon began to rain advantages: dinner parties, picnics, gifts, patronage, entertainments for charitable objects—hospitalities of all sorts; and then the balls at carnival-tide! A dash, a gaiety, a profusion that one could neither believe nor imagine—a splendour, the memory of which, as all the local journals put it, “would flourish with perennial vigour in the hearts of a grateful community.” We thought we had returned to the very flower of the golden age of Arcadia. It was two talents, more especially, which won golden opinions for Signor Diego among the worthy citizens of our little borough—his magnificent expenditure and his wit. Of Attic salt he had as much as sufficed, within a very short space of time, to pickle the whole place; whereby it became one of the wittiest towns in the world. I do not say that the inhabitants did not possess a great deal of wit before he arrived; nor do I wish to hint that the conversation of the educated persons who visited at the house of Diego was mere insipid triviality coloured with a little presumption, and that touch of perfidy which is, so to speak, the _sauce piquante_ of empty gossip. No, indeed! for they, too, took their share in public life and talked politics, speaking highly of themselves and of the party in power, and exceedingly ill of those who were not present to hear them. But what I mean is that Signor Diego, profiting by all that he had learnt in his travels, showed them a more excellent—that is to say, a more Parisian way, and taught them the great mystery of _chic_. He instructed them in all those arts of gilding and veneering, by means of which the most contemptible trifles may be made to appear noble and graceful. He taught them to laugh at serious matters, but to take the most religious care—practising the worship of themselves with unheard-of austerity and entire self-devotion—of their hair and their coats, and the dignity of their attitudes and movements; and to pronounce sentence with the extremest rigour on the unfortunate who should transgress the least important of the rules established by social etiquette.

_Mario Pratesi._

_DOCTOR PHŒBUS._

Many years ago a company, with capital to back it, took a lease of the manganese mines in the province of Valle Amena. Perhaps the “Pleasant Valley” may at one time have deserved its name; but nowadays there is nothing pleasant about the monotonous barren hills, of no use to any one but the goats, and the distant woods, too scanty to lend any tint of green to the dry and desert landscape. The company’s employés were scarcely to be blamed for not liking the place; everything was scarce, even pretty faces—at least such as had had the benefit of soap and water. But the pay was good, and more than one among them had hopes of becoming a shareholder, or at least cashier; and so things went on somehow or other. Two hundred navvies pushed the work rapidly forward, and enormous trucks full of the grey metal blocked the postal road day and night.

But all that glitters is not gold; and one day the report spread that the flourishing company had failed, as though prosperity had undermined its foundations like stagnant water. It made a great talk in the neighbourhood, and every one concluded his or her comments by long exclamations of astonishment.

“_Mah!_” ejaculated the old, dried-up chaplain of the _Misericordia_,[18] with his hands in the pockets of the threadbare shooting-coat which he always wore except when he put on his surplice to go and fetch the dead. “In my opinion it was just like when a set of people leave the gaming-table, where low cards have been dealt; but they do not all leave with the same advantages.”

“There is no getting at the exact truth,” remarked the landlord of the village inn, who did not repent nearly so much of his sins as he did of having given credit; “but in this business I too believe that the rogues have done the honest men who trust their neighbours, and never suspect any cheating.”

“What nonsense!” exclaimed Signor Vincenzino; and perhaps he would have said more, only that, being syndic, and very rich, he thought it possible he might be risking the chance of a decoration. He rose from his seat in the Caffé del Giappone. “In any case,” he continued, keeping his back turned to the host, “there is the law.”

“I’d like to see it!” replied mine host. “But it’s very seldom that rogues who have grown rich do not find some one to help them, in one way or another, in keeping what they have stolen.”

“Precisely!” retorted the chaplain, holding up his finger like Dante under the Uffizi. “There are certain experts and certain lawyers who show a most extraordinary ability in this respect, and acquire enormous credit, so that sometimes the Government is even forced to raise them to the rank of _Commendatore_. You alone, poor Phœbus...”

And so on, and so on.... It would be tedious to repeat all the conversation that took place at the Caffé del Giappone. As to Phœbus, however, I should not be altogether disposed to agree with the chaplain. If Phœbus found no one to make the best of the arguments on his side when—having been blinded by the effects of an explosion at the works—he asked for a miserable little pension, which the Company refused, saying that his misfortune was due to his own carelessness, and not to the necessities of his work,—if, I say, he had no one to plead his cause, this must be regarded merely as an accident, which happened to him, as it may happen to hundreds of others in a like condition. Then came the crash; and if a company were going to give every man what he wants, what motive could it have for declaring itself insolvent. In this case, to recommend the fulfilment of any humane duties is like running after a mist-wreath, or asking a routed army, in full retreat, to think of the dead and wounded they are leaving behind.

