The Village Commune........................................................................................................................................1

Ouida ........................................................................................................................................................1

Vol. 1.......................................................................................................................................................2

CHAPTER I. ............................................................................................................................................2

CHAPTER II. .........................................................................................................................................10

CHAPTER III........................................................................................................................................15

CHAPTER IV........................................................................................................................................31

CHAPTER V.........................................................................................................................................34

CHAPTER VI........................................................................................................................................37

CHAPTER VII. ......................................................................................................................................43

CHAPTER VIII.....................................................................................................................................47

CHAPTER IX........................................................................................................................................49

CHAPTER X.........................................................................................................................................53

CHAPTER XI........................................................................................................................................57

CHAPTER XII. ......................................................................................................................................65

CHAPTER XIII.....................................................................................................................................68

CHAPTER XIV.....................................................................................................................................70

CHAPTER XV......................................................................................................................................74

VOL. II. ...............................................................................................................................................................80

CHAPTER XVI.....................................................................................................................................80

CHAPTER XVII. ...................................................................................................................................83

CHAPTER XVIII. ..................................................................................................................................86

CHAPTER XIX.....................................................................................................................................86

CHAPTER XX......................................................................................................................................87

CHAPTER XXI.....................................................................................................................................93

CHAPTER XXII. ...................................................................................................................................96

CHAPTER XXIII. ..................................................................................................................................99

CHAPTER XXIV................................................................................................................................102

CHAPTER XXV. .................................................................................................................................106

CHAPTER XXVI................................................................................................................................107

CHAPTER XXVII. ..............................................................................................................................114

CHAPTER XXVIII. .............................................................................................................................116

CHAPTER XXIX................................................................................................................................124

CHAPTER XXX. .................................................................................................................................126

CHAPTER XXXI................................................................................................................................128

CHAPTER XXXII. ..............................................................................................................................135

CHAPTER XXXIII. .............................................................................................................................140

CHAPTER XXXIV.............................................................................................................................143

CHAPTER XXXV. ..............................................................................................................................149

CHAPTER XXXVI.............................................................................................................................153

CHAPTER XXXVII............................................................................................................................161

APPENDIX. .........................................................................................................................................162

SANTA ROSALIA in Selva is a village anywhere you will betwixt the Adrian and the Tyrrhene seas, betwixt

the Dolomites and the Abruzzi. It is not necessary to indicate its geographical position more clearly; it is

sufficient to say that it is a little Italian borgo, like many another, lying under the sweet blue skies of this

beloved and lovely land that has been mother to Theocritus and Tasso. A village white as a seashore stone;

lying along a river green as the Adige; with low mountains in sight across a green tableland of vine and

chestnut, olive and corn; with some tall poplars by the water, and a church with a red brick belltower, and

the bell swinging behind its wooden cage. Across the fields and along the side of the hills are scores of other

villages; narrow roads run between them all in a network hidden under vine leaves; and some hundreds of

houseroofs make up together what is called the Commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda. Of this commune the

chief place, because the largest village, is Santa Rosalia. Santa Rosalia in Selva; so called because thus

named in days when the woods had covered it up as closely as a blackbird's nest is covered with the long

leaves that it builds in; Santa Rosalia in Selva, a simple, honest, fresh, and most rural place, with sunburnt

women plaiting straw upon its doorsteps, and little naked children tumbling about like Loves escaped from

the panels of Correggio; with the daffodils and the odorous narcissus growing in springtime everywhere

among the grass and corn, and in the autumn the oxcarts going with the tubs of gathered grapes slowly

down its single street: a street without a pavingstone, and without a shop except the butcher's stall and the

grocer's, and one little old dim penthouselike place where in the gloom an old woman sells cakes and toys

The bright green country lies close about Santa Rosalia, and indeed is one with it, and in summer so overlaps

it, and roofs it in, with vinefoliage and clouds of silvery olive leaf that nothing is to be seen of it except the

belltower of its chief church, San Giuseppe, with a statue of the saint upon its roof pointing heavenward.

Things had always come and gone easily in Santa Rosalia in the old days, and even in the new. With

revolutions and the like it had had nothing to do. It never talked politics. When men who had remembered

wine ten centimes a flask found it rise to a hundred they scratched their heads and were puzzled; being told it

was the cost of liberty, they took the explanation simply as a matter of fact, and thought liberty was a name

When the church was whitewashed, and the trattoria was turned into the Caff� Vittorio Emanuele, and the

conscription placards were pasted on the bridge, and the Imperial taxes established themselves in a

brandnew stuccoplastered public office next the butcher's, with a shield upon it, bearing a white cross on a

red ground, Santa Rosalia did not take much notice: everything grew dear indeed, but some said it was the

gas away in the city did it, and some said it was the railway, and some said it was the king, and some said it

was all the fault of liquid manure; but still nobody troubled much about anything, and everybody continued to

go to mass, and do his best to be happy, untilthe events took place that I propose to record.

The Commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda, whose centre is the village of Santa Rosalia, is, like all Italian

communes, supposed to enjoy an independence that is practically a legislative autonomy. So long as it

contributes its quota to the Imperial taxes, the Imperial Government is supposed to have nothing to do with it,

and it is considered to be as free as air to govern itself; so everybody will tell you; and so inviolate is its

freedom that even the Prefect of its province dare not infringe upon itor says so when he wants to get out

Anybody who pays five francs' worth of taxes has a communal vote in this free government, and helps to

elect a body of thirty persons, who in turn elect a council of seven persons, who in turn elect a single person

called a syndic, or, as you would call him in English, a mayor. This distilling and condensing process sounds

quite admirable in theory. Whoever has the patience to read the pages of this book will see how this system

Now in Vezzaja and Ghiralda the thirty persons do nothing but elect the seven persons, the seven do nothing

but elect the one person, and the one person does nothing but elect his secretary; and the secretary, with two

assistants dignified respectively by the titles of Chancellor and Conciliator, does everything in the way of

worry to the public that the ingenuity of the official mind can conceive. The secretary's duties ought to be

simply those of a secretary anywhere, but by a clever individual can be brought to mean almost anything you

please in the shape of local tyranny and extortion; the chancellor (cancelliere) has the task of executing every

sort of unpleasantness against the public in general, and sends out by his fidus Achates, the Usher, all kinds

of summons and warrants at his will and discretion; as for the conciliator (giudice conciliatore), his office, as

his name indicates, is supposed to consist in conciliation of all local feuds, disputes, and debts, but as he is

generally chiefly remarkable for an absolute ignorance of law and human nature, and a general tendency to

accumulate fees anywhere and anyhow, he is not usually of the use intended, and rather is famous for doing

what a homely phrase calls setting everybody together by the ears. It being understood that all these gentry

are men who, in any other country would be butchers, or bakers, or candlestick makers, it is readily to be

understood likewise that they are not an absolutely unmixed boon to the community over which they reign; at

their very best they have been bookkeepers or scriveners, or bankrupt petty tradesmen who have some

interest with the prefect of the province or the syndic of the commune, and as they usually are, all three alike,

little Gesslers in temperament and almost uncontrolled in power, it is easy to imagine that their yoke is by no

means light upon the necks of their neighbours and subjects, and that they dance the devil's dance,

humorously, over its finances and its fortunes. Power is sweet, and when you are a little clerk you love its

sweetness quite as much as if you were an emperor, and may be you love it a good deal more.

Tyranny is a very safe amusement in this liberated country. Italian law is based on that blessing to mankind,

the Code Napol�on, and the Code Napol�on is perhaps the most ingenious mechanism for human torture that

the human mind has ever constructed. In the cities its use for torment is not quite so easy, because where

there are crowds there is always the fear of a riot, and besides there are horrid things called newspapers, and

citizens wicked and daring enough to write in them. But always in the country, the embellished and filtered

Code Napol�on can work like a steam plough; there is nobody to appeal, and nobody to appeal to; the people

are timid and perplexed; they areas defenceless as the sheep in the hand of the shearer; they are frightened at

the sight of the printed papers, and the carabinier's sword; there is nobody to tell them that they have any

rights, and besides, rights are very expensive luxuries anywhere, and cost as much to take care of as a

Now and then the people find out their rights, and light a barrel of petroleum with them, and are blamed: it is

foolish, no doubt, and it is terrible, but the real blame lies with their masters, who leave them no other light

than the petroleum glare. That they do not use their petroleum for anything except their household lamps is

due to the patience and the docility of the people; it is not due to the embellished and filtered version of the

Santa Rosalia is a rambling place, straggling along one side of the green impetuous river; of course it

possesses what it calls a piazza, and makes a sort of pretence at being a town; but the grass grows long in its

stones all over the place, and its folks are as rustic as villagers can be. There were never very many people in

the lowly borgo, but the few there were, at the time of which I write, dwelt in good harmony together.

There was Luigi Canterelli (always called Gigi) who dealt in all kinds of useful things from hammers to pins,

from drugs to broad beans; there was Ferdinando Gambacorta (known only as Nando), who was plumber and

cartwright and carpenter all in one; there was Leopoldo Franceschi (Poldo), who was locksmith, blacksmith,

whitesmith, and farrier; there was Raffaelle Dando (Faello) who was the big butcher, and there was

Alessandro Montauto (Sandro) who was the little one; there was Vincenzio Torriggiani (Cencio) who was the

tailor of the community and might be seen sitting all day long crosslegged and hard at work on his threshold

and for ever ready for a gossip; there was Filippo Rasselluccio (Lippo) who was the baker and also trafficked

in grain and seeds; there was Guiseppe Lante (Beppo) who had a trattoria and wine shop, and would roast

you a dozen thrushes or fry you a dozen artichokes against all the cooks in Christendom. There was Leonardo

Mariani (Nardo) who kept a paint and oil and brush shop, and also kept the postoffice after his own manner,

which was to spread the letters out upon his counter and let them lie there till somebody should come in who

would be going the way to which they were addressed, and would consent to take them thither. There was the

apothecary, of course, il dottore Guarino Squillace, who was paid by the commune about 20l. a year to look

after its bodies; and there was Dom Lelio, the Vicar of San Guiseppe, who was paid about twenty shillings a

month by the State to look after its souls; and there was the miller, Demetrio Pastorini, who dwelt on the

river, and had handsome sons and daughters to the number of seven, and there were a great many other very

poor people, nondescripts, getting their bread anyhow; and outside the village there were of course all the

small gentry and many contadini and fattori who dashed through the place on fiery horses or in jingling

Santa Rosalia had been made into the centre of a new commune some decades ago; but though wine had

become ten times the old price, and taxes had become fifty times heavier, Santa Rosalia had not felt its new

shoe pinch very terribly, for its syndic had been a very just and excellent person (as does sometimes actually

happen), a certain Marchese Palmarola, as simple as Cincinnatus and as gentle as S. Frances. But unhappily

for Santa Rosalia, Palmarola had died of tertian fever one hot summer time, and another and different person

had been elected in his place, the Cavaliere Anselmo Durellazzo. The Marchese had seen to everything

himself; had never signed a paper or a form without reading it, and enquiring into the case that required it;

had let many foolish and cruel regulations be dead letters, and had never been known to be unjust to either

rich or poor. Most people are unjust to one or the other. But then the Marchese had been a Catholic and a

gentleman, and so had been silly enough to believe in such an antiquated thing as moral responsibility.

The Cavaliere Durellazzo had not these scruples; he had been a wax candle manufacturer on a large scale in a

city, and though the Church had helped to make his fortune, he was much given to laughing at it; with his

millions he had purchased estates in the commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda, and the Giunta thought there was

nobody better for a syndic; he thought so too. He was a fat, easygoing, sleepy man, and as soon as he came

into office signed some hundreds of blank forms to save himself all trouble; he cared for nothing except

playing dominoes and begin bowed to by his peasantry. As he had passed all his life in bowing himself, it

The commune under the Cavaliere Durellazzo soon got into disorder; complaints were made to the thirty, and

the thirty made them to the seven, and the seven made them to the one. The Cavaliere Durellazzo looked

around him, and bethought him of a remedy which should involve no trouble to himself. He summoned

Messer Gaspardo Nellemane, who was then employed in the Municipality of the nearest city and soon into

the sunlight of Santa Rosalia, there came a tall, trim, erect figure, clad in townmade clothes, who was

Messer Gaspardo Nellemane was a man of some sevenandtwenty years; he was well made, and had a dark

and rather handsome face, in which the Hebrew origin attri buted to him displayed itself somewhat strongly.

He was quite a grand personage in Santa Rosalia; he dressed in city fashion, and he had a great many rings, if

he did not always wash his hands, and the way in which he smoked his cigar, wore his hat, and kicked a dog

Messer Nellemane had begun life in a little dusky den of pots and pans, and odds and ends of iron and brass

that we call chincaglierie, and there had tumbled about, a dusty child, amongst the rust and rubbish, till,

seeing he was sharp little boy, his old father sent him to school, and from school he went to a notary's office

as clerk, and from there had mounted up into the Civil Service of Italy, until here he was, a great man, in

Santa Rosalia, with twice as much as the apothecary, and four times as much as the vicar, as official salary,

and bed and board beside, not to mention any such windfalls as might drop to him in the due course of a just

Messer Gaspardo Nellemane lived in two little rooms, very bare of furniture, and was waited on by the man

that swept out the Communal Palace, and ate white beans fried in oil, and salt fish, and had a bit of kid on

highdays and holydays, just like any other unit of the modest public. But Messer Gaspardo, though he

smoked twocentime cigars and drank a thin wine at a few pence a flask, was an ambitious man; he saw no

reason why he should not become a deputy, and even a minister before he died, and indeed there was no

reason whatever. He was only a clerk at fifty pounds a year; but he had a soul above all scruples, and a heart

In station he was only a humble though energetic official, carrying out the supreme will of the Guinta, just as

young Bonaparte seemed a mere general carrying out the will of the Republic. But genius has its supremacy

wherever it may dwell, and Messer Nellemane in real truth moved the Guinta as though they were automatic

figures and he their central spring. The Guinta gathered round a council table every week, and believed they

did business; but, in point of fact, they only looked through the spectacles that Messer Nellemane provided.

There stood the Palazzo Communale in the midst of sunny Santa Rosalia, a square bald ugly building, dirty

and naked and always dustylooking, with its plaster crack ing, and its paint peeling, and Santa Rosalia was

told that this ugly building was their temple of liberty and equity; liberty public and private, equity that was

no respecter of persons, but impartial and incorruptible; and inside the Palazzo Communale Messer

Nellemane had it all his own way, and thence did rule the commune 'with suavity and moderation' as he

himself would say, when he would speak of his administration, as he took a bibita at evening in the doorway

of the little humble caff� which was proud to house so great a man; a caff� where the Secretary and the

Conciliator and the Chancellor sat and played cards, and drank little strong essences together, most nights, in

that perfect accord which characterized their public and private career. They never quarrelled: not they: one

held the sheep, another sheared it, and a third gathered the wool; if they had once quarrelled they might have

Messer Gaspardo Nellemane sometimes thought that he could very well have held and sheared and gathered,

all by himself, for he was clever, and his friends, the Conciliator and the Chancellor, were not distinguished

The Conciliator was a fat bald man, who in remote days had been a priest, a cook, a taverner, a

cheesemonger, and found all trades fail; he like his glass and was generally half asleep: the Chancellor had

been an apothecary's prentice once upon a time, and had got into trouble for mistaking the dog Latin on his

pots and bottles, and giving the wrong drugs; he was small and thin and very timid, and had but one passion,

Messer Gaspardo Nellemane was of a different mould to his colleagues, whom he called so affectionately his

dear Tonino and his beloved Maso; his was a master mind, and his own master the Syndic, the most

worshipful Signor Cavaliere Durellazzo, never dared say a word of dispute or reproof to him, but, when he

drove into Santa Rosalia once a week or once a month, nodded and blinked, and assented to everything, and

muttered 'Va bene, va benissimo' to all the acts and deeds, the elaborate judgements and obsequious

explanations of his secretary. So Messer Gaspardo Nellemane ruled and reigned in Santa Rosalia in Selva, as

a number of precisely similar people so rule and reign still, all over the land, in this year of grace 1880.

The public creates the bureaucracy and is eaten up by it; it is the old story of Saturn and his sons. Messer

Gaspardo was a very insignificant atom of the European bureaucracy, it is true; but he was big enough to

All the commune detested him, yet all the commune cringed to him. The commune had appointed the thirty,

and the thirty had appointed the seven, and the seven had appointed the Syndic, Cavaliere Durellazzo, and

Cavaliere Durellazzo had appointed Messer Gaspardo; and when once this clever rider was upon the patient

mule's back, nobody in all Vezzaja and Ghiralda was clever enough to get him off again.

Government, according to Messer Nellemane, and many greater public men have thought the same before

him, was a delicate and elaborate machinery for getting everything out of the public that could be got; the

public was a kid to be skinned, a grape to be squeezed, a sheep to be shorn; the public was to be managed,

cajoled, bullied, put in the press, made wine of in a word; wine for the drinking of Messer Nellemane. Messer

He was only a clerk indeed, at a slender salary, and ate his fried tomatoes publicly in the little back room of

the caff�; but he had the soul of a statesman. When a donkey kicks, beat it; when it dies, skin it; so only will

it profit you; that was his opinion, and the public was the donkey of Messer Nellemane.

Messer Nellemane had blessed SantaRosalia for about three years and a half when the first of the incidents

that I am about to narrate took place, and changed the fates of some very poor people; the sort of people that

the world will sometimes deign to read about if Georges Sand or George Eliot write of them, but who,

Messer Nellemane had been dining at three o'clock in the balmy afternoon of a lovely spring day, and was

strolling along the left bank of the Rosa river: the bank where the houses were not.

Messer Nellemane this day was in a complacent frame of mind; he had been inspecting the roads with his

friend Pierino Zaffi, who was the engineer of the commune; an engineer who knew too little even to be

employed on a railway. Happily for him, however, he had gone to school with Messer Nellemane, and had in

his boyish days lent Messer Nellemane little sums of money; so, when an engineer was wanted for the

commune on the old one dying, Messer Nellemane had said, 'There is Pierino Zaffi, a man with capabilities

to bore the Gran Sasso, and drain the Maggiore. It might be well if we could secure his services;' and the

Syndic had said, 'Va, bene, va benissimo.' So Pierino Zaffi had also been put upon the civil list of Vezzaja

There was a very heavy tax for roads in the commune; everybody who paid fiftyfrancsworth of rent had to

Now the roads were very bad in Vezzaja and Ghiralda, and Pierino Zaffi was there to make them better, and

the big lump sum taken from the public for that purpose was there too. But for Pierino Zaffi to mend the

roads, and for the money to be spent on them, would have been much too simple to be statesmanlike; they

went quite another way to work, did these two schoolfriends. They put up the roads to auction; here are the

roads to be mended; the roads will go to the lowest bidder; how much for the roads? Then a miller stepped

forward and said he would take them in hand for 400 francs per annum; he was scouted. Then a stonemason

said he would do them for 350; he too, was put aside contemptuously. Then a contractor from the city said he

was willing to offer 200; and he was dallied with coyingly because he was a contractor; and after much

higgling, bidding, screaming, and disputing, the stonemason made final offer of 140 francs per annum for the

The stonemason's views as to the mending of roads were simple: he had all the flint that was chipped off, and

all the rubbish that was shot, in his yard emptied at different places on the highways, and when he happened

Goers to and fro upon the roads cursed the state of them; horses and mules fell into their holes, and wheels

jolted to pieces over their ruts. The stonemason stolidly replied that if he did not keep the roads well the

engineer could say he did not, and see to it. Then the engineer was summoned, and made an inspection, and

breakfasted with the stonemason, and drank Vino Santo and was made comfortable in every way, and sent in

a report which affirmed that it was impossible that the roads could be better. 'There!' said the stonemason, and

entrenched himself safely behind the report, while Messer Nelle mane read the report to the Guinta, and the

Syndic said, 'Va bene, va benissimo.' And as for the roads, Messer Nellemane had looked at the green corn in

the fields, and Messer Pierino had looked at the clouds in the sky, and both had declared themselves as to the

state of the roads most satisfied, most gratified, nay, actually surprised with the excellence of them. Mules

only broke their legs because they were obstinate, and wheels only came off because they were rotten; that

was the fault of the mules and the wheels, clearly: the state of the roads was excellent.

This is how roads are managed in Vezzaja and Ghiralda. Municipal government is a blessing, and the greatest

Meanwhile, where did the rest of the public taxes for the roadkeeping go, when the stonemason's hundred and

forty francs were deducted? This was a question nobody in Vezzaja and Ghiralda ever thought of asking. The

patience of the taxpaying public all the world over is wonderful. It is probable that this donkeylike quality is

what makes statesmen also all the world over, and especially chancellors of exchequers, so contemptuous of

Messer Nellemane had been with Messer Pierino on one of these tours of inspection and had come back in a

good humour; the Vino Santo had been admirable, and the thrushes and the harewithherbs had been done

to a turn. In a genial frame of mind, therefore, Messer Gaspardo strolled homeward by that pretty river, the

Rosa, which is a bright stream, green as a lizard's back, rough and roaring in winter times of flood, clear and

The Rosa is an historic river, though a narrow one; who will may read in ancient chronicles of holy

pilgrimages made along its banks, and unholy war waged upon its shores, of Guelf and Ghibelline fording its

But of these old tales Messer Nellemane thought not; for the past he had a boundless scorn; how stupid were

those barons and troopers of middle ages who could only roast a Jew's feet, or use the thumbscrew to an

usurer! how superior for the same ends were taxes, tribunals, and the law! Messer Gaspardo Nellemane was,

like many other modern philosophers, quite convinced there had never been any times so good as the present.

He sauntered along, his Cavour cigar in his mouth; the sun was going towards the west, the Lombardy

poplars fringing the riverbanks shook in a slight breeze; elsewhere it was dusty and unpleasant, but by the

Suddenly the eyes of Messer Nellemane lighted ona contravention. His eye brightened at the sight as a

warhorse's at the panoply of troops. What he saw was an old man cutting osiers on the margin of the now

shallow Rosa; near him a girl was beating linen in the water, and a youth a little way off was sifting the river

The old man, Filippo Mazzetti, always called Pippo, was a basketmaker and mender of rush chairs, and

weaver of the wickerwork of wine and oil flasks. He was certainly very poor as the great world counts

poverty, but he was as happy for all that as a cricket in the corn. He had a little house of his own, his very

own, as the children say, that hung over a bend in the water, and he always managed to have a pound or two

of meat on Sundays, and his canes and osiers could be had merely for the gathering.

The maiden beside him was the daughter of his dead son; she was the pride of his soul and the apple of his

eye. She was called Viola, for that name of Shakespeare's shy, bold, sweet heroine is one common amongst

the country people here, and she was like the Sibilla Persica * as a human face can be like an immortal

thought. She had a very noble and pensive face, and when she went to cut osiers and willows with her father,

and bore the green bundle of the reeds, or a red sheaf of maple wands, ___________________ Of Guercino.

Page 34 upon her head, she was as full of grace and unconscious grandeur as though she had been a daughter

She could not read a line, and her feet were usually bare, and she was hard at work from sunrise to sunset; but

she had the old Heralike beauty, the antique sculptural calm. Her grandfather had kept her strictly, and she

had never stirred out without him; a little shrivelled old man, very small and very sunburnt, who looked

beside her like a withered bough beside an amaryllis. She was devoted to him, and he to her, and here in

Santa Rosalia their innocent lives had passed quite peaceably and painlessly until this spring day, as he went

by the river, Messer Nellemane by ill fortune saw her washing linen there, Pippo cutting reeds the while, and

the miller's eldest son, Carmelo Pastorini, kneedeep in the water, shovelling up and shifting shingle.

Messer Gaspardo Nellemane stopped, espying, as I have said, that thing whose sight was beatitude and yet

exasperation to hima contravention. He had made a code of little bylaws, all brandnew and of his own

invention; he thought administration should be persecution; if it did not perpetually assert itself who would

respect it? He had made everything punishable that could be possibly distorted into requiring punishment.

Every commune has the right to make its own bylaws and Messer Gaspardo had framed about three hundred

and ninety and the Giunt� sleepily and indifferently had assented to them, and the worshipful Syndic,

Cavaliere Durellazzo, had looked them over and said, 'Va bene, va benissimo,' and so in Santa Rosalia all the

secretary's regulations had been adopted and become law. Quite recently he had incorporated into these

regulations the law that nobody must cut canes or reeds in the Rosa without permission of, and payment to,

the commune. L'�tat c'est moi, and its pocket is mine too, was always in the thoughts of Messer Nellemane.