I do not deny that the consequences were certainly unpleasant for Phœbus, who had now eaten nothing for three days, and sat in the chimney-corner, yawning and stretching his arms to such an amazing extent, first in one direction, and then in another, that he looked like the castle of St. Angelo when the fireworks are being let off on Easter Day. A miserable hen, which sat motionless, not daring to attract attention to itself, and a cat which seemed to have nothing more to wish for in this life, having now reached the very utmost degree of leanness, and lay curled up, with half-closed eyes, on the dead ashes of the hearth, were the only creatures not audibly complaining in the melancholy darkness of the hut, which covered so much misery. It seemed as though they were meditating on the infinite vanity of things. But not so Phœbus’s wife, nor Vittorino, his little son; for the one, by continual whimpering, and the other with her reproaches, added notes of sickening despair to the symphony of those sonorous, expansive, and well-nourished yawns of the blind man. Yet the wife had not the slightest reason for envying the cat; she was dry and thin as though she had nothing left for hunger and grief to gnaw at;—she was near her confinement, poor soul, and, with her face the colour of sodden dead leaves, and her black eyes, greedy, feverishly bright, and sunken in their sockets, she was a very different person from the comely young Rosalinda whom Phœbus had married when he returned from serving in the _Bersaglieri_. That was six months before the accident at the quarries; and now she was more like one of the thirsty, dropsical wretches in Dante’s “Malebolge.”

“Go to Sor Vincenzino,” said Phœbus.

His wife did not reply.

“Go to the doctor.”

“Don’t you know that a hundred poor sinners might die before either of _them_ would stir a finger? Don’t you know that the doctor keeps on asking me for a franc for that tooth he pulled out last year?”

Phœbus moved his jaws for a little while, like an animal chewing the cud; then he gave seven or eight more yawns, and rubbed his hands as if he had just concluded a good stroke of business.

“Go to Nannone—go to the chaplain, to the archdeacon, to Lisetta—only go to some one!”

“I went to Nannone this morning—he was not at home. I went to the chaplain yesterday, and he gave me that bread. I went to Lisetta the day before yesterday, and she gave me that _polenta_. And who’s going to the archdeacon’s, with that vixen of a Modesta there? Not I!”

“Then, you ugly slug, you cannot be hungry, and must just eat your own talk!”

The wife rose, sobbing and muttering curses, and went out, dragging the water-jar with her as usual, as an excuse for knocking at people’s doors. When they opened, however, it was something more than permission to draw water at the well that she wanted—her errand was more serious than that.

To-day she did not find them disposed to listen to tales of misery, for it was the last day of the carnival, and the weather was bright and clear. A cold wind kept the sky cloudless, and the sun, going down in the west, seemed to embrace the whole sky and earth with its rays, and smiled among the shadows and on the peaks of the snowy Apennines, which gradually faded away into the distance on the last clear rim of the horizon. But the village, all but the great ruined tower on the little piazza, the upper part of which was still in light, began to grow dark; and it was already dusk in the ancient, narrow streets, black as if after a conflagration, filled with crowds of country folk, among which the red shawls of the jolly peasant women made bright points here and there, and noisy with cymbals and other instruments, laughter, and shouting.

This, then, was not a propitious moment. In fact, Rosalinda was not long in returning, with her pitcher and her hands both empty. The people, nearly all poor, were tired of her continual requests, and by this time the pitcher trick was becoming stale.

“Eh!” said her husband, rubbing his hands as usual. “I suppose they would not open their doors to you, because it is winter, and they are afraid of the cold coming in?”

“Be quiet!” screamed Rosalinda to the child. “Be quiet, or I’ll make an end of you!”

“Be quiet, Vittorino,” repeated Phœbus. “This evening we shall have twenty loaves and some roast meat! Wife! you be quiet too, and give me those things that ought to be in the box!”

The things were a heap of rags, on the top of which lay a worn-out tall hat, very old, but seeming still to remember its former owner; for to those who had never seen him in any other hat for years and years it was impossible not to be instantly reminded of that wrinkled, benevolent, patient face, whose serious sadness was rather added to than diminished by the somewhat long chin and Dantesque nose. The other things—a waistcoat, knee-breeches, and a very long black overcoat—had very evidently belonged to an extremely poor and unfortunate priest.

But Vittorino began to laugh and dance when he saw his father put on not only this Court suit, as it seemed to him, which his wife handed him, grumbling and crying at the same time, but a pair of huge horse-hair whiskers and an enormous paper collar, the points of which reached nearly to the tip of his nose.

Not only this, but a wave of merriment ran through the whole village, like the ripple which a puff of wind makes in the surface of the lagoon, when Phœbus issued from his door thus dressed, with a huge book containing the whole series of ancient medical prescriptions under his arm. Some people insisted on recognising in his icy smile, in those remedies so learnedly prescribed in his slow, pompous manner, in that awkward, straddling walk, Doctor Ambrogio, the village physician for forty years, who was also surgeon, veterinary surgeon, and dentist. As dentist his renown had attracted people from the remotest villages; and for the expense and trouble he had undergone to acquire it he expected compensation even from the poor, though in justice it must be said (and this shows Doctor Ambrogio’s fair-mindedness), much less than from the rich.

Other masks made a cheerful variation in the crowd—_stenterelli_,[19] with painted faces and pigtails curled up like a point of interrogation, harlequins, Turks, madmen, wizards, and big, bearded creatures got up as nurses, and carrying turkeys swathed up in baby-clothes; which birds, pushing their red-wattled heads out from among the bandages, never imagined—though they seemed astonished and confused enough already—the slaughter which was to befall them later on. The women, with bright eyes and laughing lips, hung over each other’s shoulders, in the windows and on the balconies, to get a sight of Phœbus. Only when he began to give utterance to certain jokes at which no girl—and not even a married woman—can very well laugh in public, then they knitted their brows, while the men, looking at them, laughed fit to kill themselves. Then his popularity grew; then it seemed as though Plenty thought fit to empty her cornucopia over Phœbus; then the public liberality knew no limits, and down were showered steaks, and bread, and sausages, and _polpette_,[20] and _maritozzi_,[21] and _ballotte_,[22] and _strozza-prete_,[23] and apples, and _schiacciatunta_,[24] and rosemary cake, and millet puddings—all poured on the devoted head of Phœbus, who, without putting the smallest morsel into his mouth, stuffed the whole into the front of his waistcoat, into his hat, and into all the pockets of his overcoat and trousers.

Yet none the less did he continue to look like Famine, or Lent personified, come to play the fool in the midst of all that courteous and kindly merriment. The clumsy black spectacles—with the glasses broken and mended with black sealing-wax—with which he covered the horrible sight presented by his burnt eyes, seemed of themselves to darken him, and take away every touch of life and mobility from his worn face, white as old wax, which might have been taken for that of an old man or one far gone in consumption, if it had not been for the intensely black hair, and the figure, which, though below the middle height, was broad in the chest, and all muscles and sinews. If his hair had been white he would not have moved people’s compassion so much as he did when they saw him still fresh and robust; for thus his lot appeared peculiarly unjust and cruel, paralysing his strong arms, and robbing him of so many years of ease gained by hard labour, and reducing him instead to the necessity of asking alms, which were so limited, and not always kindly given. Nevertheless, on account of that habit he had of smiling and rubbing his hands when speaking, many people thought him a merry and light-hearted man who was fond of his joke.

The shouting crowd hustled him out on the little square, where rises the gloomy tower—at that moment lit up by the last rays of the sun, with the hawks wheeling, in the blue sky, round the top.

Doctor Ambrogio, standing at the door of the chemist’s shop, looked like Æsculapius himself, with his ruddy, well-nourished face, full of severe learning, and his long white beard, under which appeared, wound several times round his neck, a heavy scarlet woollen scarf. If this physician, who was great at blood-letting and cupping, had remained a little behind the times, the chemist had by no means done so; and in this instance the old and the new generation joined hands. For the chemist, emulous of his city colleagues, had sold to a Florentine dealer in antiquities the phials and vases of glazed terra-cotta and the dried Nile crocodile, which, hanging with widely-opened jaws from the middle of the ceiling, had formerly given an uncanny idea of medical science and the apothecary’s art, as though they had been devouring monsters. Moreover, he had decorated his shop with all the latest improvements—gilt boxes and ornamental stoppers, chalybeate water, and purgative syrups enclosed in cut-glass bottles; and he never sold an ounce of cream of tartar or bitter salts without doing it up in a little bag of glazed paper. All this elegance certainly raised the price of his commodities; but only consider how much it added to the efficiency of the drugs!