So he went down to the edge of the stream, and said, quite affectionately to old Pippo, because the maiden

was so handsome, 'My dear friend, what you are doing there is against the law unless indeed you have paid

Old Pippo, who was rather deaf and a little surlytempered, grunted, and went on cutting. Messer Nellemane

'My friend, do you hear? It is ex pressly forbidden by the regulations of the municipal police to do what you

are doing. There is a fine for the first offence and a very heavy penalty if it be repeated'

'Four hundred years and more my fathers cut reeds in the Rosa,' said Pippo, looking up at last and sticking his

'We do not accept degraded precedents as any justification for infraction of the laws of the commune,' said

Messer Gaspardo, who loved very long words, for they proved that he was an educated man and did not

'Eh?' said Pippo, who was easily frightened and yet timidly disposed to stand up for a right that was like an

heirloom, only the long words worried and puzzled him so that he thought he must have done murder, or

sinned against the Holy Ghost, without knowing it. 'Scusi tanto, Signore,' he said in his confusion. 'But

everybody gathers the reeds; my father and grandfatherand what shall I do for my baskets?'

'Petition for a permit, and if it be accorded you, pay for it,' said Messer Nellemane, sharply. 'If you cut them

Pippo scratched his head in bewilderment. Young Carmelo, kneedeep in the water washing his shingle,

looked at Viola washing her father's shirt and saw she was trembling and staring with alarmed distended eyes

'It is an old right,' said Carmelo, boldly shouting to the clerk of the commune. 'It is a right of the people, like

'The people have no rights when the majesty of the law abrogates and abolishes them,' replied Messer

Nellemane with dignity, which is perhaps the truest word he ever spoke, and wrote in the notebook which

he always carried: 'Carmelo of the Casata Pastorini appears to be of a contumacious and disputative

character; mem: to be watched.' He was about to utter words more severe, when he chanced to look down and

see the beauty of Viola's upraised face. Messer Gaspardo Nellemane was human in all his greatness; he was

dazzled for a moment, and weakened by the lustre of her humid and frightened eyes: he knew that she was

'You are warned, Mazzetti, and warned by me,' he said, with a charitable condescen sion in his tone. 'As you

were in ignorance of the municipal regulations, I will not report you this time, but beware of another

infringement on the law: see Article 6 of Rule XIV. of the Communal Code of Vezzaja and Ghiralda. Buon'

'May I carry them in, think you?' said old Pippo in doubt and fear, fondly regarding his cut rushes.

'I would not care for him and his laws,' said young Carmelo, plunging his arms down into the shingle with a

contemptuous laugh on his bright fresh face. 'He was made yesterday, and the river was here before any of us,

'That is all very well, Carmelo,' said Viola, timidly. 'But that gentleman has all his own way, and he has three

guards at his beck and call, and with a few fines they ruin you: look at poor Nanni.'

Giovanni, the cobbler, who had sat at his stall in the open air, as his father had done before him all his life,

had been smitten hip and thigh by Article 20 of the new regulations that had come in with the clerkship of

Messer Nellemane which forbade anybody to sit outside on the pavement and encumber it. As old Giovanni

was an obstinate and obtuse old man, and persisted in believing the stones before his door were his own, and

persisted also in cumbering them very much with his board and his chair and his tools, the commune had

summoned him over and over again, and finally added up his fines for contumacy and contravention to such a

big total that Nanni, who made about a franc a day and lived on it, could no more pay the sum than he could

So that the usher of the commune visited him and finally sold up his poor pots and pans and sticks of

furniture, and the foolish old fellow was so hurt by this that he smoked himself to death with his last pinch of

charcoal, and was found stiff and stark on his bare floor, for of bed and bedding they had left him naught.

Nanni had been a merry kindly old soul, and his death had been a shock to the people of his village, for he

'I do remember Nanni,' said the young man, with a dark frown upon his face. 'These newfangled laws killed

him; and as for the "gentleman," as you call him, if anyone thrashed him they would do a good work.'

'Oh hush!'said Viola, looking affrighted after the figure of Messer Gaspardo as it passed along the opposite

'Had I best carry them in or leave them?' said Pippo in the same perplexity, looking wistfully up from his

The miller's son let fall his shingles back into the water, and with a stride or two through the clear stream

reached the bundles, hoisted them on his shoulders and went away with them to Pippo's house, a score of

roods' distance down the river. Messer Gaspardo, who had glanced back, saw the action; he noted it in his

The river was all golden and green in the late afternoon; here and there was the red flame of a knot of tulips; a

lovely silence and radiance were over all the scene as the sun sunk to its setting. Messer Gaspardo went on

down the bank of the Rosa and looked very dark and very grim against the shining light of the evening skies.

Viola gazed after him and felt afraid, terribly afraid; she wished he had not seen Carmelo Pastorini take the

osiers on his back. The young man indeed was indifferent; he was very young and bright and brave; he had

drawn a lucky number and so been free with only forty days in the army, and able to stay at home with his

father at the little watermill on the Rosa; he feared nothing. But Pippo and Viola feared everything, yet knew

not what they feared: it is a ghostly burden of dread, that which the honest poor carry with them all through

their toiling hungry days, the vague oppressive dread of this law which is always acting the spy on them,

The poor can understand criminal law and its justice and its necessity easily enough and respect its severities;

but they cannot understand the petty tyrannies of civil law, and it wears their lives out, and breaks their

spirits. When it does not break their spirits, it curdles their blood and they become socialists, nihilists,

internationalists, anything that will promise them riddance of their spectre and give them vengeance.

We in Italy are all of us afraid of socialism, we who have anything to lose; and yet we let the syndics with

their secretaries, conciliators, and chancellors sow it broadcast in dragon's teeth of petty injustices, and petty

cruelties, that soon or late will spring up armed men, hydraheaded and torch in hand!

MEANWHILE, Messer Gaspardo went homeward to his rooms in the Municipio and sent for Bindo. Bindo

Terri was one of the rural guards that had been put on the roll of the civic power of Vezzaja and Ghiralda to

see to the due enforcement and carrying out of the three hundred and ninetysix new rules, with their various

articles of which the Giunta was the putative, but Messer Nellemane was the actual, father. Bindo was a great

scamp who was now seduously bent on proving the wisdom of the adage, set a thief to catch a thief; he had

been a blackguard all his youth; but as he loafed about in Santa Rosalia, snaring birds and running errands,

Messer Nellemane, with the shrewd eye that was so useful to him, had discerned in this loafer the making of

an officer of the State; and so strongly recommended Bindo to his master, Durellazzo, that the Syndic had

said, 'Va bene, va benissimo,' when it was proposed to clothe vagabond Bindo in hodden grey, with a belt and

a short sword, and a feather in his hat, and make a rural guard of him in the interests of the commune; the zeal

of Bindo being stimulated to boiling point by the fact that he was promised half of every fine that he could

Bindo, who more than once in years before his promotion had had a drubbing from the Pastorini for stealing

Bindo shook his head sorrowfully; the Pastorini, father and sons, were quiet, Godfearing, sturdy, honest

fellows; just the people to vex and disappoint beyond measure a guardian of morals and of manners, who was

'Alto, signore! There is nobody else to grind anything for five miles down the river.'

'You may go, my dear Bindo,' said his superior, who liked to be called illustrissimo. 'But keep your eye upon

Carmelo Pastorini, for he seems to me a sullen unsympathetic rebellious young man, and in these days of

Bindo pulled his curly forelock respectfully and withdrew, leaving behind him a list of the day's

contraventions of Messer Nellemane's code, which comprised and forebade nearly every action that a man, or

a child, or a dog, or a horse, or an ass, or a goat, or a cow or a duck, or a hen, could be likely to perform upon

a public highway; and since it treated as high treason nearly every primitive pleasure and habit and custom

that this rustic world had ever been wont to indulge in, it was not very difficult for a vigilant officer like

Bindo, always walking about with his eyes and ears wide open, to furnish his employer with a list of

Bindo Terri preferred the ways of virtue to the ways of vagabondage; instead of being put in prison he put in

other people, which combined the charm of variety with the fascination of power. It was a more lucrative

path too; if people did not wish their lives molested, their habits interfered with, and their dogs poisoned, they

slipped some francs at intervals into Bindo's hand; and those butchers, bakers, and cattle dealers, and

cornfactors who wanted to cheat the State of its revenues, and not pay fines on their sales, became a very

considerable source of income to him, for he knew admirably when, and (for a consideration} how, to shut

When you have not quite 20l, a year as your official income, it is understood that you must supply the

vacuum left somehow. When the commune paid Bindo five hundred francs a year for his invaluable services,

and gave him half the fines, the Guinta said virtually to him, 'Rob, oppress, be bribed, get your bread out of

the public;' and he did get, not only his bread, but his wine, and his cigars and his sweethearts.

Very naturally he took into his especial hatred all honest folks, and folks careful to pay the taxes and obey the

As Messer Gaspardo Nellemane did not make his code to render people virtuous or comfortable by its

regulations, but to fill the municipal moneybox by its infractions, so his myrmidon, the wily Bindo, did not

walk about with his eyes open in hopes of seeing the law observed, but in hopes of seeing it broken. The big

butcher on the piazza carried his dead bullocks away to the distant city without paying a farthing duty upon

them, because he was wise enough to have a complete understanding with Bindo; whereas the little butcher

by the turn of the river never would have any such understanding, persisting in saying stupidly that Bindo, in

his unregenerate and unofficial days, had stolen tripe and pork chops off his stall a hundred times; whereby

naturally his fines and his payments for every head of cattle, swine, or kids, fell heavily upon him.

What will you? Corruption is the natural law of all official life, all the world over, and why should Bindo be a

'Via!' said Bindo, with his tongue in his cheek and his feathered hat on one side, whenever anybody hinted to

him that his hands were not so clean as was desirable in a guardian of the public morality and decorum.

Now Bindo had always hated the whole family of the Pastorini; in their little mill on the water with its great

black wheels churning below, and its tall green poplars rising above, they had always dwelt harmlessly,

honestly, and in peace with heaven and their neighbours. They paid their imposts regularly; cheated no one;

bided at home, and were well liked by all; the sons working hard and rarely being seen inside a wineshop; a

family to be peculiarly abhorrent to an officer of the State who received half the fines imposed on noisy or

Therefore the heart of Bindo Terri bounded within him when he heard these few pregnant words from his

chief. He was a capable and ingenious youth, and of considerable powers of invention; in his mind's eye in an

instant he saw CarmeloCarmelo, clean of limb and clean of conscience, honest, frank, quiet, sober,

everything in a word, that was detestable,brought before the tribunal and going from the tribunal to prison.

Meanwhile Messer Gaspardo sat down to the calm enjoyment of his list, lighting a long cigar.

It was a list that delighted his soul and fortified it; there were contraventions for keeping trees too low of

branch, for letting children play upon the sacred steps of the communal palace, for letting dogs run loose, for

letting plants stand upon windowsills, for emptying pails of water into the gutter, for having a chair and a

chat on the pavement, for anything and everything that the enlightened regulations of Vezzaja and Ghiralda

'How perverse are the public!' though Messer Nellemane, as he ran his eye over the papers. He wanted a

model public; a public that doffed its hat to him, chained its dogs, never laughed or quarrelled, drilled its

children like small police sergeants, and respected his code as if it had come from heaven. Yet he would have

had but little enjoyment out of even this model public, could it have been created for him, for he would have

had nobody to punish, and no fines to put in that municipal moneybox which it was his profession to fill and

his perquisite to empty. Like all other great men he was happiest in stormy waters, so he folded up the list

with marvel at the people's perversity, and betook himself to the caff� of Nuova Italia, where he supped

cheaply off a salad and some liver, and played dominoes afterwards with the Conciliatore Maso, who always

made a point of losing the game to him. Anyone who wished to be in Messer Gaspardo's good graces lost the

Santa Rosalia lies along the Rosa river, and its little humble houses open out in the centre on to a clear space,

where the beautiful old church with its tapering campanile faces the hideous new communal palace; a broad

space of dust and desolation stretching between the two and being called by courtesy the piazza. Pippo and

the other old men, and even younger ones, by remembrance of their childhood, could call to mind the time

when the piazza had been shaded by broad plane trees and limes, and in the centre of it had stood a very old

and large stone fountain, the delight of the people and the dogs, the horses and cattle that drank and their

But an earlier Giunta, the firstborn of Freedom, had cut down the trees and sold them; and Messer

Nellemane coming, and finding the fountain a nuisance because everyone gathered about it, and he did not

think with Mr. Ruskin that the sight of women, loitering with their bronze pitchers round a fountain, at

daybreak or twilight, in Italy, is one of the most poetic sights on earth, had it taken to pieces and carried

away, and the water sent back to the river. The people groaned, mourned and protested all they dared, but the

So the fountain became a thing of the past, and the labour for its destruction was entered for a considerable

sum in the communal expenses under the heading of 'Works for the salubrity and decoration of Santa

Rosalia.' An ugly waste ground, filled with rubble and rubbish, was all the people got in its place; and as for

the old stones, some did say they were reerected in a rich Russian's villa fifty miles away, Messer Gaspardo

knowing the reason why. A gardener of the neighbourhood swore to his neighbours that he had seen them

there, and that he had heard they were the carved work of some great ancient sculptor; but Messer Nellemane

said they had all been broken up to mend the roads, and had been of no value for aught else whatever, so the

subject had dropped, as most inquiries into public wrongs or expenditures of public money do drop, and

though Santa Rosalia mourned for its lost fountain it mourned altogether in vain, and the Giunta unanimously

considered that the piazza looked very much better bare; both trees and fountains beget humidity, they

thought, and why should they not do in Rosalia just what was doing in Rome? As little dogs always imitate

No one ever dared to name the stones to Messer Nellemane, who had given his word that they were broken

up and under his feet and the cartwheels, and nobody ever knew that he bought five thousand francs' worth

of foreign scrip soon after they disappeared because these little purchases were made for him by a cousin who

was a money changer in the town of Allesandria: a shrewd 'Ebreo,' with greasy clothes and sallow skin, who

will in all probability end as a baron and a banker. This evening, however, when he had eaten his supper

Messer Nellemane did not think of scrip or anything mundane; he thought of Viola Mazzetti.

Her grandfather's little stone house, called the Casa della Madonna on account of a blue and white china

shrine set above its entrance, built in the thirteenth century, and strong and sturdy, though low and small,

stood at the corner of the piazza sideways to the river, and with the unpaved road that served the borgo as a

street alone separating it from the water. The door and the kitchen window turned to the piazza; and when

Messer Nellemane sat on the opposite side of the square, he could see the house very well.

Messer Nellemane, all the while he smoked, and read the gazette, and played at dominoes, kept his eyes upon

the cottage, and he could see the Rosa river also very clearly, and down it for a long way, and he saw young

Carmelo come leaping along the opposite bank under the poplars and service trees, and wade lightly across

And Messer Nellemane, who could not see through stone walls despite his omniscience, followed him in

thought angrily, since the beauty of the maiden had allured his own fancy and desire.

While he pursued these discontented reflections and played dominoes alternately with his beloved friends,

Maso and Tonino, and the clear autumn evening began to grow grey and tinged with sadness, Carmelo

Pastorini whispered to Viola while old Pippo first smoked and then snored. Carmelo was a handsome fair

lithe young fellow, wonderfully like the Faun of the capital, and just as admirably made; here and there

amongst the populace one may see the old classic faces and figures almost unaltered, and men who have

never stooped over desks and have always in childhood gone barefoot have much of the old perfect symmetry

'How ill you march!' said one of his officers once to a Tuscan in his conscript days, and the Tuscan answered

the officer, who was kind to him, 'Signor Capitano, how can anyone walk well with a great strap across the

breast and leather on the feet? If I might take off my boots and carry my knapsack on my head, then I would

walk against any man:' and the first act of that youth's liberty when he had been set free was to kick his boots

Barefoot now, and decked in blue homemade linen, for the weather was warm, Carmelo leaned against the

little window of the room and murmured to Viola, who was bending her beautiful dark face over her straw

They were sweethearts in an innocent calm fashion; they had neither of them anything in the world, but that

did not trouble them; Carmelo could always work at his father's mill, and Viola had no fear of poverty. The

Men and maidens marry improvidently enough in this country, but most of them are happy in their marriages,

and the children tumble up, round and blithe as little rabbits, and all goes well; or does go well, till the

These two were not to marry yet awhile, nay, they had scarcely spoken of it; the courtship was timid and

reverent on Carmelo's part, rather than impassioned, for Viola had a saint's look about her, and saintly

thoughts and ways, and old Pippo was a man not to be gainsayed in his own household, and he had said,

'adagi�, adagi�,' meaning that they were young and there was no great hurry. Demetrio Pastorini, the father,

said the same, and so their lives went gently on in a sweet pastoral that was happier, and less troubled, than

'Why should we not marry as the others do!' he whispered, and Viola smiled ever so little, and old Pippo

spoilt it all by waking up suddenly, and shouting: 'Not cut the osiers in the Rosa? Everybody's always cut

them, for twice then thousand years. Who's that new meddlesome fool with his rules and his rates and his

'Hush,grandfather!' said Viola, timidly, for she remembered the death of old Nanni, and from their window

she could see across the river on to the piazza, and the desolate place where the fountain had been, and also

could see Messer Gaspardo Nellemane playing dominoes on his green iron chair before the caff� with thin

Tonino losing to him, and fat Maso looking on at the game. Messer Nellemane across the river also could see

her; and when Carmelo had been sent away at eight o'clock, and they had eaten their bit of supper, and she

had lighted a lamp for her grandfather to have a glimmer by which to finish a reedbottomed chair wanted by

the priest on the morrow, he could see still the better the bent brown head of the girl, and studied it critically,

as a virtuoso might have studied a canvas of candlelight effect of Ostade or Van Steen. It was almost as

beguiling and delightful to him as the guard Bindo's list of misdeeds and misadventures.

Viola was beyond dispute the loveliest girl in the place. Those onyxcoloured eyes, those dreamy lids, those

curved red lips, those elastic and symmetrical limbs, would have made her a beauty anywhere at a court or in

a studio, and had enough of physical exuberance, combined with maiden like simplicity, to touch the inmost

heart of a man who would, with all his will, have been a voluptuary had it not cost so much, and had he not

loved his place still better than his passions. Still there was no harm in looking at her, he thought; and look he

did, until her grandfather's piece of plaiting being done she put her light out, closed the shutter, and left only a

Then Messer Nellemane flung the end of his cigar away with a lordly air, pushed back his iron chair, and

'One could marry her to Bindo,' thought this very prudent person, as he walked away through the white

THE next day was the last day of April, and in the remote villages above which the Apennines brood, as in

those upon the mountains themselves, there still prevails the old gracious fashion of the Calen di Maggio : the

'bringing in the May,' as England called it when it was merry England, and not moneygrubbing and

machineground England, with its hedgerow timber felled, and its songbirds starved and mute.

In the cities and in the little towns the old custom has quite passed away, and even in many villages the

weddingnight of April nd May goes by without remembrance or celebration. But in the simpler and more

remote country places 'Ben venga Maggio' is still said as Guido Calvacanti said it, and the time is one of

harmless feasting and of tender song. In Santa Rosalia it still lingered thus, and on the memorable night the

lads of the borgo went along the Rosa banks and out amongst the fields from house to house, bearing the

This year Carmelo carried the May, a green sapling hung with flowers and lemons, and his next brother,

Cesarellino (little C�sar), bore the traditional basket of nosegays to throw to the maidens. Other youngsters

were with them, with red and yellow tulips in their hats, and gaycoloured shirts, and mandolines slung on

their shoulders, and they went from door to door with their salutation and song, and in turn received wine and

cakes garnished with red ribbons, and now and then money, which, making the sign of the cross, they put

Messer Nellemane, as he sat in the window of his room in the communal palace, saw the group of youths as

they came along by the water, and he recognised the face of Carmelo, as the young man bore aloft the

lemonhung tree and shouted with a fresh and mellow voice the Or � di Maggio che fiorito � di fiori and

stopped before the little Casa della Madonna, where they tossed their flowers through the open window, and

Viola, smiling, brought them out the sweet cakes. The brow of the spectator of this innocent pastime grew

'What pagan folly!' he muttered as he saw. 'What childishness and benightedness in this age of reason!'

It could be put down under the head of disturbance, or unauthorised festival, or public meeting without

The law has smitten almost all these innocent revellers to the dust; carnival is scarce more than a name; on

Ognissanti indecent crowds push laughing and jostling over the dead; the Feast of St. John is suppressed, and

replaced by the Feast of the Statute, and almost every procession of the Church is smothered by a dirty,

Messer Nellemane impatiently consulted his lawbooks and his own code, and found at least fiftyfive

different rules and regulations, any one of which would serve, and suffice to break down the leafy crown of

Until ten o'clock of the night the peace of his evening was disturbed by the chanting of the old serenade, no

near, now far, the vibration of the guitar, the sounds of laughter, the unpleasant knowledge that people were

'Next year!' he muttered vengefully, as the singing died away and the village grew dark with night and

slumber. Carmelo went to his bed drowsy and happy, with the Maio tree set up outside the milldoor in the

On the morrow was the weekly council of the Seven presided over by the One; and as Messer Nellemane was

the mainspring and central lever, the brains and the heart and the nerves of this councilchamber, he was too

He had to exercise great tact at these meetings, for he was only a secretary, and was only supposed to take

notes and read reports. But with an air of extreme deference and unimpeachable modesty he knew how to

make his views adopted, and how in the presence of the Syndic to prompt him, and in his absence to replace

him. Ostensibly the famous rules for the Polizia Igiena e Edilit� of Santa Rosalia were a product of the minds

of the Thirty, filtered through the Seven, and delivered as pure essence by the One, to the Prefect of the

province, and ratified by him and by the Minister of the Interior. But actually these laws had all flowed from

that fount of wisdom, the mind of Messer Nellemane. He had spent laborious days and wakeful nights in the

gestation and production of them; they had cost him months of anxious thought; for when your problem is

how to wring pence out of penniless pockets it requires meditation and deliberation; and Messer Nellemane

being anxious not to leave a loophole unwatched by the law, passed as many vexed and studious hours as a

mathematician or a physiologist. When accomplished, he had to see his work accredited as that of his

masters: but this he bore patiently, knowing that most of the fruits of it would be his.

The Guinta consisted of two nobles, of two small gentry, of one lawyer, one doctor, and one usurer, the latter

a rich person who had purchased a house on the Pomodoro road outside Santa Rosalia, one by name Simone

Zauli. This day the usurer, who in power outweighed all his six colleagues, as he had the notesofhand or

the mortgages of each of them in his pocket, was absent. In his stead the nobles were angry about the state of

the roads and had come in person to the meeting, a thing they did not do once in a twelvemonth. Their horses

were hurt and their bodies were shaken by the state of the roads, and they appeared at the council irascible. It

cost Messer Nelle mane a whole morning of invention and adulation to appease them and bring them back

to their old belief that his friend Pierino Zaffi was the first engineer in the world.

Having succeeded at last in doing this by great ingenuity and infinite lying, the meeting broke up: the

Cavaliere Durellazzo said 'Va bene, va benissimo,' which he always did, as if he were a cockatoo; and Messer

Gaspardo Nellemane had far too many minutes to make, and entries to write, and letters to dispatch, to have

But the next morning he was free, and excused himself even from his habitual noonday attendance at the

Palazzo Communale by alleging an errand to the city; under pretext of which he had himself shaved, oiled,

and curled by the barber, and then, dressed in his best, wended his way to Pippo's house, having seen old

Of course she was a poor, unlettered, and almost ragged girl, but she had beautiful arms which were shown

by her rolledup sleeves; she had a beautiful bust which her kerchief, loosely pinned, adorned; she had a

lovely face with a great cloud of raven hair; and even thus, seen at a tub with her lettuces, a painter would

She coloured all over her face beholding Messer Gaspardo Nellemane, dressed like a marquis, curled,

'Scusi tanto, signorina mia,' he said again, and wished her a goodday with many fine phrases. Viola laid

down her lettuces, and pushed him a chair and stood before him, very shy, timid, and afraid.

'I called to speak to your father,' said Messer Nellemane, rejecting the chair with many flourishes. 'I wished to

'Ah!' said Viola, with a gasp; and she grew very pale, and her great eyes were like a frightened doe's. Her

'Is in direct violation of our civic laws. But I came to say the Messer Filippo being so old a resident, and,

having heard that his forefathers, as he said, always enjoyed that privilege, I think a point may be stretched in

his favour and exception. I myself will see the Syndic on the matter, andwell, ahem! I will see that he is

not troubled about this thing; indeed I will give him a permission myself if he will call for it, free of charge,

Viola murmured something quite unintelligible: but her eyes thanked the gracious tyrant who promised to

spare her humble home, and he thought himself repaid. She was mute, indeed, and shy, even to stupidity; but

Messer Nellemane was not illpleased at that; he deemed it a tribute of simplicity to his own greatness and

attractions; and his bold, bright, black eyes, round like a bird's fastened on her with such ardour that the

Messer Nellemane, however, was in no haste to be gone; leaning on the back of the chair that he refused

otherwise to occupy, he wove grandiloquent phrases and sugared flatteries into a medley such as had never

Carmelo never talked like that; and Viola saw with surprise, and a vague apprehension, that her guest had

Messer Nellemane, nevertheless, did not quite declare his passion, but he paid her compliments that made her

cheeks glow like a damask rose, and set her brain spinning; his hand touched hers, and pressed it and he

'Fear nothing for your grandfather, carina. With such a face as yours you would get him grace for far heavier

At that moment a dog dashed in chasing the pig; the pig frightened the hen; the hen flew into the flourbin;

and Messer Nellemane's eloquence and courtship came to an undignified end, as Viola, grateful for the

interruption, hurried to the harried sow, and drove it to its quarters in an inner closet. Messer Nellemane

looked on with a troubled brow. A pig in a dwellinghouse! It was Contravention of Art. 3 of Rule CCCL. of

The author of the rules for the Polizia Igiena, e Edilit� of the commune could not fail to feel every fibre of his

being morally offended and set up on edge like a porcupine's quills, and yethe was in love. He bent

hurriedly before Viola and the pig, and left the house in the confusion of public duty met and routed by

'If it were not for hergood heavens! they transgress every law!' he thought, as he put on his hat and walked

to where the diligence waited, and, entering the shaky vehicle, rolled through the sea of olive foliage along

the narrow roads towards the city which lay afar off in the sunshine, against the opal and pearl of the morning

When Pippo returned, his granddaughter told him of the visit. With the suspiciousness that is so oddly rafted

into these easily pleased and docile natures, Pippo stared and swore a little and scratched is head, and said,

Viola turned away because she felt her cheeks were hot; be a maiden ever so innocent, she feels the approach

'Leave to cut the reeds? Give me leave?' cried the old man with great contempt. 'Lord! they'll talk of leave to

let the grass grow, leave to let one's lungs breatheleave to see, and speak, and cough, and laugh next! Lord!

Viola set his soup before him; hot water with bread in it, some garlic, and a little parsley.

'Will they let us drink our soup, I wonder?' grumbled the old man. 'Shall we have to pay a tax for that next?

Don't you let that prying jackinoffice come spying here again. The saints above us! In my young days he'd

have been knifed before he could have turned the place into a nest of wasps and snakes like this. Leave to cut

Viola went away inside their little back kitchen and cried a little, with a vague dread and pain upon her. She

could not forget the bold admiration of Messer Gaspardo's black eyes, and she was afraid.

She did not say anything of her fears to her grandfather, nor to the young man Carmelo; she was of a reticent,

prudent, serene nature, and she thought it could do no good to tell anyone, but might produce danger and

Meanwhile her old grandfather, having scalded himself with his soup, cooled himself with a draught of

watered wine, acid as vinegar, and, after giving himself his wonted midday sleep, went outside, taking some

rushes to plait, and sat on the threshold with his chair on the pavement, disregardless of the municipal rules

It was a lovely afternoon, and waned into a lovely evening in the village; the swallows were coming home,

the shadows were lengthening, the sweet smell of the rosemary and the vine flowers was fresh on the wind.

The people had ceased working, and stood and leaned against their doors, or out of their windows, and

gossiped; all was as peaceful as a pastoral: only along the sunny dust a dark shadow went, and the people

looked askance at it, and it took all mirth out of the jests, drove all tranquility from the hearts; it was the

shadow of the oppressor rusticorum; it was the figure of Bindo the guard, walking to and fro with a carabinier

To the rich it may seem nothing: this going of the guard to and fro, this system of inquisition and

condemnation that comes up with the sun and never ceases with the fall of the merciful night. To the rich it is

nothing; it scarcely ever touches them: they live behind their own gates, and if ever they are fined send their

lawyers to pay the fine. But to the poorwith their threshold, their cradle, and their club, with their dogs and

their babies tumbling together on the pavement, with their hardgathered gains hidden under a brick or in a

stocking, with all their innocent bewildered ignorance of the powers of the law, with all their timid patient

helplessness under oppression, with all their unquestioning submission to great wrong in fear lest resistance

should bring them wrongs still greaterto the poor this figure of the poicespy for ever in their midst,

observing their coming and going, seizing on every industry and pittance, watching the lighting of their

candles, the gambols of their children, the usage of their tools, the frolics of their dogs, the trailing of their

housecreepers, all to one single end and object'Contravention'to the poor I say this figure of the tyrant

of the tribunal darkens the light of the sun in this our Italy, hushes the laughter of the home and fills the

leisure moment of the toilsome day with a weariness and carking care never to be thrown aside. The rich

make these petty laws, and the parasites of the public offices carry them out; they are as thorns in flesh

already bruised; they are as the gadflies' bite in wounds already open. In vain do the poor suffer these things:

Blind and mad, no doubt, are the Socialists and the Nihilists, but as blind and as mad are the rulers of the

people who treat the honest citizen like the criminal, and of the innocent acts and careless sports of his

The law should be a majesty, solemn, awful, unerring; just, as man hopes that God is just; and from its throne

it should stretch out a mighty hand to seize and grasp the guilty, and the guilty only. But when the law is only

a petty, meddlesome, cruel, greedy spy, mingling in every household act and peering in at every window

pane, then, the poor who are guiltless would be justified if they spat in his face, and called it by its right

Bindo lounged about in the village streets (taking care to have a carabinier and the carabinier's musket at his

elbow) and looked out for all whom he might devour; were there a ladder leaning against a wall, a child at

play on this bare piazza, a log of wood outside a door, a dog disputing with another dog, any trifle of the

hundred and one trifles entered as cardinal sins on the books of Santa Rosaliathen was Bindo happy, and

Bindo used a wise discretion, it is true; and so did Messer Nellemane, as in the matter of the big and little

butchers. Filth stank unrebuked before the pizzicheria door, because some good cheese and some toothsome

pasta found its way thence to certain cupboards as a mere compliment of Easter; the apothecary's Spitz

snarled on unchidden up and down the street, for that worthy knew well the panacea that lies in gilded pills;

and the baker had his fuel in a heap before his door, and sold short weight, and adulterated his flour with

ground peas and acorns, because the baker had been wise enough at Christmas to offer to Messer Nellemane

some fine contraband tobacco and brandy (a present, he said, from France), and to Bindo had said, 'If you like

a fila of white bread every morning you know you are always welcome; we are such old friends, I could not

Of course, the pizzicheria man, and the apothecary, and the baker, all thought the commune of Vezzaja and

Ghiralda admirably managed, or at least were bound to say so. They were the discreet, judicious, docile,

reasonable people of the place. 'Why was not everybody the same?' thought Messer Nellemane and his

Now many of these people of Santa Rosalia were of ancient lineage and place; there were many families very

poor, but who lived where their forefathers had done in centuries passed away. Pippo was one of these. In

that house his forbears had dwelt for many generations, and there was a rivulet of water that passed through

his washhouse and out at his door in which he himself had seen his greatgrandfather soak the canes and

osiers before him; his greatgrandfather who had been an old man when Murat's horsemen had been stabbed

This spring rose somewhere in the earth of his strip of herb and fruit garden, and had been allowed to run

through the house and out of it and across the road to the river. Everybody always thought that it was the

saint's blessing which had made the spring run there, just where there was a basketmaker and rush plaiter

always want ing to soak his willows and reeds. It never occurred to anybody that the little old house had

This bright evening Bindo Terri, sauntering about with poisoned cates in his pocket for the dogs, and sharp

eyes roaming everywhere in search of misdemeanors, caught sight of the water running merrily across the

road, a narrow shallow brooklet, pleasant to see and carrying cleanliness with its presence. Water running out

of a house and across a public roadway! Bindo was not sure whether it was a crime against the code, but he

was quite sure that, if not, it ought to be. He opened his book of the Regulamenti Municipali which he always

carried with him carefully; and though he was not a good scholar he could spell through its clauses. He

studied it now, travelling with his finger under each word as the peasant manner is in all countries. He

found, as he expected, printed in Rule CCLVIII. of his beloved code, that it was forbidden to throw or let run

any water on any public way. Bindo certainly had never read Shakespeare and never heard of him, but he said

'You must stop that water; water must not run across a highway,' said Bindo with stern authority. Pippo stared

'God set it runnning there, and I doubt He won't stop it for you, jackanapes,' said the old fellow to the young

'You must cover it in, or drain it,' said Bindo, getting into a high official rage. 'It is against the law to have

water in the public road. One has to step into it or step across it. You must cover it or drain it, or I shall report

'Youngster,' said peaceable Pippo, very patiently, 'that water has been running as many years as the world is

old; my father's fathers let it run and thanked heaven for it, and so do I. Go your ways, Bindo Terri, and don't

For a guard to be called youngster! The insult made Bindo livid, and, had he dared, he would have crammed

He muttered some unintelligible words, at which old Pippo irreverently whistled, and he went on up the little

street, if street it could be called, since it had no pavement, but only a path of cobble stones, and on one side

'Dear Lady and all the saints!' cried Pippo to his neighbour: 'that young popinjay is saying now that water

mustn't run as God set it running! I suppose our heads mayn't wag on our shoulders next!'

'Have you anything to show that the water may run?' said the neighbour nervously. He was the cooper Cecco

(Francesco Zagazzi), a timid meagre man, who had just had to pay a fine because his dog had sat outside the

door instead of inside it, the dog being a terrier so small as scarcely to be discerned without a magnifying

'Lord's sake, Ceccino,' said Pippo, fairly in a rage. 'The water's run three hundred years if one. Do you think

The neighbour spat with anxious face into the dust. 'Almighty made dogs with four legs and didn't glue them

'Bindo Terri have an apoplexy smite him!' shouted Pippo, which is the Italian way of saying 'you be d___d;'

and he bundled together all his osiers and withes and went in and screamed to Viola; 'Child, do you hear this?

They're calling on me to stop the water! The Almighty's own stream, set abubbling in the beginning of the

world, is to be stopped! That's a sight worse than telling me not to cut osiers!"

'Lord knows!' said Pippo with a gasp. 'The world's topsyturvy and the scum's all atop, when Bindo Terri can

'Nay, nay, that I'll never do,' said the little old man. 'I'll break his head. Stop that stream of water? Stop the

sun ashining, stop the wind ablowing, stop the moon arolling! Why they're daft.'

'No, they aren't daft,' said the neighbour who had been fined for his terrier, and he shook the ashes out of his

pipe very sadly. 'They're not daft; they're very sharp; they are too sharp for us, and that's the fact. Haven't you

'Bit of paper? Bit of paper?' said Pippo, with a sort of ferocity. 'It ran for my father, and it ran for my

grandfather, and it ran for my greatgrandfather, and that's enough for me. Bit of paper? Who talks about a

'Perhaps they will forget all about it,' said Viola, with an effort at consolation.

'Bit of paper?' echoed Pippo, unheeding. 'Do you want a bit of paper to let the church stand in the square? Do

you want a bit of paper to let the stars go on their courses? Bit of paper? The water runs through the house

All the world to him was made up of bits of paper, he had been so often summoned and fined; happy people

had bits of paper that released them from everything; unhappy people had bits of paper that condemned them

for everything; to this much harassed man the world was chaos, and only this one idea was to be grasped out

of its confusion. Pippo told him fiercely that his mother had been a female ass, and his father a galleyslave;

but the neighbour bore the insult meekly, and went into his own door saying, 'that they never would let him

The populace, as I have said, can very well understand the law that punishes it when it thieves, when it slays,

when it forges, when it fires; it can understand its chastisement well enough, and does not question the justice

of it. But the law that punishes it for sitting in the sun, for running with a dog, for letting its child whip a top,

for stopping its tired horse to rest in the shade of a wall, for letting its starved goat crop a bit of wayside grass

that is nobody's and so is everybody's property, this it does not understand; at this it grows stupid and sullen

as poor puppies do when cruel keepers beat them, and thus the guards get their fines, and the galleys their

Bindo Terri went on into the piazza, and as the carabinier, who was no friend to him, told him somewhat

roughly that he himself must loiter no more but go and look round the outlying country for the thieves that

everywhere are ready to rob henroosts and granaries, the rural guard was disinclined to adventure his person

alone amongst the populace, and went into the smaller Caff� of Nuova Italia, and called for wine and tobacco,

'Diamine!' said Gigi Canterelli (he was the grocer, and dealt beside in drugs and paints, and also had a sort of

trattoria in his backparlour), standing on the sill of the shop and speaking in a low tone as the figure of

Bindo, deserted by the carabinier, was seen disappearing through the Caff� doors. 'Diamine! many's the time

I've kicked and cuffed that rascal when he was but a monellino, for stealing plums and treacle, and knives and

string. The saints bless us! And now he takes a turn at us all and does not gorget old grudges! The other week

or two past, ay, what did he do, think you?' added Gigi, turning to a young soldier just come off his term of

service, who had been buying some gunpowder of him. 'The law bids me stick a light outside my door of a

night (the Lord know whyfor there aren't a child twenty miles round that couldn't find me blindfold), but,

however, there's the law, and I am not saying anything against it; I suppose the wiseacres made it for some

good reason or another, and every night of my life I've lit that lamp since the order about it came in when we

were all made free. But that night, it maybe a month ago, there was such a lot of folk in my shop, and they

were all talking about the murder of the goldsmith in the city, and what with one thing and another, having

nigh a score to serve at once (and one said the man had been murdered with a knife, and the other said he was

shot, and another would have it he was strangled, and another said no, he had been brained with a hammer), I

clean forgot the lampfirst time in fifteen years! I know the time because that order about lamps came in

just the year after we got our liberty. Well, I forgot to light the lamp. Next morning comes that upstart, Bindo

Terri, to me: says he, "What is your name?" "I should think you know it," I say; and I think to myself your

breeches have felt my switch times enough when you were a pickle. "Don't answer me," says the upstart as

bold as brass. "What is your name?" "Luigi Canterelli," I say to him, feeling like a fool seventy years old, I,

and having smacked that rogue often for robbing me! "Luigi Canterelli," says he, as though he were the

Pretore in his black cap; and writes it down! Sure as fate, upon the morrow a summons comes to

me"contravention" and bidding me go up before the Conciliatore, and the hue and cry out after me if I

do not, and the pains of the Upper Court threatened! Then when I go, there is the blackguard himself witness

that my shop was black when the moon came up, and twentyseven francs in all are run up against me: and if

I had said a word of the treacle and the string and the pocketknife of the old time, the jackanapes would

have been down on me for disrespect to an officer of the law. Oh! Lord save us!'

Gigi spat solemnly into the dust and filled his pipe which had gone out in his oratory.

'We're all fools,' the young exconscript said gloomily. 'What have I had? Black bread, and ne'er enough of

that, and set freezing in a cotton jacket up in Milan, in March, because the fellows down in Sicily had put on

cotton jackets and so must we; though Sicily's as hot as hell, they say, and Milan's just an icehouse; and I all

the while was sore needed at home here, and father has had to pay a labourer all three summers because I was

A friend nudged his elbow; Messer Nellemane in high silk hat and citycut coat was sauntering by; Messer

'You are no patriot, my lad,' he said severely. 'I fear you have been but an indifferent soldier. You were a

The young man coloured; he was wounded and ashamed; he was a peasant who had been taken by the

conscription just as a young bullock is picked out for the shambles, and he had never understood why very

well; his heart had been always with his fields, his homestead, his vines, his sweetheart; he had hated the

barrack life, the dusty aimless marches, the drilling and the bullying, the weight of the knapsack and the roar

of the guns; he had been a youth ere the government had made him a machine: he had not actively or

outwardly rebelled, but he had hated it all, and he had come back to his native place, a harder, a crueller, and

a moodier lad than he had left it; and when he thrummed his old mandoline by the farmhouse door, it had no

longer any music for him; it seemed to him as if the beating of the drums had got into his ears and deafened

himand Messer Nellemane told him to be grateful. He looked down, shuffled his feet, doffed his hat, and

Messer Nellemane spoke with the serenity of one who never had served. Fortune, which took pleasure in

favouring him, had made his mother a widow, when the time had come for him to enter his name, and he had

'Never you mind; you're better than he is any day, the cursed Jew quilldriver,' muttered old Gigi to the

If the enemy had come into his country he would have held his own hamlet against them to the last gasp; but

to be drafted off to Milan, to wear a fool's jacket and eat black bread while the fields were half tilled, and the

old people sore driven, and the girl of his heart got married to some other manno, he was not a patriot if, to

Yet he had ducked a Frenchman in the Mincio for calling Italians cowards. Messer Nellemane might not have

done so much; unless, indeed, a Minister had been looking on, and the valour would have been likely to bring

The next morning Bindo Terri, amongst other contraventions, presented on his list the case of old Fillippo

'Wait awhile,' he said to his zealous servitor. 'Of course no water must run across the road. You are quite

right; it is a nuisance, and expressly forbidden; but you have spoken to Mazzetti, and we will give him time.

He is an old inhabitant, and should be dealt with gently. We must warn, counsel, recommend, at first; and use

our power afterwards if the person be refractory and obstinate. We must not be too harsh.'

Bindo Terri stared, disappointed and almost inclined to be rude to his chief patron. He could insist on his list

of offenders being dealt with according to the regulations if he had chose. But in his heart he was sorely

afraid of Messer Gaspardo, who was so good to him; so he grumbled a little under his breath, and consoled

himself with going out of the municipality and buying some bullock's liver to cook at home with phosphorus

to make up into balls to fling about over the country roads to destroy all dogs that might be trotting

innocently on their way to their homes, or their fellowdogs, or sitting at their master's gates to guard his

fields and vineyards. He had no right to throw it in the daytime, even the regulations did not allow that; but

there was nothing to prevent him doing so; and if, as now and then happened, a sheep passing amidst a flock

touched the foul thing in the dust, and was taken with what its shepherd thought a fit, the amusement to

Bindo was complete, when he watched from behind a hedge the beast's agony and the shepherd's dismay.

Messer Nellemane, although he drew rein to his myrmidon's zeal, in heart approved of it, of course. A spring

of water bubbling across a public pathway was to him a thing of horror: was what a stole and rochet are to a

stern Protestant, or a shot fox is to an Englishman; and there indisputably the little spring was, whimpering

out from Pippo's garden door, and making a little silver thread in the dust. It was just one of those lawless,

easygoing, illegitimate things, births of ancient customs and indolent privileges, which it was the scope of

all the Regulations to reach, sweep away, and utterly destroy. In truth, the water outside Pippo's gate made so

slight a show as it ran to the river, that in passing over it, it had never struck the eyes of Messer Nellemane;

he had seen it, but he had thought it the leak of a pipe or the accident of the hour. Now, however, it assumed

to him all the awful blackness, all the unspeakable insolence, of a contravention. The Inquisitors are dead, but

For the present, however, he stifled his feelings, and only kept the water in memory, to use if need be; just for

all the world as Torquemada would have kept the torture; and he continued his courtship, stealthily, so that

Santa Rosalia might know nothing of it, but boldly, so far as he dispensed with all hesitating preliminaries

and plunged in media res, with all the disregard of delicacy that became a great man condescending to notice

a poor maiden. He did not, however, to his surprise, make much way in the maiden's good graces. He could

never manage to see her alone; old Pippo was almost sure to be there, till Messer Nellemane longed to

throttle him with his own reeds; or, if he were absent, there was the nextdoor neighbour, the cooper's wife

with her tribe of children, or some of the Pastorini girls, or Viola's greataunt by the mother's side, a little

withered rosycheeked old apple of a woman, who called him Excellenza and opened her little black eyes

Nobody was ever alone in Santa Rosalia; all doors were open, and all work was done to a chorus of chattering

voices. Gossip is the very staff of life to all Italian communities, and the scanty bread and the watered wine

are made up for by the delight of endless talk. The talk is of Lippo's cow that has calved, of Tina's baby that

has cut its teeth, of Dina's girl that is to marry at Pasqua; of the vicar's new surplice, of the fattoressa's new

gown, of the chances of oil being cheap and of flour being dear, of all sorts of little odds and ends of local

tittletattle that are to them as the scandals of the Jockey Club, the combinations of Worth, the actions of the

Viola had never been alone in all her life; her grandfather thought no woman ever should be; but her new

admirer fancied that all these people round her were precautions taken against himself, and waxed very angry

He did not want all the neighbourhood to talk of his courtship of this poor old man's granddaughter, and he

knew very well that if you only fling an acorn in the dust one day people, the next, will swear to a grove of

The Italian tongue chatters like a magpie's; if they did not let the steam off thus they would be less easily

ruled than they are; but no great talker ever did any great thing, yet, in this world.

Messer Gaspardo Nellemane was by no means an immoral man; he was rather cold of temperament, and

being a wise person he saw how often a little naughty story when it gets afloat about a public career is to it as

fatal as the rift in the lute. He had a wholesome horror of ever being compromised by foolish frivolities; he

was an ambitious man, and these wayside dallyings had but little temptation for him. Nevertheless, Messer

Nellemane was not a saint, and the beauty of Viola, granddaughter of Pippo, was seductive to him.

Marry her? No; he did not mean to marry; not until he should get some better post than this of Santa Rosalia,

and be able to discover some heiress of a wax candlemaker, or a strozzino, or an oil merchant, whose money

would help to make him a deputy, since he fully intended some day to jump from the officestool of the

municipality to the benches of Montecitorio. No; he had no thought of marrying Viola, but she was very

handsome, very beautiful, and there was docile Bindo Terri ready to take any thing off his hands, from a

frayed coat to a tarnished love. Bindo Terri would marry herfor a consideration.

As it chanced Corpus Domini fell late in May that year, and of course there were to be processions all over

the country, and every girl, however penniless she might be, would find a white or a blue frock, and perhaps a

bit of tulle for a veil, and would walk with the Host as it was borne under an umbrella between the mulberry

trees that lined the dusty roads and through the gardens of the neighbouring villas.

Viola was very poor, and her clothes, though clean, were always sorely patched and frayed; so Messer

Gaspardo thought it good policy to go down into the city himself and choose a most delicate print of the

Madonna's own azure, and a wreath of white roses and some shoes, shoes with bright silveredlooking

buckles, just such as the ladies wore; and making all these up into a parcel when he got home, he left them

himself on the table of old Pippo's cottage when Pippo and his daughter were absent.

On the roll of print he had pinned a card, 'Con ossequie teneri all pi� bella del mondo: dal suo

He knew the right road to the female heart. Viola chanced to see the parcel when alone; her grandfather being

outside smoking pipe with a neighbour. She coloured very much, and then grew very pale. She could just

spell out the words on the card. She hastened up the steep stone staircase to her own little miserable room and

hid the packet under the sheet on her bed. She had only just caught a glimpse of the blue print, and the white

wreath, and the buckles; and they had made her tremble as though she had seen the face of a ghost.

She was keen in all her simplicity as her people almost always are, and she had that doubt which always

underlies their sanguine temper. If Carmelo saw these things he would be capable of flinging them at their

giver's head and saying perilous words in the very palace of the municipality itself.

Her heart sank like a stone in the deep sea as she thought of the forbidden rushes and the running water at the

'If I spoke him fair?' she said to herself with her countryfolk's belief in fair words as a panacea for all evils

'May I go and see the aunt 'Nunziatina this evening?' she asked of Pippo. Her great aunt lived at the other end

of Santa Rosalia ; the same little applecheeked old woman who had stared at Messer Nellemane; she was

poor, nay, she was penniless; she shared a room with three others and lived frankly on alms; very honest

begging it was; she went round from house to house with a big basket, and got bread and broken meats, and a

little money, and now and then a flask of wine, and then she sung her Jubilate. Everybody knew and liked her

in this place where she lived all her life, and knew very well that she had not a soldo in the world; her

husband had been a daylabourer, and when he had chopped his hand off, in cutting a hedge of oakscrub and

myrtle, and had died of mortification, the old Annunziata had been left destitute.

The Government which forbids begging, and lands those who do beg in prisons, has as yet provided no

poorlaw; so eightyyear old 'Nunziatina had no choice but to trot round with her basket, or to die silently of

Want seems sadder in this light and lovely land, where life requires so little to make it happy and to fill its

needs, than it does in the dark grim North, where fog hides the suffering multitudes and cold is the tyrant of

all. Here, give but a little bread, a little oil and wine, and life can sparkle on cheerily as the firefly burns in the

cornfields; but alas! even that little, thousands and tens of thousands have not, and so perish.

'May I go and see 'Nunziatina?' said Viola, and her grandfather nodded ascent; she went and got the parcel

'The cloth I have spun; auntie can sell it better than I,' said Viola, thinking nought of a little fib for peace'

sake, though she coloured as she spoke, for she was of a straightforward and truthful nature.