Here, right in front of this luxurious establishment, Phœbus stood still, in the midst of the crowd, opened his book, turned over the pages, and after discoursing for some time, concluded by prescribing Dr. Ambrogio, who was still standing in the doorway, and who suffered from sciatica, _a decoction of asinine cucumber_.

Dr. Ambrogio turned his back, closed the glass door, and said to Sor Vincenzino, who was seated on the sofa reading the paper: “This blind man is a public nuisance, and I cannot think why you don’t get him out of the way. If I were syndic....”

“If you were syndic you would know what red-tape and difficulties and formalities are! Last year I tried to send him to the hospital for the blind at ..., and they sent him back because he was not a native of the place.”

“Yes, I remember. I gave him as full a certificate as I could to get him away from here. Good heavens! If this town is not a nest of wretchedness, I don’t know what is.”

The chaplain, who was also in the shop waiting for the chemist, seemed touched to the quick, and said—

“It is the fault of the rich. If the rich were to think more about giving work——”

But the doctor interrupted him.

“Here we are with the rich again! Can’t you understand, sir, that the rich have too many taxes?” The syndic nodded approvingly. “It’s the Government that’s in fault,” said the doctor. “Here’s the dilemma, and there’s no getting out of it:—Either they ought to take off the income-tax, or they, and not we, should see to the feeding of these starving wretches.”

“Very true! Just the thing I have so often thought,” answered the syndic. “Because if they were to take off the income-tax, that sum would remain in the treasury; but it cannot remain there, because the funds have to be turned to account; and for doing this labour is needed, and labour being needed it has to be paid for, and being paid for, why, there you are. Then people have something to eat! Why, that’s quite clear, gentlemen! No difficulty in understanding that!”

“There was no need for your explanation,” returned the chaplain, shrugging his shoulders with a slightly vexed look as he rose from the sofa, stretching out his legs, which appeared, long and thin as those of a blackbird, under the skirts of his wretched coat. “Even the poor countess paid income-tax; yet at the end of the year she had spent a pretty large sum in good works. But her heirs have inherited her money and not her merciful heart.”

“That is just the sort of speech you might be expected to make, belonging as you do to the _Misericordia_,” said the doctor, with a quietly contemptuous smile.

“And a ruined man into the bargain!” whispered Sor Vincenzino into the doctor’s ear. “Later on, some time, I’ll tell you a little story about his niece.”

“Throwing away one’s own money in that fashion,” the doctor went on, with a solemn air of wisdom, “is not charity; it is merely carrying out the whims of hysteria; and the countess was hysterical from the tip of her great toe to the ends of her hair. It’s a question of organisation. You’re far behind the times, chaplain!”

“You had better take care. I may be in advance of you!”

“Everything _may_ be; but that there ought to be methods and limits even in charity, for otherwise even great fortunes would fall into ruin, this indisputable and precious axiom of economic science, I am afraid—excuse me—you are not acquainted with. And with interest, you know, there is no joking.”

Sor Vincenzino concluded his approving nods by one of final and comprehensive assent; and wishing to convey clearly to the chaplain that, in short, he thought nothing of him, he turned his back on him, and set himself, with a diplomatic countenance, to meditate over his newspaper. The chaplain understood that, and with his simple face full of grave sadness, and his white hair curling over his temples, remained standing, waiting patiently for the medicine for his poor, pretty niece, who was ill. The doctor kept looking out of the window, and saying to himself, “I should like to know what has become of the police! They ought to make an example and dismiss them both! If I saw one of them I’d tell him to make that rascal hold his tongue!”

“To-day I cure every one for nothing!” Doctor Phœbus was shouting in the midst of the crowd. “To-morrow it will be too late! Yes, it will be too late, unhappy people! If you have not enough to live upon—if you do not pay me a proper fee for every visit—if you don’t want to pay a high price for medicines, and buy them here of my good friend the chemist, who is the only man who sells good ones—why then, unhappy wretches, you can be no patients of mine! Then you will have to go to the hospital—our hospital!—where he who goes in never comes out any more! What with fasting, and poultices, and gruel without salt, mallow-water and cuppings, in a week you will either be cured or gone where you want no more curing.”