The old man ambled by her side on his little lean shrivelled shanks, for he never let the girl go through the

Arrived at the dwelling of Annunziata he let his granddaughter go upstairs, while he stayed below, chatting

with the carpenter who owned the cottage, and dwelt in the groundfloor of it, and let the rest to lodgers.

The cottage stood on a bit of waste land by a bend in the river; some poplars made a pleasant murmur near;

'The Giunta cuts the trees down come Ognissanti,' said the carpenter with a groan.

'They would if they could get a centime a toe!' assented Pippo, and told his grievances as to the rushes and the

Meanwhile, Violas upstairs told her story to her grandaunt; a little old square figure with a straw hat on, and

a very short skirt, and old leather boots like a ploughman's, and a cheerful sunburnt ugly pleasant face.

'Dear our Lady! But it is beautiful stuff for a gown!' cried the old woman, fingering the blue print as

reverentially as if the had been the holy wafer. 'Eh, eh! I opened my eyes at him the other day! I thought,

'But I cannot keep it,' said Viola, with a flush on her cheeks and a little tone of inquiry in the words.

They had been all of them very upright and unstained folks in both these families from which Viola Mazzetti

'Maybe though, he means it in all honour?' said 'Nunziatina doubtingly, and thinking to herself: 'She is so

handsome, the child; why not?and after all, though a great man here, he was a tinker's son, they say; and

Viola shook her head, and her cheeks grew red. The maidens of the poor soon learn what evil means.

'No, no; he is a bad man,' she said with a slight shudder. 'And besides, if he did mean well, I must keep faith

'That is another thing,' said the old woman. 'Now what is it you want me to do, my dear; for there is

'I thought this,' said Viola. 'I thought, I cannot go to Messer Gaspardo; that would never do; I never scarce stir

by myself, and grandfather would be furious; and besides, I want him to know nothing, and Carmelo nothing

either; so I thought, if you would take the parcel back to Messer Gaspardo, and thank him, and speak him

fair, and tell him I am betrothed, I thought that might be the best way? You can see him any day they say, at

the communal palace; and we must try not to offend him, because he can hurt people so much, and he is

The old woman chuckled a little, for she was a merry soul, though she was eightyfour and had not a penny

'A pretty figure am I for a palace!' she said with a laugh as bright as a robin's song. 'But let us talk it over, my

They did talk it over, turning the matter inside out, and in every possible light, Italians like to do on all

occasions; the girl was harassed and oppressed by this lovegift; the old woman was rather flattered and

'Pray speak him fair,' Viola begged of her amabassadress as old Pippo called her to go down. 'Pray be humble

'Pooh, he can't eat us,' said the old woman, who had a spirit of her own. 'And he won't be the first man, my

dear, that has found himself forestalled by a better than himself with a handsome maiden!'

'He can do everybody so much harm!' she said anxiously with a sigh. The dread of Gaspardo Nellemane was

'Never fear,' said the old fool merrily. 'He can't do me any mischief, my child. Who has nothing loses nothing.

Does not the proverb say so? Why should you be angry with the young man? He means no harm, I will

'Viola! come down I say! Your tongue will reach to the town and go twice round the cathedral!' roared Pippo

impatiently from below; and the girl went down the cottage stairs heavy of heart, and wondering how her

grandaunt's errand would speed. She could not shake off the memory of Messer Gaspardo's bold black eyes.

But at the cottagedoor they met Carmelo driving a cart of his father's home, empty, having taken sacks of

flour to a neighbouring hamlet; and she and her grandfather to up into the cart behind the good old grey horse

Bigio with its jingling bells, and so sped cheerfully past the poplars and along the river; and in the gaze of

their lover's honest beaming eyes she was half though not wholly cured of her fears, and repaid a hundredfold

on the loss of the dress and the rosewreath and the shoes with the shining buckles.

In the forenoon 'Nunziatina took the parcel in her almsbasket and trotted with her stick to help her through

Santa Rosalia to the municipal building, and then boldly asked for Messer Nellemane. She was a

brighthearted, highcouraged, old woman, and had that sturdy independence which still extant among the

old people who are too old to be able to learn to cringe before the national curse of municipal law.

She cared nought for all the greatness of Messer Gaspardo, and fought valiantly with Tonino and Maso and

Bindo, all of whom tried to shut their doors on her, and at last, in sheer despite of them, she stumped up the

stone stairs in her hobnailed boots that were three times too large for her, and at ten of the clock precisely

Messer Gaspardo welcomed her quite charmingly; he knew she was the grandaunt of Viola Mazzetti. He

was seated in state, ready to receive anybody, as was his wont from ten to twelve, with a long writingtable

before him, covered with papers, and the green blinds shut against the sun, and maps of the district and books

of the Penal Code and the Civil Code around him; and really he might almost have been taken for the Prefect

'I am glad to find your excellency all alone,' said the bright little old woman, laying down the big parcel on

the writingtable, for she thought to herself, 'I am told to speak him fair, and nothing will please him like a

'All the country is always talking of all it owes to your illustrious self' (and that is true, she thought, because

every living soul is always cursing and abusing him from morning till night), 'and never should I have

ventured, a poor old beggar as I am, to intrude upon you, only that I have to speak to you about my sister's

'Speak on,' said the secretary, but his eye grew annoyed and startled; this was by no means what he wished; to

have his admiration of Viola made a subject of discussion in her family was the last thing that consorted with

his desires or designs. 'The girl has been boasting already,' he thought angrily, and gave a malediction to the

'You admire Viola, they tell me, and so indeed it seems, since you send such fine presents, signore mio,'

'Everyone admires a beautiful girl,' he said at last, with an uneasy laugh. 'You must not conclude too much

'No, no, sir, not I, ' said the old woman very cheerfully, but her little sunken still bright brown eyes plunged

their regard into his and read him, down to the secrets of his innermost soul. 'Gentlemen like you have a

kindly way of paying compliments that mean nothing; oh, nothing at all; and my Viola is a girl of a great deal

too much sense to have put meaning into anything you said or did. Only as she is very grateful to you for

such courtesy, and could not come very well to say so, she bade me speak for her; and do you be very sure,

sir, that none the less thankful is she, though her feeling as to what is right makes her send your pretty things

Therewith 'Nunziatina took out of her basket all the gifts that had represented with Messer Nellemane the

Messer Nellemane grew of a sickly colour. He was pallid with rage. He half rose from his seat.

'No, no, sir; never a thought of it,' said wily Annunziata; 'no more of it than you had in buying those pretty

things for the child to wear on Corpus Domini; a kindly thought, just like a gentleman'

'Why thenwhy ' still stammered Messer Gaspardo, still aghast with wrath and wonder.

'Why, sir?'the little old woman drew herself up quite straight, with both her hands on her

elmstick'Why, sir, because it is not meet for maidens, and motherless maidens, to take gifts from those

too much above them to mean honest marriage, or have nay thought except a foolish sport that may divert the

man but does destroy the woman. City girls, I know, are ready for that sort of play, but our girls are not. That

is all I wanted just to say, and thank you kindly, Signore Gaspardo; for I am quite sure you had no thought of

harming Viola. And now let me take away the inconvenience of myself, and bid you a very good day.'

With that Italian phrase of peasant farewell which here was no figure of speech, for she was indeed the

greatest discomfort to him that had ever fallen across his prosperous career, the little old woman in her straw

hat and her short petticoats bowed to him, with that grace which oftentimes even the humblest and the very

aged keep in the land where Art once ruled supreme, and trotted out of his room and down the stone stairs

She had said nothing of Viola's betrothal; the Italian courtesy and caution alike lay down as a fixed rule for

rich and poor, that you should never say a disagreeable thing under any pretext or pressure.

'He will learn it soon enough, ' she thought, 'and he is a bad man, and a dangerous; the devil dwells under his

To her granddaughter, however, she only said cheerfully, 'I put it to him politely, my dear, and thanked him;

For she reasoned with herself of what use was it to tell the child her own fears? She thought it would be of

more use to buy a real wax candle instead of a bit of kid, the first time anybody should give her some

coppers, and burn it before the Madonna up in the old oaktree of the church of San Romualdo upon the

slopes behind her dwellingplace; a shrine which had been set in the trunk of that old tree no one well knew

how many hundreds of years before, and at which were wrought still many marvellous cures, and many

infinite kindnesses of the Holy Virgin to true believers. The candle that very week she did buy with the first

money she got on her rounds, and it twinkled its life out in the hot May day until at night the little white

moths burned themselves up in it by scores, and it dwindled into darkness as the stars began to gleam and the

But whilst her holy candle burned under the holy ilex trees, the fires of an unholy rage burned in the breast of

Messer Nellemane. He felt he had been checkmated, and checkmated by a little old trot in a ragged petticoat

who, he felt, had been jeering at him with her illustrissimo. His own grandmother, indeed, still living in the

township of his birth, was not one whit less ragged or impecunious than was 'Nunziatina. But he always

strove to forget his grandmother as he strove to forget his father's old iron and rusty brass, for it was not meet

for a man on the highway to a political party and a ministerial greatness to cumber himself with these

remembrances. He sent his mother, indeed, now and then a banknote in a registered letter, but it was always

on the understanding that she never of her own accord recalled her existence to him.

A retentive memory is of great use to a man, no doubt; but the talent of the oblivion is on the whole more

The fire of his rage consumed him, and he was the more angry because at the moment he knew not how to

'That old woman who came to bring me a petition todayshe is a professional mendicant?'

Bindo watched his chief's face anxiously to get his cue, but could read nothing.

'La 'Nunziatina?' he said, hesitatingly. 'No, Signore, I would not call her that; everybody knows her; she has

been always like this; she goes from house to house, and out to all the villas in turn'

An angry glisten of Messer Gaspardo's eyes told his faithful servitor that he had gone on the wrong tack: he

'A beggar, of course, she is,' he added. 'I think she has been one twenty years. I remember her as long as I

remember anything, and she always lived by charity. A lady did get her awhile ago permission to get taken in

at Montesacro; but the old cranky, crazy creature said she could not live shut up: if she could not walk her

dozen miles a day she would dieso she said. Yes: to be sure, illustrissimo, she is a beggar.'

Messer Nellemane shrugged his shoulders and sighed over the degeneracy of a public which would still

continue to find patrons to support and pamper mendicancy. He fell into deep meditation. In the 395

Regulations framed for the Polizia, Igiena, and Ediliti� of the commune there was one terrible void: there was

'They can find means to maintain all these creatures, and yet they declare they cannot support the imperial

and local taxes!' he said aloud to his subordinate; by his 'they' meaning the landowners of the district, men of

long descent, patrician appearance, and courtly manner, whose rank was the bitter envy of Messer Nellemane,

Bindo Terri sighed too, and put up his hands to express his own equal regret and horror. Himself, he knew

very well that most of the people who gave alms to Annunziata were people of the poorest sort; peasants or

homely folk, such as masons, carpenters, smiths, and the like; but he saw that it would not suit his chief's

'There is nothing about beggars in it?' he said questioningly, turning over the leaves of his beloved and

'Not as yet,' said Messer Nellemane. 'The good Cavaliere Durellazzo is, perhaps, too lenient to the vagrant

The good Cavaliere Durellazzo was just then sitting in a straw chair, with a wide straw hat on, smoking a

cigar made, for the most part, of straw, on the sands of a summer resort on the Mediterranean, and no more

THAT very night, as ill luck would have it, Messer Nellemane went sauntering down the green banks of the

Rosa, for the pleasure of surveying a grim piece of work he had done the year before. An old convent, once

of an Olivetine Congregation, crowned a hill that rose up from the Rosa; it had been a beautiful hill, clothed

for centuries with forest greenery, in which many a tall cypress, hundreds of years old, and of great height

and girth, towered majestic, whilst the bronzehued ilex oak, and the silver poplar, and the chestnut, and the

acacia, all grew in amity together, sheltering in spring time millions of primroses, and of many another wee

Santa Rosalia is in a lovely pastoral country; the country that seems to thrill with Theocritus' singing, as it

throbs with the little tambourine of the cicala; a country running over with beautiful greenery, and with

climbing creepers hanging everywhere, from the vine on the maples to the chinarose hedges, and with the

deep blue shadows and the sunflushed whiteness of the distant mountains lending to it in the golden

distance that solemnity and etherial charm which, without mountains somewhere within sight, no country

ever has. But since the advent of freedom it is scarred and wounded; great scar patches stretch here and there

where woods have been felled by the avarice illumined in the souls of landowners; hundreds and thousands of

bare poles stand stark and stiff against the river light, which have been glorious pyramids of leaf, shedding

welcome shadows on the river path; and many a bold round hill like the ballons of the Vosges, once rich of

grass as they, now shorn of forest and even of undergrowth, lift a bare, stony front to the lovely sunlight, and

This convent of Francesca Romana had been 'appropriated' in the sacred name of liberty, and the nuns had

been all sent here and there, back to their families if they had any, and out to weary loneliness if they had not,

and the dowers they had given the Church had gone to the coffers of the Government, and enriched

The old home of these Olivetine Sisters itself was despoiled, much as it would have been by an invading

army that was allowed loot. Its crucifixes, its ivories, its carvings were sold by the State to curiosity dealers,

and its frescoes, by Sodoma and the Carracci, were cut off the walls and disposed of to a foreign nation.

All this had been done before Messer Nellemane's time, although done by men so closely like to Messer

The deserted building, when he had come into the village, had stood on the hill like a wrecked city; majestic

still, since its old walls, all faced with marbles and porphyry, would have yielded to nought save cannon; and

it tall belltower, exquisite in its slenderness and symmetry, and its ivorylike whiteness, had still pointed

heavenward from his green throne, though its bells had been torn down and melted to help make a bronze

statue of one of Messer Nellemane's elder brothers away in the city, where it was called the Monument of a

The building was an empty shell, and while the Government were always meaning to turn it into an institute,

a barrack, a powder magazine, or a laboratory, the years had slipped away, and damp and drought alternately

were changing it into a ruin. But the forest beauty about it was still untouched when Santa Rosalia first

beheld Messer Nellemane; and when he had been a little time upon that office stool of which he intended to

make a starting point to a future ministry of State, he cast his eyes upon this shattered temple of superstition.

All those instincts which always made him feel it was his destiny some day to become a minister of finance,

What waste of the public purse! And what a commission awaiting for somebody! Messer Nellemane, of all

things this world held, loved best a job. The official mind always loves a job. Moreover, he detested trees, as

he detested dogs. As dogs were only endurable when chained up, so, to him, trees were only tolerable when

The official mind, with which he had been created, viewed with abhorrence the unministerial and

improvident existence permitted to that once sacred wood, whilst the convent it surrounded had been dealt

Messer Nellemane made a humble suggestion on the matter to Cavaliere Durellazzo; the Syndic made a

communication to the Giunta; the Prefect of the province was seen and whispered with; the Prefect went

down to Rome and whispered with the Minister of Public Works, who was his friend. It was suddenly

discovered that there was a great need of oak wood in the dockyards, though they were building ships of

nothing but iron; soon it was decreed that the trees which had sheltered and graced the bigotry of the past

The Ministry entrusted the direction of the sale to the Prefect; the Prefect en trusted it to the Syndic of

Vezzaja and Ghiralda, the prefectorial commission being, a thing understood; of course, no one speaks of

such matters. The Syndic entrusted it in turn to his secretary, the syndical commission being, of course,

equally understood; and the Giunta also being understood, without words, to have each of them an interest in

But it may be taken for granted that, when the various commissions, first of the big Ministers down in Rome,

and then of the big Prefect down in the adjacent city, and then of all the lesser personages concerned, not

omitting Messer Nellemane himself, who took all the trouble of it under the rose, were all shaved off the sum

total brought by the sale of that wood to the State, the nation never bought timber dearer for its dockyards.

However, everybody was very pleased except a few artists who tried to make a noise about it, as those

troublesome beings always do, and the people of the commune in general, who were not consulted and did

The particulars of the sale were amongst those official things which never issue out of pigeonholes, and

concerning which blue books, yellow books, all books parliamentary, are silent in all countries.

The trees fell; the giants of the centuries crashed down under the axes or under fire; the hares, the birds, the

myriads of innocent pretty, forest life that had lived under them so long, fled away or were ruthlessly

destroyed; cartloads of timber went to burn in the furnaces of public works or rot away in the shipyards; and

Messer Nellemane, through his trusty cousin, some foreign scrip; indeed everybody concerned in the sale

The convent stood bare and drear upon its desolated hillside, and above the river, rose a great slope, naked,

scarred, frightful, with charred holes yawning where the primrose tufts and the blue irises had blossomed in

Messer Nellemane looked up at it now, and felt it had been a work worthy of him, and one fully in the spirit

It was really quite equal to the pulling down of Tell's chapel and of Milton's house; to the destruction of the

walls of Augsburg and the towers of Nurnberg; to the levelling of the Spanish Houses of Brussels and of the

gates and the bastions of Gall, of the Grand Chatel�t of Paris and of the Tabard Inn of old London; he felt that

it might take its place proudly amidst all the greatest destruc tion wrought by Progress and Economy in this

noblest and most �sthetic century, by means of its chiefs and excecutants, the Municipalities.

In the old time architects and artists had wrought here diligently, reverentially, lovingly, in the name of God

and of the arts; but Messer Nellemane, though he had never heard of Sainte Beuve, would have quite agreed

with him, that, 'Dieu, ce n'est pas fran�ais,' and for his own part would have been as ready to affirm that Art

In the old time European municipalities thought that they existed for the ends of patriotism and the glory of

their cities; they built for the honour of God and the love of their country. But nowadays all that is changed; a

municipality is only a selection of persons intent on their own interests; the motto of each is 'my policy's

myself;' whether old walls are pulled down or new ones put up, gold comes off the mortar for the

towncouncilmen, the contractors, and the commissioners, and they can never understand why everyone is

not as satisfied as they are. Whether the question be one of demolition or construction, all they look for is

Whether trees fall in Kensington Gardens or the Cascine, whether old churches are pulled down in Rome or

in Paris, whether new street make hideous Venice or Vienna, whether gardens are chopped to pieces on the

Pincio or in the Bois, there is always somebody who pockets something sub ros�, and instead of Jacques

Coeur or the Fugger, or William of Wykham, or Alan Walsingham, we have officers of Public Works as

If you want a handsome structure, can you not make a large glass frame for a market or an exhibition, or raise

a fine sugarwhite gimcrack in plaster and stucco, that you can call a war office, a church, a college, or a

The bureaucratic and the municipalic mind cannot comprehend any higher joy than destroying,

Our friend Messer Nellemane had been born with the bureaucratic and municipalic organs both largely

developed in his brain, and within his narrow confines he contrived to compass vast things, and his heart was

always comforted as he looked up at the bald gneiss and sand where the convent oaks once had stood; but, as

woe would have it, taking this night his favourite stroll past ruined Santa Francesca, he saw two shadows in

the evening light, and all his comfort fled. The shadows were far below him, and were entwined one with

another, like two young acacias that have grown up and leaned together; they were moving slowly over the

He recognized in the happy murmuring lovers under the trees, Viola and young Carmelo. His passion was

stung to the quick, and his pride and his vanity were wounded yet more deeply. 'She rejects me!' he thought,

and no emperor flouted by a peasant maid, and seeing a rustic lout pre ferred, could have felt himself more

True, the old shop of rusty iron was not so much above the mill as an origin; but then Messer Nellemane was

now a servant of the State, nay, rather, an integral piece of the State itself, as a cogwheel is a piece of the

He walked now above the river on the bare ridge beneath Santa Francesca, and saw the lovers strolling

below, through the poplar wood, with the big white dog of the mill, Toppa, strolling as well in front of them,

He could see the brown wheel churning in the water; he could see the flour sacks leaning against the fence

under the hedge of elders; he could see the jay in its cage amongst a passion flower that covered all the house

wall; he could see the snowy head of the old miller himself, leaning out of a little square window, and calling

orders to the boy who was waiting with the mulecart at the gate; and he could see the lovers loitering in the

sunset warmth by the river; lovers, who thought to live all their days out there peacefully under that same

roof, and leave their children to come there after them, and get their bread by the same old wooden wheels

He stood on the heights above, and looked down on the tranquil little scene;with a curse.

Viola would not have been a daughter of Eve, had she not thought longingly, on the eventide before this great

feast, of Messer Nellemane's blue gown and white wreath. What would not the other girls have said if they

could but have seen her in that beautiful dress, and with the buckles shining on her feet!

She never wished that she had kept them, but she often did wish that they could have been the gift of the

The procession was the great day of the year in Santa Rosalia, as in every other village and little borgo round.

Messer Nellemane, who was a libero persiero, yearned to have it suppressed; he thought it degrading and

idiotic. Like a true Liberal thinker he was of opinion that as there should be no distinctions for the rich, so

there should be no diversions for the poor. He would have forbidden banners, music, colours, lights, public

services, and gatherings of all sorts, except for Liberal purposes, under threat of heavy pains and penalties,

but he had no power; the Government has not quite made up its mind as yet to do away with any

timehonoured custom, and he, without the Government, was helpless, for this was an imperial matter.

So all day long, every F�te Dieu, the tolling and chiming of bells, the aspect of villagers clad in their festal

array, the sounds of chanting, the scent of incense, the sight of banners, pursued him, and made him irritable

and unhappy; so unhappy that even the number of contraventions, generally to be gleaned on a day when

people were too merry and too engrossed to chain up their dogs and shut up their children, could not

altogether console him. Besides, even Bindo was so carried away by the influence of long habit that he was

himself not so watchful as usual on this day, when the girls were all looking their best in their white or blue

gowns, and most houses had open doors and a full table, and at nightfall there was dancing and illuminations

This summer the procession was especially hateful and foolish in Messer Gaspardo's sight; was more than

ever loathsome to him, since Viola Mazzetti did not wear his gown, and his garland, and his shoebuckles,

but came out in her humble grey skirt and bodice, that were to her loveliness like the dark leaves to the

Old Pastorini, too, was the capo of the feast, and managed everything, and in the village band Carmelo beat

the drum; beat it indeed with more zeal than discretion, so that it could always be heard high above every

other instrument at every moment, but was very much praised, and looked very handsome and bright as he

Messer Nellemane found all this too much for him, so he rose early on this day, and went on business to the

great city, twelve miles away under the mountains, and let Santa Rosalia have its fooling since he had no

And Santa Rosalia had it; very peacefully and piously at first, and then very goodnaturedly and gaily,

mingling the sacred and the profane in an innocent jumble, singing the O Salutaris one moment devoutly as

they followed the Host, and the next, humming waltz music merrily as they jumped round in the dance.

Italian merrymaking is no longer pretty; the sense of colour and of harmony is gone out of our people, whose

forefathers were models of Leonardo and Raffaelle, and whose own limbs, too, have still so often the mould

of the Faun and the Discobolus. Their merrymaking has nothing of the grace and brightness of French fairs,

nor even of the picturesqueness and colour of the German feast and frolics; even in Carnival, though there are

gaiety and grotesqueness, there are little grace and little good colouring. Yet the people enjoy themselves;

enjoy themselves for the most part very harmlessly, and very merrily, when they forget their taxpapers, their

The village enjoyed itself this day of the Feast of God, though its piazza was very dusty, and its band very out

of tune, and its food and its drink as thoroughly bad as they could be. But it was Corpus Domini, and

everyone was happy; and when the long procession had said its last prayer the trescone began in the square,

Messer Nellemane, being compelled to return by the last diligence that ran to Santa Rosalia from the town to

which he had gone to escape from the ceremonies and festivities, found himself at ten of the night in a still

crowded piazza as he descended from his rickety conveyance. The Municipality was black as crepe; that he

could ordain; but every other house round the place was twinkling with the flame of lighted oil in little iron

sconces; the very same sconces that had been used in the Cinque Cento to celebrate feasts and frays and

The lights were blazing brightly; the music was sounding jocundly, the youths and the maidens were going

round and round, laughing and chattering as they jumped. The drum stood on a pavement with the honest dog

of the mill guarding it, and Carmelo was dancing with Viola, while old Pippo and the miller, sitting on two

A shining sky was over them all; the river glistened in the strong moonlight; the air was heavy with the scent

of the lilies and the stocks, the carnations and the roses in the gardens around. Saint Rosalia was in festa, and

the two old men, warmed by a little more wine than usual, were saying one to another.

'They might as well wed at once? They will never be richer, and there is no time like youth.'

Messer Nellemane did not hear the words of the old men, but he saw the young dancers.

He went on sullenly, with his hat drawn down over his brows, pushing his way through the crowd without

He slammed his door, and went to his bed, and shut his shutters to shut out the shining heavens, the fragrant

air, the glittering little lights; but the laughter, and the music, and the joyous blithehearted murmur that rose

up from the dancers below the shutters, he could not exclude; and he cursed them.

For the first time his liberi pensieri were distasteful to him and unsatisfactory; for atheism makes a curse a

mere rattle of dry peas in a fool's bladder as it makes a blessing a mere flutter of breath. Messer Nellemane

for the first time felt that the old religion had its advantages over agnosticism; it gave you a hell for your

In the next week there came a little party up to the Municipality of Santa Rosalia. They were Pippo and his

granddaughter and the two Pastorini, father and son. They were in festal attire; Pippo wore new dark blue

hempen clothes, and had his jacket on one shoulder, and his shirt well ruffled up above his trouserband; the

miller was in his Sunday suit, all grey; Carmelo had a pink shirt and a blue necktie and a jay'swing in the

band of his wideawake; and Viola had a gown of pale dovecoloured stuff that she had bought in the town

of Pomodoro for her wedding, and had her dead mother's string of seedpearls about her throat; her pale

cheek was as red as a rose, and but for her grandfather's stout hold on her arm she would never have found

Bindo Terri, lounging in the entrance, saw the little group, and thrust his tongue into his cheek and spat on

the stone. Pastorini the elder, who was the stoutesthearted of the quartette, asked for the most worshipful the

The Chancellor, who was inside the door, and who was busy eating little black figs and whittling a stick, said

the Most Worshipful was at the Bagni for his health, but there was in his stead and equal to himself for all

intents and purposes of business the Most Estimable his secretary, Messer Gaspardo Nellemane.

The miller said stoutly: 'Then his Most Estimable the secretary let us see. It is a matter that brooks no delay,

Thereat Demetrio Pastorini laughed, and chuckled, and winked, being a merry man, and the Chancellor bade

them go on up the stairs, and on the landing place, at a door to the right, they might enter, he said; then he

returned to eating his figs and throwing the skins on the floor of this august place where children were

They went on up the staircase, and at the door the elder Pastorini rapped with his staff.

'Enter!' said the voice of the high functionary of state within, and they entered and stood in the presence of

A single gleam, like the glitter of a steel mirror in moonlight, lit up cruelly and fiercely the eyes of the

A moment more, and the evil light ceased to shine in his regard; he smiled a pleasant and condescending

'Ser Fillippo, gooddaySignora mine, you look as fair as the morning. Signore Pastorini, what can I do for

you? But I divine your errandnay, before as an official I execute your business, let me as a friend wish you

The men were subdued, fascinated, deceived; they thought what a good comrade this tyrant of the community

could be; the maiden alone was not blinded; she had seen the first, fell, fierce gleam of her village Faust's

eyes, and it had stabbed her like a knife. The smile that had replaced it was no lovelier to her than would have

Messer Nellemane said some more polite words and wellturned assurances of friendship, and old Pippo

thought, 'He'll never go against me for the rushes and the water nowafter all this.'

Then the Syndic's secretary proceeded with the Syndic's work of registration and wore an unruffled brow.

The intended marriage of Pastorini Carmelo, aged twentytwo, and Mazzetti Viola, aged seventeen, was

formally announced in print, and stuck up, for all the commune to see, behind a dirty glass in a dirtier frame

with those admirably delicate and spiritual formularies which modern governments deem necessary for the

Then Viola took off her pearlcoloured gown and went to make some bread, and Carmelo tucked up his

sleeves and went forth to work amongst the sacks till nightfall, and both knew that when the round moon

should want and grow a slender horn once more in the summer skies, the day of days would dawn for them.

SOON after Corpus Domini the Rosa water became too low to turn the great wheel of the Pastorini's mill.

This often happened in Santa Rosalia now that the woods of the convent and of other hills in the stream had

been felled, and that farther up in the province, at the making of the new railway, whole forests of sweet

chestnut and of pines had been destroyed; needlessly in most instances, only that so fine an occasion for the

making of loot could not of course be missed by the army of contractors, landowners, and officials of public

'I never knew the like when I was young; there were always four feet of water even in the Leone month, ' *

said Demetrio Pastorini, scratching his head wofully as he gazed down on the sundried wheels and the

shallows that showed all the pebbles and the sand, the water weeds and the little fishes.

'Lord amercy!' said Pippo, 'when we were young, things were let alone as God made them; now they're

always messing and muddling, and thinking as how they could have built the world a deal better.'

'I suppose it's that,' said the miller sorrowfully. 'Never when I was young was Rosa dry. As fast as wheat was

'It's along of the meddling and muddling,' said Pippo. 'Why Lord! they do say that beyond Pomodoro on

Old Pastorini sighed: he was a better educated man than old Pippo, and he knew that into the quiet, sweet,

pastoral lands there were coming the 'buzzing and muzzing' of those unsightly machines which are the best

friends of socialism, being the gain of the proprietor, and the curse of the peasantry, everywhere throughout

He had never heard of Virgil and of Theocritus, but it hurt him to have these sylvan pictures spoiled; these

pictures which are the same as those they saw and sang; the threshing barns with the piles of golden grain,

and the flails flying to merry voices; the young horses trampling the wheat loose from its husk with bounding

limbs and tossing manes; the great arched doorways, with the maidens sitting in a circle breaking the maize

cone from its withered leaves, and telling old world's stories, and singing sweet fiorellini all the while; the

hanging fields broken up in hill and vale with the duncoloured oxen pushing their patient way through

labyrinths of vine boughs and clouds of silvery olive leaf; the bright laborious day, with the sunrays turning

the sickle to a semicirclet of silver, as the mice ran, and the crickets shouted, and the larks soared on high;

the merry supper when the day was done, with the thrill and thrum of the mandolini, and the glisten of the

unhoused fireflies, whose sanctuary had been broken when the bearded barley and the amber corn fell prone;

all these things rose to his memory; they had made his youth and manhood glad and full of colour; they were

here still for his sons a little while, but when his sons should be all men grown, then those things would have

ceased to be, and even their very memory would have perished, most likely, while the smoke of the accursed

engines would have sullied the pure blue sky, and the stench of their foul vapours would have poisoned the

He roused himself, and said wearily to Pippo, 'There is a tale I have heard somewhere of a man who sold his

birthright for gold, and when the gold was in his hands, then it changed to withered leaves and brown moss; I

'Truly,' said Pippo, who did not very well understand. 'But what has the world to do with us? We have done

'It is all "world" now: that is the worst of it. There is no country, or soon there will be none. Even Rosa water

Pippo went home to his daughter, and said : 'The end of all things is a'coming: Rosa is drying up; I do not see

how you can marry if the mill stops. To be sure you could always live in this house, and Carmelo could

Viola's eyes filled: she did not mind how poor Carmelo and she might be, but she thought it would be such a

terrible shame to him to be a bracciantea day labourereverybody looks down on these, and nobody is

Viola never contradicted her father; but she slipped away, and went inside San Giuseppe, which stood in the

piazza, and prayed to that Bohemian S. John who is the patron of all running water, to set the Rosa flowing

Messer Nellemane met her straight, face to face, as she came out of the church and he out of the caff�: he

She murmured some unintelligible words, coloured hotly, and ran towards her own door, her little yellow dog

'A dog loose!' said Messer Nellemane to his myrmidon Bindo, who was near. Bindo muttered sheepishly that

'Little or large; what is the use of rules if they be not enforced?' said the uperior, very sternly. 'A little dog

'And that is true, signore,' said Bindo. 'And besides they never pay any tax for this one.'

Messer Nellemane made a note of the fact, and the next day took the taxgatherer to account for leniency and

When in the evening the great man sat on his usual green iron chair in front of the Nuova Italia with his

comrades and colleagues, fat Maso and thin Tonino, he saw the young Pastorini, Carmelo, with his two

brothers, stop the millhouse mule before Pippo's house, and Viola come out to talk to them on the doorstep.

There is the miller's cart,' said Messer Nellemane to his colleagues. 'By the way, I hear, the mill has not

'It never used to be dry. It used to be a very deep stream,' said the Chancellor. 'I cannot tell the reason of it,

Messer Nellemane gave him a glance of scorn: the Lily lake had been a beautiful piece of water which had

been drained, as a speculation, by a rich man, and the draining had been called progress and patriotism,

though it had destroyed great beauty of scenery, and been the ruin of some three hundred families of

freshwater fishermen. All the syndics and their councils had admired the work exceedingly.

'It is very injurious for the interests of the province,' continued Messer Gaspardo, 'to be dependent thus on the

caprices of a river. It would be a great thing if a steammill could be established.'

'Ouf!' said little Tonino, opening wide his eyes. 'And what would become of the Pastorini?'

'The interests of the few must always be subordinate to those of the many,' answered Messer Nellemane, with

his usual excellence of phrase and opinion. 'It is quite absurd in these practical times for a whole commune to

be dependent for its bread on the accident of a river being full of water. We must see what can be done in the

matter. Of course,' he added, 'it would at the moment be very hard upon the miller and his family; but

someone must always suffer for any great work, and the cause of progress is sacred,'

'Just so,' said Maso and Tonino in concert, being always convinced, if not en lightened, by the magnificent

'There was some talk of such a mill before the Cavaliere went to the baths,' said their instructor, though he

had never until that moment ever thought of such a thing. 'And, certainly, if the river continue to run dry like

this, something must be done. The miller is not very well off as it is, I believe; and this is an improvident

'Alas! no,' said Messer Nellemane, who was never vulgar, with an air of regret. 'It is these hasty and

impecunious marriages that bring about the beggary of the nation. They ought to be forbidden by the law.

'They have no voice in politics,' said Messer Nellemane, coldly: he was a very literal man, and never saw a

'What a minister he would make!' said Maso admiringly to Tonino, when their great man had left them to go

and read the 'Diritto,' which had come to him by the evening's post: the little girl of Nando running over with

'Ah, he would indeed!' assented Tonino; but there was no great warmth in the assent: Messer Nellemane

That night, as it chanced, old Annunziata was coming home alone along a path across the fields from one of

the farmhouses in the hills. The massaja there had been very good to her, and had given her some eggs; not to

eat, for Annunziata would have thought that wild extravagance indeed, except at Pasqua, but to sell for her

On this path, dark with twilight and the thick canopy of overhanging pines, the old woman was accosted by a

drunken fellowa smith from the forge above at Sestrianowho shook her, jeered at her, and carried away

her basket of eggs. The poor old soul went bruised and weeping down towards Santa Rosalia; she mad made

a good fight for it with her oaken stick, but she had got blows in return, and had lost her eggs.

She met Carmelo Pastorini as she neared the village, and told him what that drunken lout, Pomp�o of

Sestriano, had done to her. Carmelo listened with all his bright face lit up in a radiance of wrath, and before

she could stop him had dashed up the hill path, had overtaken the staggering scoundrel, and had rescued the

But Carmelo thought that he would not tell her that: he had a little money of his own, allowed him by his

fathervery littlefor tobacco and his clothes: he had a franc left, and he strode farther up the hill, and

bought a dozen eggs at the first farmhouse that would sell them. 'It will be only to go without a pipe for a

Annunziata was home again in her chamber with the other old women by the time Carmelo reached Santa

Rosalia, and she had to get out of bed and speak to him, as he threw a stone at her shutter.

'I have got back your eggs, 'Nunziatina,' he shouted to her. 'Let me down a bit of string, and you can draw up

The old woman, laughing and crying with joy, did as he bade her, and the eggs were drawn slowly upward

'Not I,' said Annunziata. 'I wouldn't put a poor toad in the lockup for a bag of gold if he took it of menot

'Good night,' said Carmelo, and went away, humming to himself, Nel mezzo del mio petto � una ghirlanda, E

But as not a mouse squeaks in its own hole without all the countryside chattering about it, this encounter

with Pomp�o of Sestriano got wind, and all the village was talking of it next day. The story ran here and there

In consequence the carabiniers, at Messer Nellemane's instigation, visited Pomp�o at his forge in Sestriano,

and visited Carmelo at his father's mill, and great fuss and noise were made about it, and the two men and the

old woman were summoned to the Municipality. ___________________ Around my breast there is a

garland, And on it's writ the name of Viola, And four angels of God make melody!

The old woman, trembling like a leaf for her very life, for she had never been called up by the police in all

her years, made light of it, and said she 'was sure that 'P�o had but done it as a joke.'

'The law does not recognise jokes,' the law said to her by the august voice of Messer Nellemane, who was

Pomp�o himself declared that he had no remembrance of anything at all; and most likely spoke genuinely, for

he had been very much the worse for wine; and when he had awakened on the hillside at morning had not

'P�o was drunk,' he said, 'and I knocked him down to get Viola's aunt's basket away from him, but he heeled

over as if he were made of straw and fell on the grass under the vines, and there I left him. I broke none of his

'The Law knows everything,' said Messer Nellemane, with a frown, 'and for concealing a theft there is a very

Annunziata, beholding the blanched, scared, stupid face of the sottish smith, felt all her courage and her

'Holy Mother! sir, most illustrious, I mean,' she cried in desperation, 'there wasn't a bit of harm of any sort

done, and I am certain the poor fool took them from me not knowing; and he wouldn't hurt a hair of my head

if he were sober; and the eggs were all safe and sound, and nobody could go against anyone when the eggs

were all got back; and as for me, not a soul would I put in prison if they cut the gown from off my waist; not

'Woman!' thundered Messer Nellemane, losing his benignity before these atrocious principles, 'do you dare to

insult the majesty of the Law? Abstract justice is alone fit to govern any human action. You have a duty to

'Me, sir!' cried Annunziata, and muttered to herself, 'Welladay! one does live to come to something.'

'Which must be above all personal considerations. Let us examine for a moment to what your astounding,

your inexcusable, laxity of principle would lead. You would actually establish the frightfully immoral fact

that, if stolen goods were returned intact, the theft would be condoned, effaced, become as though it had not

been! You ignore entirely the moral heinousness of the crime. You take the low and debasing view that the

only thing of importance in a theft is the pecuniary loss it may inflict! Whether your goods were returned to

you safe, or were destroyed, is altogether beyond the question. What moral teachers have you had, woman?'

Annunziata dimly comprehended that her morality was impugned, and her little black eyes blazed with

'I have been a decent person all my days, sir,' she said with a resentful fierceness in her voice. 'I was a good

wife while my poor man lived, and since he died, thirty year or more ago, never have I done a thing he'd be

Messer Nellemane paid no attention to her whatever, but continued his dissertation, to which Carmelo

listened with a merry grin upon his face, Pomp�o stupidly with open mouth, and the Chancellor, the

Conciliator, and Bindo Terri, with his colleagues, in attitudes expressive of righteous awe and overpowering

admiration. Finally, Messer Nellemane, unwillingly felt that no judge would sentence with any severity for an

offence nonproven, and prosecuted against the aggrieved person's will; yet, reluctant to let them escape

altogether, he decided that after this unofficial examination that the Sestriano smith should be summoned to

appear at Pomodoro, to be there judged for drunkenness and attempted theft, and that the miller's son should

pay a fine of twenty francs for having taken the law into his own hands in lieu of summoning the police, an

'Those are the dearest eggs that were ever laid, mother!' he whispered to Annunziata.

'And that poor soul to go to prison for me! Oh dear, oh dear! And the gentleman won't hear a word that I say!'

'You will have to be witnesses at the trial of Pomp�o,' said the guard Bindo, with keen relish, to them, as the

'Nay, I'll never say a word against him, poor creature. When the wine's in the wit's out,' said Annunziata.

'I'll say again what I said in there,' added Carmelo, 'and that's just the truth; he went over at a touch like an

owl in noonday. And as for you Bindo, if you had against you all the witnesses that see you in the caff�s,

Bindo growled and muttered something about his wish that Carmelo and all his people should be burnt.

'Sia brucciato!!' remains a favourite imprecation in the language, having been transmitted no doubt from the

Carmelo went onward, disregarding the storm he had raised, and singing at the top of his voice the stornello:

What did Bindo's wrath or the punishment of hanging over the drunken head of Pomp� of Sestriano matter to

him? He was not more selfish than another, but he would not have been a youth and a lover if he had had

The papers of the marriage had been long enough behind the wire cage and the dusty glass of the communal

palace, and the time had rolled on until now on the first day of July he would be wedded to Viola, and only

fortyeight hours separated him from that morn. He ran along the village laughing and singing, with a fresh

rose stuck behind his ear and a fresh ribbon round his hat, and reached the house with the white and blue

Madonna, and went in and sat in the windowsill, looking down on the girl's hands as they plaited, whilst

'You were so good to 'Nunziatina,' said Viola, raising eyes to his that were wet with tears of pleasure.

'Che!' laughed Carmelo, swinging his shapely bare feet against the wall of the window. 'Won't she belong as

MEANTIME Bindo slunk away across the square, fumbling at the revolver with which the commune had

lately armed him on pretext of mad dogs, and meditating within himself on his vengeance. Suddenly a bright

The favourite mission of Bindo was to poison dogs. Messer Gaspardo hated dogs; hey had an unfortunate

way of smelling at him which made people laugh and remember the old saying that a dog can smell a rogue,

and hurt his dignity in his own sight and that of others. Moreover, courage does not characterise the tyrant

always; though Atilla was brave, Messer Nellemane was not. He was afraid of dogs; and he had made it

Article I. of Rule I. in his Regulations that a free dog was never to be seen in all the length and breadth of

But there will always be dogs loose, all Regulations to the contrary notwithstanding, for there is no

population anywhere in which everybody is a poltroon. So, as loose dogs still trotted about the commune, and

led their pretty, merry, brisk lives under his very eyes, in impertinent disregard of Article I., Rule I., Messer

Nellemane had at once bethought himself of poisoning them. Phosphorus was cheap and deadly, so were

ratpoisons, and when fried with liver as Bindo fried them, and thrown about in the dust of the highway, they

stretched many a gallant hound low, and left many a puppy rigid and swollen after an agony more terrible

than the hanged malefactor suffers; whilst for those that his poisoned polpetti did not slaughter he wore out

the lives of the owners thereof with summonses without end and fines without mercy.

It grew to be the general belief in Vezzaja and Ghiralda that you had better stab a man than keep a dog, and

Carmelo, like most sons of the soil, was fond of his dog, a fine curly white fellow, strong and young like

Carmelo himself, who was called Toppa because he scared away robbers. Toppa, by choice, kept close about

the mill, and in that little boschetto of poplars which had belonged to the Pastorini longer than men could

remember; for he was a good and dutiful dog, and knew that if he went roaming, thieves might break in and

steal. Therefore Toppa rarely fell under the head of a contravention, since even Article I., Rule I., could not

Nevertheless, on Toppa the evil eye of Bindo had often fallen, for Bindo had been pinned by Toppa more

than once in unregenerate days before becoming a functionary of the State; and moreover, Messer Nellemane

had said, 'That dog at the mill looks dangerous; he barks when anyone passes;' which hint sufficed for the

guard now that to natural cruelty was united the thirst of personal animosity. At dawn, whilst the mists of

earliest morning were still white on the river and the hills, he walked warily within sight of the little wood by

the mill, intent alike on hurting Carmelo and pleasing his patron. Toppa was lying with his head between his

paws on the grass on the bank; he kept wide awake all night from his strong principle, and now when the sun

had risen, knew that he might slumber and dream in peace without peril to the homestead.

Nevertheless, when he heard a step fall upon the thick dust of the road, Toppa, although he was no longer

sentry, performed a sentry's part and rose, and ran, and looked. He kept within his own boundary, as he had

been taught to do, being a very faithful dog, and only looked; a cat may look at a king, says the old saw, but

Bindo spoke not a word, but he threw something he held in his hand from the road where he stood into the

Toppa was at no time very well fed, no dog is in the country; and he had not eaten since sunset. His nostrils

smelled an odour savoury and sweet to them. The thing lay in his own grass, within a foot of him; he drew

close to it and smelt it closer; it was a fried slice of liver rolled up in a tempting way. He ate it. Almost in an

instant he staggered, strove to vomit, became convulsed, gasped, and gave a strangled, hollow moan, then

Bindo leapt to him, seized him by the skin of his throat and back, and dragged him into the highway; the dog

was quivering, rolling, panting in agony as the poison burned and tore his entrails.

Leaving him there, Bindo slunk away. Toppa lay in the dust, mute in his death throes; his snowy, curly body

swelling and writhing, his bright brown eyes protruding, his tongue forced out, his lambs paralyzed; suffering

as men deem it too cruel to make murderers suffer. Within a stone's throw of his master and his friends, he

could not raise a cry, he could not move a limb. The burning hellish poison had its way, tearing, consuming,

Presently the mists began to yield to the lovely light of the fuller day; and in the sunshine on the lonely road

Toppa lay dead; foam on his lips, a little blood upon the dust that he had vomited even as he died.

A few moments later Carmelo, who seldom forgot the dog, came out under the poplars to call him for a bit of

bread; he called in vain; knowing that Toppa never wandered away, and was ever alert to answer his voice, he

stepped across the strip of woodland, meaning to whistle down the road. His eye fell on the dead body in the

dust. He threw himself on his knees beside it. One glance told him the truth; one instant he gave to grief,

Then on his feet he leapt; with a great shout to all the saints of heaven for justice, he ran fleet as a deer down

the road to see who was in sight; the name of Bindo Terri sprang to his lips, and the figure he saw afar off

Swift as the hurricane the young fellow tore in the wake of the guard, who now was spurred with a dire terror,

and ran not knowing what he did. With one last bound like that of the hound on to the wolf, Carmelo seized

'You have!' swore Carmelo, with an oath, and shook the slenderer form of the guard in his grip.

'I have not killed him, no. He may have picked up poison on the roadit is the law, the law allows it.'

Without a word the more, he dragged him to the edge of the wood where some wood was lying for fencing,

and with his other hand snatching a stave of oak, swung Bindo Terri backwards and forwards, striking him on

the head, the arms, the shoulders, with the wood the while; men were at work in the vineyards beside the

road; they screamed, and ran, and caught the arm of the young Pastorini, and, being five to one, wrenched

him asunder from the trembling frame of Bindo, being willing enough to see harm wrought on the body of

the guard, but afraid of the law if they looked on at the death of one of its myrmidons, and Carmelo, left

The moment that the vinedressers freed him, Bindo Terri staggered away, sick, bleeding, bruised, and nearly

'He has killed Toppa!' he gasped, his eyes bloodshot, his muscles straining, his whole body writhing to be

'Ay, ay! has he done that?and he merits death himself,' muttered the eldest of the peasants. 'But they will

have the law on you, and worse for touching him, the vile little villain, that the snakes must have spawned.'

'My dog! My dog!' moaned Carmelo, as his passion dissolved into an agony of grief, and his eyes filled with

blinding tears, and dully and stupidly he went back to where the dead dog lay, and sat down by him in the

Bindo Terri was a poisoner and a scoundrel, but the arm and the shield of the law were over him, and made

The law here ordains that you cannot be arrested for anything you do, unless you be taken in the act, even

though the deed be clearly proved against you. But there are sins so heinous as to be beyond this mercy, as

the crimes in the Latin documents of the Vatican are beyond pardon, human or divine. Carmelo's was such a

You may lay a sacrilegious finger on the Host with more ease than on the person of a municipal guard. Nay,

there is more fuss when one is touched than when the King is shot at: if Passavanti had tried to assassinate a

guard instead of a sovereign, he would not have been let off the scaffold so easily as he was. Therefore, when

Bindo Terri picked himself up, staggered into the house of the elder guard, Angelo, which was within a rood

of the millhouse, an there fell down, groaning aloud that he had been murdered by the devil Carmelo, the

elder man flew, as one possessed, down the road to the picket of the carabiniers, and brought them to the spot

to avenge a foul and inexcusable assault whose end would be sooner or later death; and clamoured and roared

and raved, while Bindo, dying Bindo, raved with him, and forced the gendarmes to go and seize the assassin.

The carabiniers, with their sabres and their white belts flashing in the sun, strode straightaway, therefore, to

the mill upon the Rosa and laid hands on the youth, who sat on the bench of his house under the trees with the

dead dog at this feet, and his father and brothers and neighbours gathered around him in sad sympathy.

'But tomorrow is his marriageday!' stammered the old father, half mad himself with rage and sorrow.

The carabiniers laughed a little grimly and pulled Carmelo up roughly by his arms, and marched from the

door, pushing him with them. In their hearts they sympathised with both the Pastorini, but it was not their

'I did what I had a right to do,' muttered the lad firmly. 'He killed my dog: I beat him, the poisoner, the devil;

'You had no right even to complain. Your dog was the offender; he was on the public road,' shrieked the elder

rural guard Angelo, and shook off the miller and thrust Carmelo on between the gendarmes.

'I will go with you without force,' said the youth haughtily. 'I have no fear; I was in the right.'