At this point the last glimmer of the fiery sunset, the sound of the great church bell, and the rattle of a drum which was going round announcing the “Last Wonderful Comedy of the Burattini,” distracted the audience. A man slipped out of the Caffé del Giappone, in the dusk, with baking-pan full of pastry, just out of the oven, and hastened to carry it to the Casino for the evening’s festivity. It was duly evident from all the going and coming that there were great things in the air. Not only at the Casino, but there was to be dancing at Sora Carmelinda’s and at Sor Gregorio’s; there was to be dancing at the taverns, in the space between the wine-casks, and in the hay-lofts at the farms; for all which occasions there had been secretly stored up in every house masks and half-masks and _papier-mâché_ noses, in which one could be perfectly certain of not being recognised. Time was pressing; the drum had ceased to beat and the bell to ring, and instead one could hear stray barrel-organs, to whose sound little companies of peasants came trooping in along the dark lanes; and here and there, scattered through the streets of the merry little town, the shouting and laughter which had previously been all concentrated in the square. Then Phœbus found that he had been left alone, in a deeper darkness than before. He stretched out his numbed hands in order to give them a joyful rub; but the long tight overcoat, now stuffed out with the bounty showered on him, got in his way; he tried to stoop and to raise his arms, but this too was a failure. He was impatient to get home quickly, and instead of being able to do so he was forced to grope his way slowly along those noisy streets, where he could scarcely find room to set his stick down.

“Wife! Vittorino! help! I can get no farther! Wife! Come and help me unload the casks full of presents my patients have given me!” he began to shout when he was a few paces from the house.

His wife and Vittorino hurried to meet him, and relieved him of his load in a twinkling; and having entered the house, all three ate like wolves, finding, moreover, here and there among the spoils, a piece of cod’s head or a rotten apple, flung for a joke, which were thankfully received by the cat and the hen, now awakened; so provident is Nature.

Then, unluckily, Phœbus said to his wife, “This evening, at least, dear, you are not going to complain!” Alas! it was like putting the match to the powder-magazine. She had been quiet; but the words seemed to set her going afresh, and she began again—shrieks, tears, and lamentations; how much reason she had for complaining, and how much for thinking of the next day, and how much better it would have been if she had always remained single.

Then Phœbus began, in good earnest, to blaspheme like a heretic, in the brutal Tuscan way. Yet, being quick-witted and kind-hearted beyond the average, he understood that such a burst of temper, after all anxiety had been removed by so abundant a supper, could only have been caused by the state of her health; and he resisted the temptation of bringing her to her senses by a good beating. Instead of that, he shuddered, pitied her, and sat down comfortably in the chimney-corner without saying another word.

But poor little Vittorino, cheered by the unaccustomed supper, began to sing and jump about in that gloomy den, just like a bird which has seen the sun rise. Only the poor woman felt as if her nerves were being torn to pieces by the noise; and she thought the child, young as he was, ought to have understood that there was cause rather for crying than laughing. Then he began to cry; but that, also, would not do; he was to be quiet and not let himself be heard in any way. The child obeyed with a sigh, and the mother then took him in her arms, soothing, petting, and kissing him. But these caresses of his mother’s, who was sobbing after having beaten him (the blind man was singing to himself the whole time), could not draw a smile from him; tired out and very serious, he fell asleep in her arms, and she laid him down on the ghastly mattress and stretched herself beside him. And after that there was nothing more to be seen or heard in the room....

They were all asleep, even Phœbus, who loved sleep because it gave him back his liberty. By day, when he was awake, there was always a cloud surrounding him, and he fancied that he had to bore his way through it, as a mole bores through the ground, to find the sun he had lost. But that dark path went on and on, and never came to an end; it was only in the darkness of night that he could even see the sun again, when he slept and dreamed that he was no longer blind, but could move about freely as before, with his eyes open and seeing. Then he saw them all again—not his little Vittorino, for the child had been born since his misfortune, and the father had never looked on his bright eyes and pretty features; but his wife, and his parents, and his mates, and sometimes lovely distant landscapes that he had never seen before.... He had never had such beautiful dreams before he became blind....

But that night he did not sleep sound, for a hand shook him roughly as he sat in the dark corner of the hearth, and recalled him to the reality of things—namely, to the belfry tower to ring the bells, according to orders received from the archdeacon, from eleven o’clock to midnight, in order to announce the beginning of Lent, and warn people against breaking in on the fast and vigil.