And he walked steadily, only turning and pausing once to say to his father, who followed him:

'Do not come; stay and bury Toppa. Bury him just there by the porch. He will know we pass in and out, and

he will not feel alone. And tell Viola not to mind; it will go well with me; no judge will keep me for a

The carabiniers behind his back looked at one another and raised their eyebrows satirically. They knew well

Early though it was, everyone was astir, and all had heard that Bindo Terri had been thrashed by the younger

Pastorini; some had heard that Bindo was dead outright; not a soul regretted his fate if it were so; but not a

soul either dared to say what they felt or stretch the hand of friendship to the prisoner.

Only old Gigi Canterelli stepped bravely out of his shop and cried to him, 'My lad, if you want a little money

Carmelo was thankful that as the way to the prison led through the centre of the piazza they did not pass the

house of Pippo; he trusted that Viola would know nothing until his sister could reach her and soften the blow

But sad mischance would have it that in the centre of the square he met old Pippo carrying three rush chairs

God's mercy, lad, what hast been doing?' he called to his soninlaw of the morrow; and he began to tremble

'Grandfather,' he said tenderly; it was the first time he used the name; 'do not be alarmed. Bindo Terri killed

Toppa, and I have avenged him; that is all. The good judge will judge me innocent.'

'O Lord, O Lord!' groaned Pippo, all in a palsy of fear and sorrow; 'what matters of being innocent? If you

touch a hair of the head of those slavedriving, venomous, viperous jackanapes it is all over with you, all

over with you! And tomorrow your weddingday, and my girl at home stitching the veil; O Lord, O Lord!'

The carabiniers hurried Carmelo onwards. 'A pestilent, seditious, foulmouthed old tongue that fellow has,'

said they to one another; and they thrust the young Pastorini with scant mercy into the place of detention; a

square bare cell with a brick floor, damp and dirty, and a barred door and a little grated casement high up in

'All in good time,' said the carabiniers, and banged the door to on him, and drew the bolts outside it.

Meanwhile, Viola, sitting in the doorway with the little brook running babbling over the stones in front of

her, was stitching some orangeblossoms she had picked off a tree on to the veil she would wear on the

morrow; she was singing in a soft low voice one of the lovesongs of the country: Al pi� d'un faggio in

sull'erba fiorita Aspetto, aspetto, che gi� cada il sole; Perche quando sar� l'aria imbrunita Appunto allor vedr�

spuntar il sole, Levarsi quel bel sol che m'ha ferita, Che mi ha ferita e che guarir mi vuole. E questo sol, ch'io

dico, � il mio bel damo, Che sempre io gli riprico io t'amo, io t'amo, E questo sole � il giovanettin bello Chi a

She was happy. The fear of her powerful tempter and enemy had passed away from her, and the future smiled

at her with the eyes of love and faith. A life of labour, of poverty, of fatigue awaited her, but also a life of

sunshine, of affection, of peace; to the first she was well used, the second seemed to her heaven.

___________________ At foot of hill, amidst the flow'ring grass, I wait, I wait, until the sun shall set;

Because, when all the air is dusk and dark, Scarce will the drooping sun the night have met, Than will arise

that sun which wounded me, Which wounded me, and now my cure will bring; And this fair sun, I tell thee,

is my love, To whom, in echo, 'Love, O Love!' I sing. And this fair sun is that most beauteous youth Who,

THERE was no court open that day at the Pretura, and the Pretura was seven miles away in another

commune, Vezzaja and Ghiralda not being blessed with one, and for criminal matters and large debts being

bound to betake themselves to the larger township of PomodoreCarciofi, though small civil causes were

So the long hours rolled on, and Carmelo remained in the dirty cramped little den behind the barred door. His

father and brothers and poor sad old Pippo came to visit him, and the Pastorini paid for him to be kept apart

from any other malefactors, and Gigi Canterelli sent him a smoking dish to break his fast with, and a flask of

wine. But Carmelo could scarce touch either, and had hardly a word to speak except over and over again he

No other ideas save these seemed to be in his brain; he was dull, and yet fierce; quite changed from the gentle

'God forbid I should say that you did wrong; who would not have struck a blow for the poor dog?' said his

father weeping. 'But oh, the pity of it, to see one of my honest sons in these thieves' den!'

For the Pastorini youths had never had a stain or slur upon their name, and for many a generation the men at

'I did right!' said Carmelo doggedly, and his brothers all echoed, 'Yes, you did right. But alas!alas!'

Meanwhile Messer Nellemane stood by the bedside of Bindo, who had taken to his bed at once, and groaned,

and shivered, and vowed all his bones were broken, and the complaisant apothecary rolled him up in wadding

soaked in almond oil, and pretended he might die; Messer Nellemane, tenderly regretful and benevolently

'My poor, poor fellow! This is all your reward for a too zealous love of duty, and of course you never touched

Bindo opened wide his eyes, and almost grinned in his employer's face; then, recollecting himself, gasped as

'Not I, Signore; he was stiff and stark, poor beast, when I came upon the road.'

'Precisely, ' said Messer Nellemane. 'That will be put in evidence. The Pastorini have long borne you a

grudge, you say, and took this excuse to pay it off on you. A shocking case. A most brutal assault.'

He shook his head as he spoke, above the bed of the victim, and the pliant apothecary shook his.

'Contusion of the vertebra,' he murmured, 'and sympathetic action may supervene in the heart and lungs, and

'Hush! he has youth on his side,' said Messer Nellemane tenderly, and stroked the curly head of the guard as

he might have stroked a child or a puppy, had he not happened to hate both pups and children.

When he left the sick chamber, taking the parish doctor with him, the invalid sat up in bed and shouted to the

'Give me my pipe and a beaker of that Vin Santo, and fry me some tripe and artichokes, and hand me the

The Book of Fate was the teller of dreams and foreteller of lucky numbers for the public lottery, and with this

favourite literature, and his tobacco, and his wine, the murderer of Toppa passed a brave and merry day, even

though he was supposed to be upon his deathbed, and was wrapped up in oil, and had begged to see the

priest, and had all the sycophants of the place (which, to do Santa Rosalia justice, were not many), coming

At home Viola was passing the bright hours weeping and kneeling before her little clay figure of the Mother

Old 'Nunziatina was seated beside her, rocking herself to and fro on her elm staff.

THE long bright day and the short luminous night passed, and melted into dawn once more, and Carmelo saw

the sunrise of his marriage morn glow on him from the iron bars of a prison cell. At eight of the morning the

carabiniers put him in a little vehicle, and took him away to PomodoroCarciofi; making him sit between

them, and looking very droll themselves in the little swinging springless cart, with their sabres sticking out on

each side, and their cocked hats as stiff as Napoleon's upon the Vend�me column.

PomodoroCarciofi was a twin township, as BudaPest is a twin city; it was very small, very dusty, very

ugly; there were a good many dyers in it, and the smell of the dye was in its atmosphere; it had a noble

campanile and some fine frescoes of Luini's, but nobody ever came to look at them; it had also had an

altarpiece of the Memmi's, but one fine day somebody had sold that, and it being everybody's, and so

nobody's, business to punish the thief, it went unpunished, and a large oleograph was stuck up by the

municipality in place of the Memmi, and the townsfolk liked it better because it had more colour in it.

The court of law was in a dull, grim, stone house that looked upon a blind wall at the back of the church that

rejoiced in the oleograph; and ugly square room, which had been newly whitewashed, was the audience and

judgment chamber; and here all criminal cases of the rural commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda were tried and

decided by the young attorney who administered the law to some ten thousand persons in all matters, from a

fiftyfranc debt to murder, arson, and theft, and who had for his salary about as much as one gives one's

The country is divided into districts; each district has its own Pretore, who unites in his one illpaid person

the onerous duties of countycourt, civil, and criminal judge. In England the first of these offices is deemed

worth as many hundreds a year as it gets pounds here. That, notwithstanding such treatment, the Pretureship

is sometimes filled by very excellent and upright men, is a credit to the legal fraternity of Italy; it is no thanks

to the administration. A man has the peace, the purse, the virtue, the liberty, almost the life, of a whole

community in his hands, and he is paid less than a groom or gardener!as a jewel in a toad's head is a just

The country Pretore can be harassed by the King's Proctor, and his verdicts can be protested against in the

city courts, but for the main part, and certainly over all the poor classes of his districts, he is unresisted and

his decrees are inviolable. Aristides in so onerous a position could scarcely mete out perfect justice. I have

known, as I say, admirable and excellent persons in this post, and I respect them deeply; but they are rare

exceptions, naturally, and in the lonely country places the Pretore exercises a power that is practically

A crowd had got about the law court this day, for the rumour had run like wildfire that the miller's son at

Santa Rosalia had murdered the rural guard. His father and brothers, and Gigi Canterelli had come over to see

if they could aid, or speak for, him, and they had brought poor old halffrantic Pippo with them; beside these

there were the apothecary and Bindo's friends, and also the Public Minister, as the little lawyer is called who

prosecutes for the Municipality, and there were also the Chancellors and the Conciliators of both borough and

Messer Nellemane stayed at home; he was never seen in person to appear against any member of the

commune, in great cases or small. He always said this with a deprecating smile, that it did not become one

who served them in the capacity he filled, to sway the balance of justice either way.

Nevertheless, he was very good friends with the Pretore of Pomodoro and Carciofi; a young advocate, fussy

and bustling, and of as shrewd a nose for promotion as ever a dog of the south for truffles; a young advocate

who hated Pomodoro and all belonging to it, and its musty court, and its simple population, and the scanty

forty pounds a year it gave him, but who, nevertheless took them all as stepping stones. In the future he, too,

This day the young man, who was a little, sallow, sharpeyed creature, by no means imposing, even though

he donned a black robe and black cap, just as those that Portia wore, took a violent aversion at first sight to

Carmelo as the accused, between the carabiniers, was marched in front of the Pretore's desk.

This day should have been the youth's nuptial day, and his heart was aching, and his blood burning, and his

face was very pale; nevertheless he walked erect, and with a firm step trod the steps of the Pretura between

Carmelo was the true peasant of his country; with shapely limbs and throat, like a young gladiator's, and a

handsome face, with the features regular, and the blue eyes large, and the skin delicate, though of a healthy,

This bold and picturesquelooking lad, who faced him with hardihood and even haughtiness, displeased the

young judge, who was himself a citybred, saturnine, and dissipated weakling. He felt at once assured that

this miller's son was a dangerous and violent character, and he listened with willing ear to all the invectives

against the accused made by the lawyer, who prosecuted on the behalf of the municipality.

The Pastorini had never known that they ought to bring a lawyer, and old Pippo, in an agony, pulled Gigi

'There's a notary against himthere's a man of law against him. O Lord! O Lord! he's no more chance than a

'Eh!' muttered Gigi with a sigh, 'in our old times one young fellow fought it out with another, when there was

any bone to pick, and no one meddled; it was the best man won; now, Lord save us! if but two cats set up

'Order there! Silence!' cried the usher; and the case for the prosecution went on glibly till, listening to it, the

Carmelo began to say to himself in amaze, 'Am I indeed this villain doubledyed?'

For the advocate of the commune, instructed sub ros� by Messer Nellemane, was a very eloquenttongued

man indeed, who, having little to do, and very small means indeed, had always his oratory ready bottled and

When he had done his plea for the prosecution, and had resumed his seat, there was no one to answer or

Carmelo and his friends knew too late the terrible blunder they had committed in their ignorance of having no

Carmelo, answering as to his age and name, and parentage, added then in a firm voice,

'Bindo Terri poisoned my dog; I beat him; yes, if I had killed him I should have done no wrong; he is a beast;

'Silence!' said the Judge. 'You can vilify no one. You are only to answer my questions, one by one, as I put

'But he is right! He is right!' shrieked old Pippo, pressing forward to the bar, behind which he and the rest of

the public were hemmed it. 'He is right! He is right! By the word of Christ our Saviour! Bindo Terri wanted

to stop my brook running; wanted to make me pay for the good God's own clear spring water'

'Take that fool out of court,' said the Pretore, and old man was carried out struggling and screaming for

Then the crossexamination of Carmelo began again in such an endless intricacy of questions that the boy's

head whirled. Wiser and more worldlytrained intelligences than his have been confused, and blurred, and

bewildered out of their own sense of memory and certitude of fact by the browbeating of such an

Did he see Bindo Terri poison his dog? No: he did not see it; but the guard poisoned all the dogs he could get

at; that anyone knew; the guard poisoned Toppa, certainly, certainly. So he kept on saying, again and again,

almost stupidly; and the tears welled into his eyes, and began to fall down his cheeks, thinking of the dead

dog, and of the maiden sitting weeping at home on the day that should have been her marriage morn.

The Pretore and, after him, the lawyer for the prosecution tormented him over and over again to much the

same purport. All Carmelo could say was, 'he poisoned the dog; he poisoned the dog.'

His father begged to speak for him, but was told it was not permitted. Gigi Canterelli, with the moisture in his

eyes, begged, too, to testify to his excellent nature and great amiability; and the Vicar of Santa Rosalia

entreated to be heard as to the youth's good and kindly character, his docility and his honesty, as one who had

But this latter witness harmed him rather than benefitted him in the eyes of the Pretore, who a libero pensiero;

and, being thus liberal in principle, would have garotted all priests, melted down all church bells, and

He said, snappishly, that the preliminary examination was not a time for the testimony of an amicus curi� to

be admitted in evidence; such could be heard at the trial itself; and then, after very busily looking over his

notes, and conferring with his Chancellor, and muttering, and scribbling, and frowning, and believing that he

looked like Jules Favre, whom he had seen in a fortnightly visit to Paris, the young Pretore summed up in a

voice shrill and stern, and said that he had never heard of a more unprovoked, brutal, and infamous assault,

that there had evidently not been the very slightest excuse or provocation for it, and that as the evidence of

the most excellent the apothecary went conclusively to prove that the life of Bindo Terri had been imperilled,

and that the said Bindo Terri still lay prostrate in a state that might at any moment bring about a fatal end, and

in which it was quite impossible to be able to examine him personally, he deemed it inconsistent with the

interests of justice and the safety of the public to leave the accused at liberty, guilty, by his own confession,

as he was; therefore he would order Pastorini Carmelo to be kept in durance and surveillance until such time

Carmelo stood like one scared; his eyes wide open, his face flashing crimson, his nostrils breathing hard, as

'In prison, I!' he cried in a loud voice. 'And why is he let go free, the thief, the spy, the poisoner?'

'Remove him,' said the Pretore sharply, with a frown; and the guards, taking him by each arm, forced him

When a little later, when other causes had been heard, the Vicar, a finelooking and whitehaired old man,

ventured on a private remonstrance with the young judge, the young man took him sharply up.

'Impossible!' he answered. 'It was a clear assault, a ruffianly assault; and made upon a functionary of the law.

So the friends of Carmelo could only drive wearily back in the rickety diligence from Pomodoro to Santa

Rosalia with aching hearts and weary bodies; and old Pippo, staggering in, white with lime dust of the road,

and hoarse with weeping, could only cry like a child, and sob out in broken whispers the story of this cruel

Carmelo himself was detained in the prison of the town, and Viola could only lay aside her bridal gown with

the orange petals to keep it sweet, and heads of lavender and dried rose leaves, withered like her hopes and

Bindo Terri was so elated that it was all the apothecary could do to keep him from jumping out of bed and

'But you are in danger of your life,' screamed the �sculapius, throwing his arms about the victim; and Bindo

'Let's crack a flask over the good news,' said he, and �sculapius drank with him.

Meanwhile his master, in the caff� of Nuova Italia, was smoking serenely, and wore a serious and sorrowful

'A very sad thing to befall an honest family,' said Messer Nellemane. 'But the Law must be respected, and all

The brigadier to whom he spoke assented with his lips, not with his heart; he had been a brave soldier in his

day, and did not love his work of torturing the poor, in accordance with the rules of Polizia Igiena e Edilit�.

'He was a good youth, this Carmelo,' he said hesitatingly; 'never have I seen him in brawl or trouble of any

kind, nor ever the worse for drink, nor ever in bad houses; his momentary passion overcame him.'

'The Law does not recognize passion,' said Messer Nellemane coldly, and the brigadier dared say no more

lest he should be reported to his commanding officer, away in the city, as lax in his discipline and an aider

IN the month that Toppa was murdered and his young master imprisoned for avenging him there was an

appeal to the country; that is to say, a vast number of attorneys, an equal number of adventurers, several Jews

The Ministry had been defeated on the burning question of a polltax on cows, their husbands, and their

children. The Ministry was convinced that all the bovine race should be taxed per head at the place they lived

in, as well as taxed at the gates when driven through them for sale, and taxed at the market when changed into

meat; all bulls, cows, and calves were to pay a polltax of twenty francs a head annually, and as this was

considered to hurt the agricultural interest which a progressive Ministry naturally considered of no account at

There was, however, in the Chambers an exnotary who cared not all for bulls, cows, and calves, and as little

for the agricultural interest, but cared very much for himself. He had been Home Minister once for six weeks;

he had ceased to be it on account of a ridiculous fuss that was made in the papers about his buying a piano

with the public money for a lady whose character wa light as a syllabub; naturally he always burned to

become it once more, and have his own way with pianos and all other articles, including the nation. So he had

turned against his old friends, who had not supported him loyally in the matter of the piano, and had set up

for himself in business, as it were, and had a separate set of principles and a separate little party, which was to

With the separate little party he vigorously attacked the cowtax; bulls, he said, might be called on to support

their share in the maintenance of the national expenses, but cows, never! He drew such a touching picture of

the cruelty in taxing the milkgiving mothers of the herd, to whom so many human infants, bereft of their

natural food, owed life itself, that the ladies in the gallery all wept, and the few gentlemen in the Chamber

who owned land took heart of grace, and these being further strengthened by the very large minority who

hated the Ministry for the best and fiercest of all reasons, that they wanted to be in its place, the bill was

thrown out amidst hooting and groaning and screaming, and the Ministry desired, or at least offered, to

But the King, who was tired of death of all parties, and of their squabbling, told the House to go to the

country, and dissolved Parliament. Thereupon all the attorneys, adventurers, and Jews became hopeful and

riotous, and the few gentlemen very anxious, being sadly conscious that every year they grew less and less

Now Pomodoro had the right to send a deputy for the district in which the commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda

was situated, and Pomodoro had two candidates, one the Marchese Roldano, and the other one Luca Finti, a

lawyer. Roldano was a stately, gracious, and very kindly gentleman, who had led a life as simple as it was

dignified; he had represented Pomodoro many years. Luca Finti was a very clever Neapolitan rogue, who had

been in Parliament for other places, could talk a foresttree into sawdust, as the people said, and was the

The Cavaliere Durellazzo, not a very wise man, had been set by his Prefect in the city, a not easy task. The

existing Prefect was of course a Ministerialist; Prefects always are, and in consequence are changed as

quickly as signals on a railway. With regard to the elections in the commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda, the

Prefect was in sore trouble. The commune, like the province, was reactionary, and had always returned the

Marchese Roldano, whose brother was a cardinal and whose father had been a Grand Duke's prime minister.

Opposed to the Marchese was this Lucia Finti, one of the Dissidenti who had slipped into the contest before

the Ministerialists had put forward their own candidate. If Vezzaja and Ghiralda, and the other two

communes which with it made up the Collegio of Pomodoro, divided up the little liberal feeling there was by

setting up a man all their own, the divided liberal votes would of a certainty let in the reactionary Roldano.

Luca Finti had got a start, and had trumps in his hand, through the goodwill of the strozzino Zauli, in whose

strong boxes mortgages and other engagements of ninetenths of the country gentlemen of the pro vince

were locked up in safety. The Prefect thought he saw nothing for it but to wink at the Finti election and

undermine the Finti principles. To get at the Marchese in any such a manner was hopeless. So the Prefect

coquetted with the Dissidente, and the Dissidente coquetted with him; Messer Luca Finti being an adept at

As for his principles, indeed, they were of small compass, and could be put in a handbag and left behind, if

need be, by accident. He knew very well that he who would travel quickly and scale heights rapidly must

Although at this moment in the full flower and fury of dissent, he was a very clever man, and had made the

Ministry feel that he would no longer rebel and fume if it were worth his while not to do so, and had also

made the conservative side believe that with a little persuasion and profit he would not be averse to join his

guerilla forces to their veteran phalanx, and march with them against his old comrades.

So the task set before the Cavaliere Durellazzo, as before the other syndics concerned in this election, was to

get Messer Luca Finti elected without in any way compromising the Ministry, and in such a manner that at

the end of it the Prefect would be able to issue a manifesto describing his own perfect impartiality, and his

willingness for every one to act up to conscientious convictions, however opposed to his own those

The Cavaliere Durellazzo ostensibly accepted this onerous enterprise, but it was his secretary who mapped

Moltke, with the ordnance map of France before him, never had graver meditations or finer combinations

than had Messer Gaspardo Nellemane now. A little persuasion here, a little pressure there, a hinted threat, a

welltimed bribe, a final compression of that punishmentcollar which the municipalities put on the throat of

the people, and all this to be done under the rose, behind the mask of a strict noninterventionhe never had

As he was a servant of the State, he ought to have had no vote and nothing whatever to do with the elections;

but, as Italy does not at present see the force of this great truth, all her prefects and syndics meddle and make

in all elections, and all her clerks, guards, and servants of all kinds can vote, and the result is the Montecitorio

Messer Nellemane had at once discerned the fitness of Signor Luca Finti, and Signor Luca Finti had at one

discerned the talents of Messer Nellemane. To be sure, Messer Nellemane was only the petty clerk of a petty

commune, but then Luca Finti had once been only a clerk too, and some said had been things much worse,

So there was a fellowfeeling between them, and even had there not been, Messer Nellemane would have

supported the candidate that he was ordered to support in his own efficient, adroit, and quiet way, which

Now Vezzaja and Ghiralda was an agricultural country like nearly all the rest of Italy, and it was very

unwilling that anyone should represent it who should put that abhorred tax upon the cows, therefore the

present election required all the tact and resources that a vigorous and active intelligence could command,

The Marchese Roldano, moreover, was much respected in the province, and lived like a patriarch in his great

old castellated villa, amidst his olive orchards and his chestnut woods, and was not easy to defeat.

So Messer Nellemane secretly toiled by day and night for he return of Signor Finti, and was so busy that he

scarcely remembered Viola, except when he passed the door and saw her sitting spinning or plaiting within,

very pale, very wasted, very wearylooking; and at such times his black eyes would gleam as if gas were

lighted behind them, and he would feel a thrill of rage, a glow of triumph: but at other times he was too

He even thought with a shudder that he might have compromised his public career for a woman! for a poor

Messer Gaspardo and Messer Luca had many a colloquy together, and found their views of a surprising

harmony. When all your politics and policies are summed up in the one intention to do well for yourself,

Messer Luca Finti was handandglove with the exminister who had got into trouble about the piano, and

promised if only he should be returned for Pomodoro to do great things for Messer Nellemane, who, for his

part, being shrewd enough to know that a man's civility only lasts as long as his need of you, took care to

know a great deal about the Finti method of canvassing, which would not have looked well in the light of

public opinion; while he also conceived and mainly carried out the grand design by which all the brigade of

carabiniers throughout the province was moved about from town to town rapidly and bewilderingly, so that

they scored their votes for full six candidates in six different collegie, with great success for the Ministerial

party and the cowtax, and placed the Prefect and all his grandeur for ever in the debt of the humble secretary

Not that the cowtax, though thundered against by the conservative party, was spoken of either, by any of the

ministerials canvassing in the province; they knew better; they made florid and beautiful speeches full of

sesquipedalian phrases, in which they spoke about the place of Italy among the great Powers, the dangers of

jealousy and invasion from other nations, the magnificence of the future, the blessings of education, the

delights of liberty, the wickedness of the Opposition, the sovereign rights of the people; and said it all so

magnificently and so bewilderingly that the people never remembered till it was too late that they had said

nothing about opposing the cowtax or indeed any taxes at all, but listened, and gaped, and shouted, and

clapped; and being told that they could sit at a European congress to decide on the fate of Epirus, were for the

moment oblivious that they had bad bread, dear wine, scant meat, an army of conscripts, and a bureaucracy

that devoured them as maggots a cheese. What is political eloquence for, if not to make the people forget all

Messer Luca Finti, who had that manysidedness of mind that he could have found equally brilliant

arguments either for or against any measure that he might have deemed it expedient to support, cared far

more to injure the aristocratic party than to damage the Government; the Government, indeed, having been

his own party till his leader had been annoyed about the piano. His single object was to get returned; once

returned, he, with the other Dissidenti, would trust to their natural talents to worry themselves into office,

either by reunion with their whilom friends, or coalition with their eternal foes. Therefore, he had quickly

taken the Prefectorial hint not to commit himself on the cowtax in either way; a discreet neutrality was all

that was asked of him, and that was difficult enough in face of the rampant rage of the country proprietors.

But Luca Finti, who had once been a little, naked, idle rogue by his native shores of Amalfi, could trust to his

mother wit to dazzle out of all remembrance of the main question of the elections, the elective body of the

Collegio of Pomodoro. He told them, instead, that it had been only the tact and wisdom of the Dissidenti that

had saved them from being involved in the impending war between Russia and China.

Russia and China, he said, were to be left to fight it out, but when the fight was over, Italy would allow no

treaty to be made that would compromise her rights, and would lay a claim to a portion of Mongolia, as a

Here, again, he was loudly applauded. Not a notion had they of where, or what, Mongolia was, but it was

something to be got for nothing, and which the French folks would dislike: that was enough. Not to fire a

shot, not to draw a sword, but to get an acquisition of territory, and give the victors of Solferino a slap in the

face; this seemed to his audience very clever indeed. Only one demurring voice was heard, which screamed,

'Will the Mongolians take the grapes out of the country? The French merchants came buying them up last

year, and it's a shame.' But this speaker who was a vinaio, was hushed down as a rusty and dull conservative.

To sell your grapes to foreigners, and have none at all at home is a spirited commerce, and fine free trade;

that the poor souls around are all poisoned with cheap chemicals in the absence of wine, is only an evidence

Messer Luca Finti said nothing about the grapes, but he would up with a great deal about Gambetta; one of

the dyers nudged another and said, 'That's the King's brother, isn't it?' and the other replied, 'No, No; 'tis the

German that took Paris;' and much edified, the assembled voters listened to the sonorous declarations of the

'Dear friends; bread is dearer in Italy by fifteen centimes a chilo than it is in Paris. I think that fact is more

Then the hungry stomachs applauded indeed, but the hungry stomachs were not the voters; and the dyers, and

shopkeepers, and small proprietors who had the votes were of opinion that, though, no doubt bread was very

dear, yet to talk about it did not make pretty speechifying, and said to one another, that if Italy got that bit of

Oratorical dust is easily thrown in the eyes of all multitudes, but never so easily as here.

The Marchese called a few of them together in his own room and showed them a map.

'He is laughing at you,' he said to them. 'Look where the Mongolian Empire is, and Russia and China.'

But the map did not convince them. 'If we get it for nothing, without fighting, Mongolia will be a good thing,'

they said stubbornly, and the idea grew in Pomodoro that the Marchese was a poor spirit, and unworthy to

As they were used to be led by the priests, so they were now led by the placemen.

Signore Luca Finti made his oration successfully in the Pretura of Pomodoro, speaking in the same chamber

where Carmelo had been brought to judgement, since it was the largest in that town; and the good folks who

heard him, understanding about one half that he said, and dazzled by the other half, imbibed only the

conviction that they were the glory and wonder of Europe, and said one to another that to be sure the

Then the agents of Signore Finti, sitting there as mere auditors, muttered to their neighbours that it was the

interest of the nobility everywhere and at all seasons to keep the people ignorant; and this idea worked its

way into the shaven heads of the Pomodorians and stirred their vanity as yeast stirs the flour, and made them

say one to another in the streets in the evening, as they lounged and smoked and chattered, that it was a very

fine thing to be a great nation, and to have ships bigger than any that could be boasted of even by that great

The Pomodorian mind was not wide, nor was it brilliant; it understood wine, oil, and dyes, but there it closed;

it thought England was somewhere down Rome way, as it thought Austria was somewhere over the hills; it

still believed in the priest's blessing on the fields, in the poisonous nature of frogs, in the weather prophecies

of its calendario, in hydrophobia being as common as catarrh, and in other things of a like enlightenment; it

did not in the least know what a congress meant, nor where the Epirus was, and it had a vague notion of

Europe as of a disorderly place beyond seas where you sent pictures and wine when you had more than you

Yet so strong is the power of vanity, and so strong is the power of oratory, that Pomodoro voted by a big

majority for Messer Luca Finti, because he had told them he would make them a Power, though he had never

said he would cheapen bread, extinguish conscription, or lighten any of the burdens with which the land is

ALL this while that Pomodoro was in a political fever and ferment, Carmelo languished in his prison cell.

Everyone had quite forgotten him except his father and his brothers and his betrothed. Old Pastorini had to

pay heavily for him to have a separate cell and a little better food; at least it seemed a heavy expense for the

miller, who was by no means rich, and had a large family dependent on him, and had had his gains much

lessened of late years by a great steam mill that worked at Pomodoro, and took away much of the grain of the

neighbouthood. Old Pastorini had gone to an attorney in the town and put his son's cause in his hands, seeing

how badly for want of a lawyer things had fared with Carmelo; but the lawyer had said, 'After the elections:

after the elections,' and no more could be got out of him, though he accepted his preliminary fees.

'After the elections,' said the miller with a tremulous sigh to his son, in the few times he was allowed to visit

He had known men innocent of any crime kept in prison for months and months, without being allowed a

trial; it is probably by way of compensation that assassins and thieves are allowed very often to go scot free

Carmelo had changed greatly; the lithe, active, brighteyed, sunburned youth, always at work in the air, up

when the dusk of dawn veiled the earth, accustomed to spend his blithe strength in healthy labour, was shut

up here as a young lion is shut up in a cage, and grew pallid, shrunken, holloweyed; a sullen dull anger

slumbered in his eyes, and a listless despondency had replaced this calm yet buoyant spirits.

But there was no one to take any heed of that. Even the lawyer retained for him, who visited him once and

asked him some rapid questions, said impatiently: 'There are a hundred causes to be heard before yours. I

For though the attorney had taken up his cause, being tempted by the sight of the elder Pastorinis'

wellthumbed national notes, he did not much care for it; he felt that it was not very nice work, to defend a

lad unpopular without.the municipal powers, and who was guilty of having assaulted a guard. These cases get

In the room in the Carcere where he was spending his wretched hours, of no use or profit to himself or to

mankind, Carmelo, through the open window, barred close high up in the wall, could hear the roar of the

assembled people inside the Pretura, as they were applauding this speech which was Greek to them. The

Pretura was opposite to him, and not many metres divided the one building of Law from the other.

He had heard from his gaoler what was going on; why the town was in such tumult night and day; and he

knew that one of the Liberals was standing against the old, whitehaired, regallooking Marquis.

'Perhaps if he be elected he would do something for us,' thought Carmelo wistfully. 'Perhaps he would take

away all those clerks and guards, and say the poor dogs might use the legs God gave them?'

And Carmelo's heavy heart rose a little, and he felt a little hopeful and glad when his gaoler told him, at

twilight, that Luca Finti was elected Deputy for Pomodoro by so large a majority that no ballot was needed.*

When the twilight deepened into night bands played, rockets went off, fireworks threw their manycoloured

Pomodoro drank too much, and fought a little, and rejoiced greatly, having a vague serious idea that it had

'Shall we be any the better?' said Carmelo doubtfully to his gaoler, a chatty, goodhumoured man, who was

'Gas! We had never vine disease, nor rose disease, till there was gas in the city,' said Carmelo, and here he did

not exaggerate; for in Italy neither were known until gas works were introduced.

'Well, nothing much besides, except that we are to be a bigger nation than England or any in Europe.'

'It is a place where the poor souls have no wine of their own, I think,' said the gaoler. 'And they make cannons

and cheese. You see their people over here now and then. They carry red bibles, and they go about with their

mouths open and catch flies, * and they run into all the little old dusty places; you must have seen them.'

'They will come in ships and fire at us if we are not bigger and stronger than they,' said the gaoler. 'We must

'What is the sea?' said Carmelo; for how should he know, he who never had been out of the confines of Santa

But the gaoler was not very sure himself, and so said sharply he 'had no time for talk,' and withdrew the

pewter plate that had carried in his prisoner's supper, and fastened the bolts and bars roughly, and then went

out to see the fireworks, and talk about England with people who did not ask inconvenient questions.

He found everybody excited and enraptured about the gas that was to come to them through the mediation of

the new Deputy. They did not know in the least why they wanted it; they had none of them anything to do

after dusk; they had their own pure olive oil to burn, that hurt no eyesight, and gave a sweet pale light that

suited the summer nights. But they thought that gas and a tromb�i were signs of progress and prosperity.

The railway hissed and roared twenty miles off them, where the city was; they knew that would never come

nearer to them; but they saw no reason why they should not rejoice in a tall brick chimney, staring black and

foul, and straight and frightful, up against their bright blue skies, and a hideous engine tearing up, and tearing

along, their winding country lanes. Other towns, no bigger than theirs, had these blessings; and Signore Luca

Meanwhile Messer Luca Finti was sitting supping with the Syndic of Pomodoro and the Giunta, and as the

Syndic of Santa Rosalia was indisposed, his excellent locum tenens and secretary was invited in his stead, at

Messer Nellemane had worked for Messer Luca Finti, and that one fact was quite enough for the community

A morning or two after the elections, Viola was sitting at her door with Raggi by her side.

Raggi (an abbreviation of sunbeam), so named because she was of a light yellow colour, was a little dog that

the girl had found seven years before, stray and miserable in a vine path, with a little tattered red coat

adhering to her body, which showed that she must have been a runaway dancing dog.

Raggi was never claimed by any master, and had long made the joy of Viola's life; the tricks and saltatory

talent that Raggi, when rested and recovered, voluntarily displayed, proved that her career must have been

professional, while her large liquid eyes had a sadness which betokened that she had had her share in those

vicissitudes and maltreatments which no artistic career is ever without. Raggi had quickly become the idol of

all the children of Santa Rosalia, and was a very happy little dog, though she always remained timid. She was

not old, but she would still waltz if any guitar or accordion were sounding, and would walk erect, and beg,

and beat an imaginary drum in the prettiest way possible. This morning she was sleeping on her mistress's

As she slept there and Viola plaited, not lifting her eyes from the tress of straw, there passed by the door

Angelo Saghari; the old man who had been rural guard of the place ever since Viola could remember; who

had never molested anybody, and had always seemed as harmless as the old grey cat that dozed amongst the

twine and sugar of Gigi's general shop. But old Angelo had been threatened with dismissal for supineness,

and had been fired to emulation of Bindo's deeds by the fact that half the fines went into the pocket of the

guard who was sharp enough to smell out a contravention; from a quiet, goodnatured, neighbourly soul he

had become as suspicious, spiteful, and cunning an old spy as could be manufactured by the infusion of the

spirit of the communal code. The blood of his aged veins was turning sour because Bindo and his colleague

were always getting the fines instead of himself, and so angry was he now that woe betided any luckless child

As he went grumpy and glum, because of these things, his sword hanging at his side, with which he could

hack a dog handily, though he never dared draw it on a thief, his eyes spied out little yellowhaired Raggi

The dog was certainly not chained; the dog had not even a collar; the grey hairs of Angelo stood erect with

He had known Raggi seven years, and had stood and laughed a hundred times to see her waltz, and beat the

drum, to divert the children in the piazza. But now he only beheld in Raggi an object for contravention. As to

Napolean all men were food for powder, so, to those imbued with the communal code, all living things are

'Raggi? Why it is Raggi! Are they going to tell me to tie Raggi? That would be too cruel; why Raggi is the

darling of everybody. What would the children do without her? Though, to be sure, she is a little rheumatic

'I have a right to seize the dog, and I have a mind to do it for your impudent answers,' he said harshly. 'The

dog is loose. It is an offense against the laws of the commune, as you are very well aware. Your father will be

'But, Angelo!' cried Viola in stupefaction, not believing her own ears. 'Raggi is just as she has been for seven

years and more. What has she done? What can you mean? You have patted and petted her yourself all these

'You will find it no joke,' said Angelo harshly, feeling a little ashamed of himself. 'Your dog can be no

exception to the rest. Your father will have to pay, and if I see the beast loose again, I shall take it to the

guard house, and it will be killed unless you pay twenty francs. You are warned.'

Then Angelo shuffled off, feeling that Bindo himself could not have said or done better. Viola took the little

'Oh, Raggi! What has come to the world that we are all treated like galley slaves, and you poor pretty things

like wild beasts!' she murmured over the dog; and it seemed to this gentle and pious girl that she could spring

at the cruel hearts of all these men, and stab them to death for the sheer sweet sake of justice.

'Dominiddio!' cried Pippo when he came home. 'I'd throttle Angelo sooner than I'd throttle an adder. Oh, the

vile old creature, when he has known me all my life, and saw you baptised with the holy water! Lord, Lord!

how are we to live? Was not life hard enough to the likes of us at all times? Is Raggi a wolf or a bear? Can a

dog live tied down with a string as you tie a callbird to a trap? They are mad! They are all gone clean mad,

and it is we who have to bear all the brunt of it. The gentlemen can't know of it. The gentlemen can't know.!'

The gentlemen did know of it, however, well enough, and when they sat at their weekly meeting, listened to

the reports read by Messer Nellemane, and applauded the zeal of the rural guards. None of the gentlemen

lived in Santa Rosalia itself, and when they drove through it they like to have no wooden disc rolling from a

child's hand across their road, no dog barking at their gigs' wheels; and cared very little by what means their

laws were enforced, or what poor household was sold up under their rules. For thorough, absolute, selfish

indifference to the wrongs and the sorrows of the people, there is nothing comparable to the apathy of an

Italian of the new r�gime. It is an apathy so obtuse, so selfcomplacent, and so pachydermatous, that one

longs sometimes to see it blasted and shaken into ruins by the roar and leap of an avenging people.

Angelo kept his word, and Pippo was summoned for having Raggi loose, or, according to the amenities of the

Poor old Pippo, being advised by his timid neighbour, Cecco the cooper, to do anything for peace and

quietness, went and submitted by being fined two francs, and had to go without wine for a week.

'Two francs because Raggi slept on your gown!' he said to his daughter twenty times a day; it seemed to him

Viola, trembling for the safety of Raggi, put an old bit of ribbon about the neck of the dog, and tied a long

string to it; but no municipality being wholly able to change the nature of animals, and it being quite

impossible to perpetually pin a dog to your side, Raggi walked about the piazza, and went to her playmates

the children with the string trailing behind her, and more summonses rained in on Pippo.

Not summonses alone, moreover, for there came with them a taxpaper which claimed on account of Raggi,

seven years' tax at six francs the year, and all the spese attending delay added thereto; in all, some seventy

odd francs. With this came documents for various contraventions concerning the cutting of the reeds and the

running of the brook, condemning Filippo Mazzetti in contumacy for not having attended to the various calls

for these great and punishable offences; and the sum total of this was so terrible that the old man, when it was

read to him by his daughter, dropped down, white as a sheet, and stared with gasping breath and suffocating

heart, till the terrified maiden screamed that he was in a fit, and all the neighbours ran in to help.

Pippo was not in a fit: but when one after another these papers rained in upon him with their inexorable

demands, the buoyant, brave, ignorant, harmless life of him seemed to collapse under a great terror, as a bird

He had never complained of his lot, though it had never been a good one; he had never thought it hard to have

to labour for his bread all the year round; he had accepted his destiny cheerfully, never quarrelling with God

or man about it; but now the docility of his soul turned and writhed, and he called out against his fate, and he

rose at every dawn with a great fear, like ice, at his heart. For what does ruin mean to the poor man? It means

Gentlemen who so lightly make your rules, and pass your fines, do ever you remember that? I think not; I

hope not; for your oblivion is your sole excuse, though such oblivion is accursed, and if ever there be justice

Ten days were given wherein to pay these charges: six of these days Pippo spent wandering wearily to and

fro, up and down, telling his woes now to this neighbour, now to that, staring on the documents which he

could not read, and wondering what on earth he could do. He could see no right at all which could force him

to pay these penalties. He had done nothing that he had not been accustomed to do all the years of his life;

how could he understand that all these charges had become due, just because a few men gathered together

and said they were so? Dogs had been free, the rushes had been free, the water had been free, ever since

Pippo could remember; why should they be taxed, and forbidden, and made sins of, just because those

The justice of moral laws even the galleyslave will admit; but the justice of municipal laws no poor man

recognises, as indeed there is no reason why he should, since none of theses laws serve him.

There was no sense in it at all; it was only done to put money in the purses of rogues: Pippo, though a simple

Life had never been anything wonderful to him; he had always worked hard and eaten little; he had never

seen anything beyond the vinepaths about Santa Rosalia and the dusty stones of Pomodoro: wiser people

might have wondered that he ever cared to take the trouble to get up of a morning and pull his breeches on, so

very little did each day offer to him. But Pippo never wondered; he enjoyed his life very much when he was

let alone; he had been very fond of his womenkind; he had once been a bright young fellow with lute and

song, and light limbs to dance with, and he had not forgotten all that time; when he could lie in the shade at

noontide, and get a little beaker of wine, and chat about nothing cheerily, and smoke his pipe, and hear his

village news, Pippo was perfectly happy, and did not want to end his life as Nanni had ended his, with a

It was not much of a life, to be sure; and as wearing away now like a waning light on St. John's Eve; but it

was a fresh, simple, pleasant, little life, spent on the edge of the bright Rosa water, and amongst the waving

beds of reeds; it seemed to Pippo that he would hear the sough of the rushes and see the glint of the

riverreaches even when he should be put away in a deal box against the church wall, or, as the priests said,

When Dom Lelio would preach about heaven, Pippo sitting at mass on his wooden chair, would nod and shut

his eyes, and dream of paradise, and would never be able to get any other idea of it than that shining water,

And he had always said to himself, 'Come what may, God will leave me the river;' and it had always been a

great happiness to him tho think that this little cot, overlooking the river that he loved, would be dwelt in by

But now,if he must borrow on itPippo felt that nevermore would it really be his own again.

'You borrow twopence on a thing you have, and from that minute those two pennies will eat and eat and eat

you till they swell like turkey poults at Ceppo, only it's you who burst for it, not they,' had Pippo's wife

No doubt to you gentlemen, it is very absurd to want these few francs; you and I give as much for a plant, for

a plate, for a chair, for a teacup; to face ruin because you cannot find it seems ridiculous, and yet it was ruin

If he did not pay, the Law would seize his rickety tables, and his earthen pumpkins, and his copper pots, and

would sell them, and sell his house over his head, and his bed from under him. He had done no harm

whatever, and he owed not a farthing; yet he would be treated as if he were the blackest thief, the most

shameless debtor, and all the few rags and sticks that he owned in the world would go under the hammer.

Pippo sat on this threshold and leaned his grey head on his hands, and could not understand it. 'If I had done

anything,' he said again and again; and, stupid old fellow that he was, could not see the crime.

'They'll fine the butterflies next, I suppose, for flying,' he thought wearily, as those golden, and azure, and

tortoiseshell, and white flowers of the air spread their wings against him, or floated through the light above

'Could Carmelo's father help us?' asked Viola wistfully; but Pippo shook his finger in denial. He knew that

the elder Pastorini had debts of his own from bad trade and the law costs attending his son's trial. For some

years the mill had brought in but slender returns, and the Pastorini were generous folks, and never grudged a

neighbour a place at their board. This openhanded way of living was well enough in the old times; but

No; old Pippo would not borrow of friend, nor of one whose son would wed his granddaughter. So he sat all

alone on the settle in his little stone porch, and totted it all up after his own manner with a bit of chalk. He

could not read or write, but he knew the look of figures, and he could sum up correctly. Many men, here,

know arithmetic very well who do not know the alphabet. They learn it in selfdefence against cheating.

He had all these hateful papers in his hand; papers wordy, and covered all over with writing, which was as

Greek to him, but he could understand one thing in themthe sum he was condemned to pay. There was

twentythree, and then there was twentyfive, and then there was thirtytwo, and then there was forty, and

besides these were five different sums of ten francs each; these last five were for the reedcutting; and then

there was the seventy for Raggi. He told them all up once more, as he had told them all up twenty times

before, and he made them in all two hundred and fortythree francs, and the total made his head reel, his eyes

swim, his stomach sicken; he could no more get that sum than he could get a gold chariot and six white

'What will happen if I don't pay?' he asked of Cecco for the fiftieth time; and Cecco answered , 'They will sell

Gentlemen, what would you feel if every week, or month, some power of the State could call on you for a

thousand pounds, and if you failed to pay it could seize on your estates? Gentlemen, you do not remember it,

but the five francs, or the five shillings to the poor is as that thousand pounds would be to you; nay, more, for

the seizure of the large sum would be to you at worst a lost superfluity, some luxury, some purchase, some

pleasure the less, but to the poor the loss of the little sum may be the loss of bread in health, of medicine in

sickness, of the meat that is strength, of the clothing that is decency; the loss of the little sum may be the loss

Think of this now and then, gentlemen who make the laws at ease, all the world over, and break the hearts

and destroy the homes of the poor with the fines that the English magistracy, the French mayoralities, and the

Italian municipalities alike so dearly love to wring from the poor man, standing ignorant, helpless, and utterly

What with pondering over the summonses about Raggi, and the summonses about the reeds in the river, and

the summonses about the brookwater, old Pippo was fairly crazed. He went about the village, shouting like

a dazed creature, 'My fathers cut the reeds before me hundreds of years; and hundreds of years the water has

run, and God sent it; and the little yellow dog, why, she is known to every man jack of them, and all the

'You must always pay if you haven't got a piece of paper. We'll soon have to pay for drawing our breath, or

'But I can't pay,' said Pippo, shoving his hat on the back of his head, and hitching up the band of his linen

trousers with a little puckered, woebegone face, and his tears only not falling because they were dried by his

'If I earn a dozen soldi a day, it's the best as I ever do; and, to be sure, the girl plaits, but plaiting isn't what it

was since all those machinemade hats came in, and it's barely enough for her dress that she makes at it; and

there's nought besides, nought; and its almost as dear to make your bread as buy it now the gristtax is on;

and wine, Lord! wine that I remember twenty years ago you might have almost for the asking of it, there is

now up to a franc, and not seldom a high as onethirty who's to pay, who's to pay, with victuals and drink

'If you haven't got a bit of paper you must pay,' said the neighbour, into whose head long years of municipal

despotism had hammered this one fact. 'The house is your own, aren't it? You've always said so. Well, you'll

The house was certainly his; he was not very clear how; but his forefathers had dwelt in it, and he had been

born in it; and in an old iron chest with rusty locks there were some old 'bits of paper' that he had been always

told established his right to it. But to raise money on it! Pippo did not know much, but he had always heard

that attorneys and strozzini * were the legitimate children of the devil. True, everybody was everywhere

raising money in these days; he heard say that all the big lands were writ down in the Mortgage Archives in

the city, and half the little estates too; but to Pippo's oldfashioned ideas it seemed quite as shameful to get

money on your bit of ground as to carry your pots and pans up to the Mone di Piet�.

He came of that stock of homely, honest, independent peasantry that is still existent in Italy, as in France and

England, but which all the newfangled laws and schools are doing their best to destroy in each of these

countries. To borrow, Pippo thought, was quite a thievish thing, and as bad and as mean as to send your girl

to her nuptials without her share of house linen and her decent string of pearls.

Then he had not an idea what his little house was worth: whether twenty pence or twenty million pence. It

was a little stonebuilt place, sound and solid because raised in the old days when work was soundly and

solidly done, but it had never a stroke for repair given to it, and it was very small, and had only a narrow

kitchen garden behind it, with one aged figtree past bearing, a few fruit espaliers, and some vegetables.

Pippo did not think anyone would give much for it, and the thought of raising a penny on it cut him to the

quick. 'For the strozzini and the lawyers,' said he in his perplexity, 'if they do but smell at a peach, it is down

He had not any dealings with such folks himself, but so he had heard, and so he had seen in this intercourse

with his neighbours. Had not Simone Zauli, the moneylender, who dwelt at the new white house with the

gilded weathercock and the castiron gates, on the Pomodoro road, made all his riches thus out of his

fellowcreatures, beginning as a ragged boy by stealing dogs and selling them alive, or their skins when

dead, and then lending other boys trifling sums to lose at lotto or at marra, and so progressing upward in

Nevertheless little old Pippo said to him self: 'Nanni gave in without a struggle, but I will go and ask them

to do right by me. Human hearts are good in the main, and what for should those gentlemen want to hurt a

He thought these things were done because the gentlemen did not know of them; so he resolved to tell the

gentlemen; and he brushed himself and put on his Sunday clothes, and betook himself on a round of visits.

First, of course, he went to the Syndic's villa, but there he was told that the Count Durellazzo was still away

at the Bagni; if it were anything of business, Messer Nellemane down in the village would attend to it.

'Nay! nay! as well send me to Lucifero himself,' muttered Pippo, and turned back to descend the long four

Bindo Terri, who was up there, flirting and drinking with the Syndic's pretty massaja, heard the muttered

Bindo had got about his duties once more, and though he had made himself some bruises very cleverly with

iodine and indigo, he could not affect to be ailing any longer, and had indeed got sick of lying in bed, despite

the fry and Vin Santo, and so had come up cheerfully to the Syndic's farm to guarantee as 'healthy meat' a

IT was too late that day to go anywhere else, but the next morning Pippo set forth again. He went to each of

the gentlemen of the district who formed the Giunta; there were seven of them. Two of them, as said, were

noblemen, two were small gentry; one was a doctor, one was a lawyer, and one was the moneylender Zauli.