At the command, then, of Phœbus, still masquerading as the doctor, two beggars, acting as his subordinates, who had already entered the tower and seized the bell-ropes, began bending their backs and rising again to the swing of the bells—a “double” so loud and eloquent in the gloomy silence as to reach even the most distant cabins, where some ancient oaks marked the boundary of the parish. But for a great many the bells tolled in vain. Nay, some masks even went and stood under the archdeacon’s windows, making unseemly noises, howling and whistling with the intention of annoying him. And in some hay-lofts the young men, laughing at the remonstrances of the old and the continued tolling of the bells, kept up the dancing till daybreak, amid the smoke of the pipes and the sawing of the violins. The girls, it is true, were somewhat recalcitrant; but with a few scruples of conscience and a little remorse, they let themselves be whirled away, after a while, willingly enough.

After ringing for an hour, Phœbus, hearing the archdeacon’s maid-servant call him from a window, entered, with his companion, the corridor of that dignitary’s house, and having cautiously knocked at a door, was told to come in. They entered a large room lit by an old-fashioned brass lamp. Facing the door, at a little round table, smoking and sipping punch, after having finished their game at chess, sat the good archdeacon, a jolly man of portly presence, verging upon seventy; Cavalier Vincenzino, the syndic, with bye-laws and civic enactments clearly written on the folds of his brow and the curves of his mouth; and the preaching friar, an elderly and hypocritical Franciscan, with red hair and a round face, who had arrived that very day to preach the Lenten sermons. When Phœbus and his companions entered, the friar hid his modest little pipe in his wide sleeve, and produced instead a snuff-box,[25] from which he immediately offered a pinch to the syndic and the archdeacon, who readily accepted. The archdeacon, seeing Phœbus appear before him in that burlesque costume, and with that crushed and battered chimney-pot hat, threw back the tassel of his black skull-cap, which was dangling close to his left ear, and nearly choked himself with laughter. Modesta, the maid, who made a glorious entry, carrying a large dish of steaming meat-dumplings, hastened to set them down on the other table, which was ready laid in the middle of the room, so that she might scratch her head and laugh, like her master—or even louder and longer. This pleased neither the preaching friar nor the syndic, and they whispered together, looking deeply scandalised.

“_Persicomele!_”[26] exclaimed the archdeacon, “are you going about masked after the stroke of twelve? And what sort of a costume might this be?”

“It is the costume of a doctor of medicine!”

“Dear archdeacon, my dear sir!” said the Franciscan, pointing at Phœbus, “this suit of clothes has belonged to a priest; do you not see the black stockings, the knee-breeches, the waistcoat? Archdeacon, it is not the proper thing to let the clothes of the clergy be seen in a masquerade.”

“_Persicomele!_” exclaimed the archdeacon, looking more closely, as he passed his hand over his knees, as if dusting his breeches. “Who gave you these clothes?”

“The chaplain!”

“Good! very good!” exclaimed the syndic, chuckling with delight, but he immediately resumed the calm, severe, and munificent aspect of the person who has to sign municipal edicts.

“It seems impossible that, at the present day, certain priests should have so little respect for their cloth!” said the Franciscan indignantly. “Fatal effects, my dear sir!...” And he took an enormous pinch of snuff, with both hands.

“You must not believe, reverend father,” replied the syndic, with some heat, “that the chaplain gives the law to our commune; he is a——”

“Sir!” exclaimed the archdeacon.

“But you don’t know——”

“I don’t want to know. The chaplain is a priest, and that’s enough! Find me another who for 260 francs will take the services of the _Misericordia_ the whole year round, who will go ten or twelve miles on foot, in the depth of winter, or in the dog-days, to attend a funeral, and that with seventy years on his back! And then he has all his brother’s family to keep—seven persons! But you were only joking, Cavalier!—so never mind, let it pass.... And as for you, you blind rascal, I must speak to you again about this. You had no business to go masquerading in these clothes, which were given you in charity. To-morrow, I shall tell the chaplain to take them away from you again!”

“What a pity!” thought Doctor Phœbus to himself; “I was going to make the overcoat into a nice jacket to wear only on feast-days!”

“But, to make a short story of it,” resumed the archdeacon after some moments of anxious silence, “what did you come here for—eh?”

“We came to see whether it is time for the _polpette_.”

“The _polpette_ are on the table; sit down, therefore, and eat.”

“Fair and softly,” exclaimed one of the guests a little later, giving Phœbus a tremendous nudge with his elbow.

“Blind man, you’re going too fast!” cried the archdeacon, looking at him.

“May I lose my sight if I have eaten more than two!”

“Two!—you’ve eaten a dozen!”

“The blind man has a good appetite! Well, there’s no harm—his teeth will stand it!” said Modesta, who was seated close by, counting the mouthfuls.

“Well then, Modesta, my dear,” said Phœbus, “when his reverence says, ‘Modesta, give the blind man a piece of bread and some meat, poor fellow!’ why do you give me nothing but little dry crusts and cheese-parings? Do you take me for a mouse, Modesta?”

“Blind man, blind man, you are never satisfied!”

“Bless your reverence!” said Modesta, “it would take a great deal to satisfy him!”

“Nay, ’twould take little enough. I would be quite content if I had the sight of my eyes again.”

“Good luck to you!” exclaimed the syndic at last, after having for some time looked on in admiring silence at the process of mastication and deglutition. “The like of us would be dead in three days if they ate in that fashion!”

“Just try a little abstinence!” said Doctor Phœbus. “Try living all the year round on wild herbs and roots boiled without salt, or roasted in the ashes. That’s my prescription for you, sir!”

“Well, well,” said the syndic, “I would willingly exchange my life for yours. You have no expenses; you pay no taxes—do you think that a small thing? Now, I have to spend the very soul out of my body; a little for the cat and a little for the dog, and what remains for me? At the end of the year—so much received, so much spent, everything paid, and nothing over!”

“I should just like to take you by the neck and hold you down to our life for a month or so, so that you could try it!”

“Is that the way to speak to me?” said the syndic, somewhat offended. “You ought to be more respectful.”

“Oh! you must not think, my dear sir,” said the archdeacon, “that the blind man is really wanting in respect towards the authorities. Not at all! He may be a little quick-tempered now and then, but when he recollects himself he is a perfect lamb!”

“A kind of lamb which——” began the Franciscan.

“What do you expect?” interrupted Phœbus. “I used to be as sweet as sugar; but now I am a little spoilt with doing nothing. Now that I have tried it I find, in truth, that the labour of a porter is better than the idleness of a gentleman. Just set me to work in your factory, sir; let me turn the wheel, and give me thirty centimes a day, and you’ll see how the blind man works!”

“Oh! indeed; you and your blarney!” retorted the syndic. “Look here, I would willingly help you, but I cannot. I shall have to shut up the works soon, to turn off every one, even my cook. Are they making game of us with these taxes? I don’t know how we can go on; I haven’t ten shillings left in the world. It is not my place as syndic to say so, but the fault certainly lies with the Government....”

“Heigho!” said the blind man, “we shall be disappointed indeed, if we are putting our trust in you, Mr. Government!”

“You should put your trust in Providence, young man,” said the preaching friar, “and come and hear my sermons!”

“Indeed and he shall come to the sermons, and be hanged to him!” exclaimed the archdeacon. “I’ll give him a couple of eggs for every sermon; at Easter, so many sermons and so many eggs. But if you miss one sermon, you blind rascal, you shall get nothing at all!”

“Put it in writing, sir!”

“Why, you blind scoundrel, are you afraid of my dying first?”

“You, sir?—why, you’ll live to the age of Noah on the clerical soups that Modesta makes for you! No; it’s I that may die before Easter, and I should like to bequeath that little legacy of eggs to my family!”

“Come, come, Modesta! never mind the blind man; it’s time to clear the table. Don’t sit there keeping the brazier warm.”

“Sakes alive!” exclaimed Modesta, looking into the dish; “there were sixty, and there are only eleven left!”

“I’m very sorry I didn’t eat them too!” replied Phœbus, “but I’ll come to breakfast after the sermon to-morrow and finish them!”

“Yes, come by all means; they’ll just do for you!” said the archdeacon, giving a glance at the dish.

“Are they made of meat or potatoes?” asked the Franciscan, with another great pinch of snuff.

“Of meat, of meat,” said Modesta testily.

“Yes, there’s just enough meat to swear by!” said Phœbus.

“Even though there were but a piece the size of a pin’s head,” said the friar as he took another pinch, “that would be enough! To-morrow, you know, archdeacon, it’s a black vigil.”

“The friar is right! Do you want to go to hell for eating _polpette_ to-morrow! Persicomele! there’ll be no more _polpette_ now till next year,—so good-bye, my fine fellow! Modesta, light the syndic to the door. Don’t you see that he has put on his cloak, and wants to go? Good-night, sir!”

“Good-night, archdeacon!” said the syndic, and then turned to whisper in his ear, “By-the-bye, the chaplain always stands up for all bad characters ... and his niece....”

“Why, whatever has the chaplain done to you? Modesta, light these other people out!”

“Never mind me, I can see in the dark!” replied Phœbus, going towards the door. “Modestina, dear, don’t you bother yourself with the light; you’re using up too much oil; you should be saving with it, Modestina!”

“What are you thinking of, poor blind man?—such a trifle as that!” cried Modesta. “Good gracious! we’re all of us baptised Christians, and a little light costs nothing.”

The blind man, in going out, closed the door with such a tremendous bang that he put out Modesta’s lamp; and returning to his disconsolate hut, wished two or three apoplexies to that meddling vagabond of a friar who had deprived him of those poor clothes and the remains of the supper, with which it was the archdeacon’s annual custom to reward the four poor wretches for their labours in the belfry. Having reached his house, he told his wife the good tidings of the eggs at Easter, and fell asleep in the time it takes to tell it. But that night he saw in his dreams neither flowers, nor cities, nor seas bright in the sunshine. He dreamed instead that he was the stout director of the manganese mines, and that he was sitting in a nicely-warmed room at a well-spread table, and just tasting the full flavour of a fat roast fowl. He was just at work on one of the legs when his wife began to turn him over and call him to get up. He struggled with his hands, feeling the director of the mines gradually disappear, and a moment later he became aware that he was only blind Phœbus. Then he hit himself a great thump on the head, and started up because he heard the bells ringing for sermon. When he had got into church he sat down close to the sacristy door, so that the archdeacon might be sure to see him. The preacher seemed to be flinging squalls of rain and wind, and all the devils of hell down from the pulpit on all the crowded, uncovered heads. Phœbus paid no attention to him. When he came out, certain good-for-nothing youngsters, loafing outside, shouted after him—

“Phœbus! Phœbus! what has the preacher been saying?”

“I don’t know!” he replied. “I was thinking of the eggs!”

“By Bacchus! the archdeacon is quite right in thinking him a little cracked! But I do believe that he would be a true believer if he saw the Divine Master’s teachings practised a little better, and also a little to his advantage!”

This was what the chaplain said to himself as he came out from the service, with displeasure still written on his face, and also a certain timid disgust, whether provoked by living men or by the dead, whom he was constantly obliged to see, I do not know.

_Mario Pratesi._

_OUR SCHOOL AND SCHOOLMISTRESS._

We used to go to school, Sofia and I, with a certain Signora Romola. They were very lavish with Greek and Roman names in our village in those days. Teofilo, Pompeo, Lucrezia, Collatino, Quintilia, were appellations frequently bestowed in baptism. Signora Romola was a strongly-built woman, plump and ruddy of face, and with a soft voice, too soft indeed for the air of severity which she wished to assume. It was her aim to strike awe into us with a glance. In fact we scarcely dared to breathe in her presence, by reason of that terrible glance which slowly swept the class, and she always used to say that it was quite sufficient. “I make them tremble with a glance,” she often told people; and as soon as she made her majestic entrance into school there was immediate silence, a fact of which she was very proud. They used to say she had been a beauty in her youth; I would not be persuaded of the truth of this statement. Her husband was Signor Capponio the chemist, who formed a complete contrast to her. He was a long, thin, thread-paper of a man, with a pair of great spectacles on his big nose, and sharp chin and cheek-bones which seemed to make a triangle in his honest face. He always wore a buffalo-skin cap, with a peak curved like a bird’s beak. I always imagined that he must have come into the world in that cap; I never saw him without it. He could play the flute, and often performed a tune for us boys during our play-hour, stamping vivaciously with one foot, and accompanying with his head, no less vivaciously, the motion of his fingers on the keys. We stood around him with our noses in the air, as though we had been gazing up at the top of a church tower, and held out our arms trying to seize the instrument, whose construction we were eager to examine; but, refusing to let go, he played on as vigorously as before—or even more so—and at last made his escape, saying, “You’ll spoil it! you’ll spoil it!” He had the name of a learned man; and he must, by what I have heard, have understood something of botany; but I think his reputation was really founded on certain sentences from Hippocrates and Galen, in Latin, written up in gilt letters over the shelves in his ancient shop. The gilding of the letters had turned black by reason of the flies which swarmed there, on which, in the summer, Capponio used to wage war—standing in the middle of his shop—by means of a stick with long strips of paper attached to it. I do not remember one of his many proverbs. He must have had a large stock of them, for it was often said, “As Capponio says, with his proverb! Eh!—honest man—_he_ knows a lot about the world!” I used to think that the proverb was a person very much like Capponio himself—buffalo-skin cap and all—but still taller and more serious—appearing now here, now there—always unexpected, and at other times invisible.