Pippo tried the nobles first; one was at his estates in another province, and the other, who was at home, said

he was very sorry, but he could not interfere; he had no power to alter the law; he was kind, however, and

told his maestro di casa to send the old man into the kitchen to have a meal; the small gentry said much the

same, a little more disagreeably; the lawyer said that they were determined to make their laws respected; and

when the old man timidly asked why the law had been made, and suggested that they would be very much

better unmade again, grew angry, and told Pippo he was impudent, which was indeed, the last thing that

Pippo ever dreamed of being. The doctor said much the same thing as the lawyer, and as for going to Zauli,

Pippo knew that would be no good; as soon will you get peaches off an anteaten tree as mercy out of the

In Pippo's eyes, and in those of most in Santa Rosalia, Simone Zauli was as a great swollen dragon, gorged

on the bodies and the souls of other men, and he was the only incarnation that they knew of usury.

Jaded, footsore, very heartsick, Pippo trotted through the ankledeep dust, carrying his boots in his hands;

he had thought it only respectful to enter the gentlemen's houses with his boots on, but that was no reason

why he should wear them out on the common highway. He was very tired when he got home; for one way

and another, up and down hill, and to and fro, he had walked five and twenty miles, if one. But he ate his bit

of supper in silence, and went to bed. In bed another hope dawned on him; a faint one, but still something on

He said nothing to his daughter, for he held the oldfashioned opinion that women had no head for anything,

and had best be told naught, but next morning put on his festa coat and waistcoat, took his straw hat and went

'They do say he is a liberal one and has a heart for the poor,' thought Pippo, and boldly went and asked for

Signore Luca Finti, who had taken a lodging in the town, for people were now saying that the new deputy,

who was a bachelor, was thinking of nothing less than asking for the hand of Teresina Zauli, an ugly wench,

indeed, brown, clumsy, with a bearded lip, and a chignon like a melon, dressed in all the colours of the

rainbow, but worth her weight in gold, and owning all they jewels, too, of a dead countess whose affairs her

father had managed; the countess, being a poorwitted and sadspirited lady. Teresina Zauli had given her

heart to a brave young bailiff who was floridly handsome as a dahlia flower, but that was not the match her

father meant for her, and she had soon resigned herself to the idea of being a deputy's wife, and living in

Rome, and going to the Quirinal when a state ball was given, as Luca Finti's wife would do unquestionably.

The 'note' of the new deputy being all things to all men, and familiar goodnature to the entire population, the

little old dusty figure of Pippo was shown into the chamber where the deputy was taking a light breakfast of

stuffed onions and a risotto of liver and brains. Signore Finti, thinking the old man came to beg, buttoned up

his pockets, but saluted him with a sweet smile and words so bland that Pippo thought at a bound: 'he will get

He was benignity and kindness itself, for this Luca Finti was to everyone; but when he found what the errand

was he grew a little colder, a trifle less affable; for to the mind of the Deputy municipal law was sacred. The

bureaucratic mind, all the world over, believes the squeak of the official penny whistle to be as the trump of

That all the people do not fall down prostrate at the squeak is, to this order of mind, the one unmentionable

He was a long time telling it, and he told a good deal of it three times over; and he muddled it all together,

and at the close of it he damned the State in general, and Messer Gaspardo Nellemane in particular, very

Luca Finti listened patiently; but when Pippo, out of breath, paused in his cursing, he frowned, and drew

'Eh? sir?,' said Pippo. 'That's what they say in the summonspapers. Contumacious. It's a mighty long

word for poor folks that don't know what it means. What have I done? Nought! Nought! He came prying and

poking where he'd no business: he didn't make the reeds in the water; God made them. He didn't set my brook

running; God set it. As for the poor little beast, every child knows her and loves her. I have done nought. That

I'll say if I die for it. I live peaceably, and I hurt none; and this Jackinoffice comes spying on me, and

worrying me, and beggaring me, and then he calls it all contumacy! What have I done?'

The Deputy's face clouded and grew grave as he looked over the papers which Pippo had handed to him.

'They seem all in order,' he murmured a little severely: if the penny whistle has shrieked, who shall dare to

'I see nothing out of order in these,' said Luca Finti. 'Really nothing. It may fall hard on you; but you should

'Laws, sir?' said the old man hotly. 'I never broke the lawnever. It never could be put against me. They are

not laws, these tomfool's rubbish that those spies and blackguards lay their heads together to concoct, that

they may wring our money out of us when they want a breakfast, or a supper, or a drink, or a trull!'

'Hushshsh!' said the Deputy, putting up his hand with quite a shiver. 'You must not say such things. You

must never say such things. The Law is unassailable, and its administrators and representatives must be

respected. These papers are perfectly correct. They are founded on Imperial Law, and, were they not so,

every municipality has a right to make and to enforce its own laws. The regulations of your commune are

admirable ones; wise, preventative, full of an excellent forethought and caution. It is your duty, and it ought

Messer Luca Finti might have gone on in this strain for an hour, since every Italian is eloquent, or, at any rate,

longwinded and master of a million words, but old Pippo, whose slow and patient blood was beginning to

'Listen, your honor; that guard is a rogue that has been a vagabond before all our eyes ever since he could run

alone; and the clerk that makes the laws is a rogue too, only a smooth one, in cloth clothes; and wrong, to my

knowledge, I have never done; and the brook has been put there by God in heaven, and the reeds any man of

us cuts when he pleases, and no one is a penny the worse; and my little old dog is a pet of every baby about in

the place, and why shouldn't it sit at the door; and if you only will think on the cruelty of all this, and the

'My dear friend,' said the Deputy wearily, 'your head is a wooden head. You will not understand. You have

broken the law. Libel against the officers of the law will not efface the fact, but only increase your

'What is the use of you being our Deputy, then, if you cannot see to having us righted?' said Pippo, whose

'You are not wronged,' said Luca Finti with a polite contempt. 'Were you wronged, be sure my protection

should be all over you. You are not wronged at all, caro mio. You have transgressed certain just laws, and

you must be made to pay a just penalty for your disobedience. It is no use to groan,' added the Deputy, as

'You should not complain. You should confess yourself to blame. I do not see that the fines are in any way

Pippo stood quite still; the veins swelling on his wrinkled forehead and great angry tears gathering in his

There is nothing on earth so hard to endure as this tone of easy superiority, of jaunty counsel: to the old man,

with whom this matter was ruin itself, every one of the tranquil, insolent, chill words was like the stab of a

He gathered up the papers with a tremulous hand; it was all he could do to keep from bursting out crying like

'There's no right in them, and no justice,' he muttered. 'God forgive you gentlemen who ruin the poor.'

And with that he put his hat on his old white head, and turned his back on Luca Finti, and went out of the

door. The Deputy hesitated a moment, then rose and went after him: this was an old fool rightly served, he

'Here,' he said a little hurriedly. 'You must try and make a collection and pay those amounts so; they are not at

all excessive; quite just, quite just; but if you are so poor, take this to begin with; only you must not say I

'Thank you sir,' he said very quietly too. 'I came for justice not for favour, and I never was a beggar yet.'

Then he went down the stairs and Messer Luca Finti for the first time in his life felt crestfallen.

LITTLE Pippo, saying nothing more, went with the bitterness gnawing at his heartstrings, and got leave to

It was a sad sight to see that strong healthy, handsome youth, who should have been at work in the mill with

the weighty sacks pulling at his arms, shut up in prison, lying on a wooden bench face downwards, doing

nothing, grown spiritless, and yet sullen, broken in strength, and yet savage, as the dogs are that these wise

Pippo sat down before him; the old man's brown face was pinched and pallid, but he was quiet still; he felt

'My boy, these devils claim two hundred and forty three francs of me,' he said with a little quiver in his voice.

'If I do not pay they will sell me up; I must get money on the house. You know well a thing borrowed on is as

good as lost. I did think to give the girl the house in dower, when she married you. What do you say now? It

will come to you mortgaged, and that is no better than a loaf that the mice have gnawed, with all the crumb

'Curse him!' said Pippo. 'He is one of them; a scoundrel climbed up on poor fools' backs, and making more

poor fools a ladder to get up higher by, that's all. A scoundrel; a sheer scoundrel, a tongue of oil, a heart of

brass! Don't think of him! You won't mind then, Carmelo, if the old house never comes to the girl?'

'I am a felon,' said he. 'House or no house, Viola will be too good for me when I come out; I am disgraced.'

'Not you,' said the old man. 'You did right; the prison can do you no shame: all the village says that, and

Viola will be as proud to walk before the priest with you, as if you were the king. I thought I would tell you

of the house, because you had a right to look for it, and when once there is a loan on it, it is gone for good.'

'Never mind me, ' said Carmelo. 'I am so sorry all this loss falls on you. There seems a curse on us. Tell Viola

not to fret, to keep a brave heart; I shall be out in three weeks more, for certain I am that when they hear all

'Then she shall marry you,' said Pippo. 'Not but what if things go on as they are now you will breed but

'We must take our chances of that,' said Carmelo. 'If you are sure she will not be ashamed of me '

'If she were, she would be turned out of my door, neck and crop,' said Pippo. 'But there is no fear of that.

Viola is a good girl and a loyal. I am glad you do not care more for the house.'

'I do not care at all except for you,' said Carmelo, to whom in his durance it seemed that no roof could ever be

'Can you tell me of a man who lends money?' and the gaoler answered that he knew no one who would lend it

without making a profit on it, but if there were a profit to be had, then nobody he thought could be fairer than

a certain Signore Nicolo Poccianti, who dwelt hard by the west gate, and was a notary and a lender too.

'When you must be hanged, what matters the rope?' he said to himself, and by sunset on the morrow he had

three hundred francs in his breeches pocket, and he left his papers that concerned the house with Messer

Nicolo, and had put his cross before two witnesses against a long written thing that was read out to him

without his understanding any word or any sense of it, and had seen seals and signatures set at the public

When he took his place in the lumbering diligence to be borne homeward, he felt that the dust of the road and

the blue of the sky spun round him. Life was over for him, as much as though the coffin had been nailed

His little house had been very dear to him; it had made him feel proud and like a man; there had been always

that little place to live and die in, a place all his own, as much as the palace is a monarch's: now that another

'I have borrowed on the house,' he said to his daughter when he reached home, and sank into a chair, pale to

NEXT morning timid Cecco the cooper went for Pippo and paid the two hundred and forty three francs

Pippo was in bed with what is called a stroke of heat, and wandered in his speech and seemed stupid. Timid

Cecco went and paid it all because the girl asked him to do so, he being very far from sure that he would not

be incriminated in some way himself. But when they gave him the receipt for the money, the simple soul was

overjoyed, and ran back as fast as ever he could, and tore up Pippo's stairs, and went in triumph to Pippo's

'Now you have got a bit of paper,' he cried, 'they never can hurt you any more. Keep it close. Never lose it.

'Is that true? Is that really true? Will they never be able to torment us any more? Are you quite certain?'

Simple Cecco, in the honesty of his own convictions, patted her hands kindly, and said:

'Of course they can't, my dear, now you have got that bit of paper. You must keep it close, and always have it

by to show; this bit of paper. Why, my dear,' continued Cecco, with a touch of patriotic indignation, 'Do you

think after taking nigh three hundred francs from your poor grandfather, they wouldn't respect his bit of

'Why, I should say so, my dear: for what else is the tax paid for her, and that bit of paper given?'

The oneidea'd mind of Cecco the cooper could not embrace a state of things in which you pay heaps of fines

'Poor grandfather!' said Viola with her onyxlike eyes suffused and tender. 'Pray God send him no more

'Nay, nay; Dominiddio has nought to do with sending this sort of trouble,' he said, with a thickened voice and

a sort of wild gesture. 'Never lay it on God, my child. This trouble and them who made it are spawned and

A lull occurred in the storm of summonses. Some eight or ten days drifted by in peace. Raggi ran about.

At the end of the week Pippo got up and put on his clothes and went out to his daily work.

'Never to cut the reeds! Never to cut the reeds!' he muttered: but he had been cowed and terrified; he did not

dare take his reapinghook and wade in amongst the little green blowing rushes. It is the per fection of these

He got his spade and went and dug, in his little bit of ground amongst the potatoes and tomatoes. Seeing him

thus labouring the girl took heart, and began to hope all would go well. She did not know enough to realise

all the mortgage on the little house implied, and she felt sure that Carmelo would soon be free.

She called Raggi, and ran lightly up to Gigi Canterelli's shop to buy a little macaroni. She passed Messer

Gaspardo Nellemane. She coloured hotly, remembering the gifts of Corpus Domini. He uncovered his head

That night he said to Bindo, 'There are still dogs loose despite the law. Enforce our regulations.'

Bindo promised extra zeal, though it was by no means to his views to drill the populace into perfect

obedience, but rather to leave a little troop of contraventions straying about like gipsies, on which he could

pounce down for his fines at leisure, as a hawk picks one out a brood of young birds for breakfast, and takes

The next day another summons, to 'make accord on a transgression,' was left at Filippio Mazetti's. Viola

received it when her grandfather was in the kitchen garden, and after a moments hesitation thrust it in her

'It is a mistake,' said Cecco. 'Of course it's a mistake, when you have got the bit of paper! Lend me the bit of

paper, and I will go and see to it. I have been once;I can just as well go again, and not worry your

Cecco was a long, thin man, like a lath, and was very pale, and almost anything in the world set him all of a

tremble, as he would say himself, and he shook in his shoes as he went up to the Municipal Palace on his

unselfish errand. But he was a good neighbour and friend, and was fond of Viola; and he put a bold front over

a quaking spirit as he asked to see Messer Nellemane. It was the hour when the potentate gave gracious

'I have ventured, sir,' he began, with great respect in his tone, for he knew that the Secretary liked and

expected much obsequiousness. 'I have ventured, Pippo being ailing himself, as one may say, and not able in

any way to come to you, to bring your most illustrious this summons they have sent him by a mistake, sir.

Quite a mistake, as you will see, sir, for you will remember only last week giving to me, who came for him

then also, a bit of paper that set him free of all these things. This is a mistake, sir'

'We never make mistakes,' said Messer Nellemane frigidly, and glanced his eye over the summons. 'I cannot

suppose for a moment it is a mistake. But it is not in my department. However, as you seem a wellmeaning

The usciere was out, serving warrants; in his stead fat Maso, who was below cracking walnuts, as he had

been eating figs when Carmelo's weddingparty had come, responded to the summons, even tried to look

pompous and official, knowing that the master of all their destinies expected it.

'This summons, Signore Tommaso,' said Messer Gaspardo to him, with dignity yet graciousness; 'Will you be

as good as to say why it was issued? It is worded so as to call to account Mazzetti Filippo, for a transgression

of the law on the 15th ult.; that was the day before yesterday. What is his offence?'

'Dog loose, Signore,' said the fat Maso, who knew that his superior liked to do all the eloquence himself, and

'All in orderall quite in order,' said Messer Gaspardo complacently, and turned to Cecco. 'You perceive,

my friend, there is no mistake. No mistake is ever made here. I should have thought that Mazzetti had had

caution and lesson enough; he must be an extremely obstinate and perverse person. His dog was loose the day

before yesterday. He must pay two francs, and if he continue his transgression the next penalty must be

Cecco gasped: he remained standing with his mouth wide open, so amazed and so horrorstricken he was.

'But your honour,' he said with a trembling and panting voice. 'Please, your honour, here is this bit of paper;

you gave it yourself, and the taxgatherer gave such another; I paid all that mint of money for him only last

week; if it don't set him free, what was the use of it? what was the money paid for?'

This most timid man grew audacious in his grief and amazement. If a bit of paper was no protection, then to

'What was the money paid forwhat was the money paid for?' he stammered in his bewilderment.

'Everything is in order,' said Messer Nellemane, coldly eyeing the agitated creature with some scorn and more

disgust. 'What this very stubborn friend of yours paid last week were arrears; long due arrears. That payment

has nothing to do with this, nor with any future ones that his contumacy may cost him.'

'If you are come to pay the fine, pay it. If not, I must remind you that my time is valuable, and so also is that

'Lord have mercy on his soul,' ejaculated Cecco, looking all round the room with a scared expression. 'Why,

if he were as rich as a wax candle maker he would be ruined at this rate in a month!'

'Are you coming to pay the fine?' repeated Messer Nellemane, sharply hitting his desk with his ruler, as L�on

'Lord, have mercy!' moaned the cooper for the third time, and fumbled in his breeches pocket and pulled out

Cecco counted out the sum; he happened to have it in his pocket, for he had just been paid for some wine

Maso made him out a receipt grudgingly, but Cecco put it back with a feeble gesture.

'What is the use of it if you will come again directly?' said this very stupid man.

'Imbecile!' thundered Messer Nellemane. 'Every charge is separate, and every charge is just. A word more,

Poor Cecco went humbly out, fumbling in his pocket at the few pence that were left him, and sorely terrified

at his own temerity. He went home, and passing Viola, who stood with anxious face and wistful eyes

'It is all right, my dear. It was a mistake,' he said briskly. 'Onlyonlykeep Raggi with a string beside you.

Then he hurried on to his noonday meal, as he said, fearing she would question him.

'We won't have meat for a few Sundays, Guiditta,' he said to his wife. 'I had a misfortune. I lost the money

they paid me for mending the casks. Nay, never tear your hair. It is no such great calamity. How did I lose

When his frugal dinner of beans was over Cecco went to his workshop with a heavy heart and a bewildered

brain. 'Lord have mercy on us,' he said to himself as he hammered his staves. 'We'll all be ruined men!'

Meanwhile fat Maso was spending the one franc fifty centimes, that he had had for spese, on a very

comfortable meal of pork chops and fried artichokes in the back room of the shop of Gigi Canterelli, who, as

he served him, thought to himself. 'By Bacchus, I should do little harm if I poisoned the whole damned lot of

For these are the cheerful and loyal feelings in the populace that the present administrators of the Law

PIPPO was not told of that summons by either his friend or his daughter; but poor little Raggi was always

The days were very sad ones to Raggi and her mistress. The girl did all she could to console the little dog;

nursed it, caressed it, and robbed herself of soup to make its meals, but nothing could atone to Raggi for that

cruel enforced inaction; and when at night, the doors being closed, it was let loose it had lost the wish to play,

being too sad of heart. The children, too, pined for Raggi, and cried at not having the pretty little dancer with

them in their sports: but even they were no more allowed to play about the piazza or on the roads, and their

Their fathers were poor, and dared not risk incurring the heavy fines which punished all infringement of

Messer Nellemane's rules and regulations, and they kept their little sons and daughters in, with harsh threats

and harsh measures. For the men themselves grew sullen and irritable. Their hearts were with Carmelo, and

their impotent sense of neverending, everincreasing wrong wore them down with a leaden weight.

There was another reason, too, for heavy hearts in the village. A new enterprise had brought with it its usual

complement of old ways and old interests ruined. It was no less a thing than a projected tramway from the

City, sixteen miles away to the north, and Pomodoro, seven miles away to the south; and this tramway was to

pass through Santa Rosalia. Nay, Santa Rosalia was even to pay five thousand francs a year for being thus

The scheme was due to foreign speculators: foreign speculators are, to free Italy of today, what the

devouring hordes of the Huns were to the Italy of a thousand and more years ago. The nation is like a young

man come into a goodly heritage, with a swarm of moneylenders on him, devouring him at ninetytwo per

cent. Some of the latter are indigenous to the soil: the majority are English, Belgian, and American.

Tory governments have always been twitted with having a job: Italian municipalities, in this respect, are

The City never needed to go to Pomodoro, and Pomodoro scarcely ever went to the City. But what did it

You can take Italians with a trap as you can take birds; for your callbird put the boast that a thing is

American or English, and they will tumble into your trap by thousands. It is a sentiment that one feels

A country tramway, whether viewed from the point of its cruelty when drawn by horses, or its hideousness

when drawn by steam, not to speak of its peril to children, and its disfigurements of nature, may be said to be

the vilest abomination hitherto conceived by that procreator of monsters which is called Progress. But the

municipal mind is enamoured with them, and likes to see them unrolling their unsightly irons over the

birthplace of Virgil, the tomb of Ferruccio, the battlefields of Scipio and of Hannibal.

There had been much opposition to this one, in the meeting of the Thirty who formed what was called the

Provincial Council; but the dissidents had been overruled in the matter: some had houses which the company

would buy to demolish; others had angles of hedges that would also be bought at high prices; some sold the

fuel that would be burned in the engine. Some how or other, with such delicate persuasions, everybody was

reduced to reason, and the tramway had been decided on; Messer Nellemane being foremost in praise of its

project, and his friend the engineer being appointed on its staff. Indeed, it was entirely due to the energy and

exertions of Messer Nellemane, working in the name of the Cavaliere Durellazzo, that the abandonment of

'The people are never awake to their own benefit,' he said, as he overheard the lamentations of the owners of

the diligences and little carts that had hitherto sufficed to carry on the intercourse of Santa Rosalia with the

He had been fully awake to his, however; and in the arrangement for the payment of the five thousand francs

a year by Santa Rosalia had not forgotten his own services, or allowed the Tramway Company to forget his.

Every member of the Provincial Council, too, got, or expected to get, something; and so every one of them

decided that tramways were a blessing of providence; and if the speculators were making a bad speculation

that was their look out; and if the diligence owners and the carters were ruinedwhythat was theirs.

The municipalities were all of them pleased, and if the populace raged and groaned, who cared? The

municipalities attend no more than a schoolmaster attends to a child's tears over Euclid and syntax. Euclid

and syntax are for the child's ultimate good; so are taxes for the public's benefit.

Now the iron rails were, of course, to run in as straight a line as possible; and that they might do so the little

The engineers of the City end decided that it was not necessary, a little curve could spare the wood; but

Pierino Zaffi argued quite the contrary; and, as he was a clever fellow who knew how to put a case, and how

to carry it through, he got his way: the boschetto of the mill was expropriated, just for all the world as the

gardens of the Farnesina were, if we may compare the death of a mouse with the fall of a lion.

Pastorini, poor foolish man, who had been wont to fancy that what was yours was your own, and that neither

King nor Pontiff could make away with another man's property, was stunned as by the fall of a mountain on

his head when they notified to him, in the municipal peremptory fashion, that his wood was wanted, and

When Messer Nellemane, with Messer Pierino Zaffi, with other legislators and engineers, brought the great

engineer of the City down into the boschetto, without so much as a by your leave, or for your leave, as

Pastorini said afterwards, and began measuring with tapes and rods, the miller stood at his house door with

his mouth wide open and his eyes staring vacantly: then, all of a sudden, he strode across his own land, and

'It is my land. It is my land,' he said in a low thick voice. 'No man comes here but by my leave; no, not the

'Holy Father!' Messer Nellemane shrugged his shoulders as he heard. What ever such a person might have

'Of course he objects,' said Messer Nellemane. 'These people always do, to raise the price; there is no cunning

'Will you go?' said Demetrio Pastorini fiercely, shaking Pierino Zaffi, who was the man he by chance had

seized. 'Will you go? The land is mine, as the church is the Lord's, and his palace the King's. You cannot

'Let us humour him, sir,' whispered Messer Nellemane to Cavalier Durellazzo, and their business being

already done, they went; Pierino Zaffi white and shaking, for the miller's grasp had not been light, and the

'I am rid of them,' muttered Pastorini to his eldest daughter, as he strode in from the wood; but his breath

oppressed him as he said it, and his brow was crimson, and his tongue seemed to him to cleave his mouth.

The next week it was certified to him by a public document that his wood would be felled in the ensuing

November pro bono publico, and that he would receive a certain sum in proportion, valuing the poplars at ten

Pastorini, through his dull spectacles, plodded painfully through the decree; then, with his white strong teeth

grinding one on another, he tore the sheet in two and put it on the charcoal fire, then burning brightly under

'We are not to be bought and sold like steers,' he muttered as the paper blazed, 'nillywillyjust at a clerk's

With the excuse of a 'general interest' and a municipal licence, spoliation may be done in the people's name,

while the people groan, and starve, and sorrow, and die: unconsenting, but impotent as the ox that is dragged

Demetrio Pastorini had driven the men off his land, and had burned the paper; he was simple enough, like

When the diligence drivers and the small carriers gathered about the millhouse in evening time, muttered

savage oaths against the coming iron day, and condoled with him for the loss of his wood, he smoked his pipe

stolidly and only said: 'No, no! they'll not touch my trees. Mine is mine, come King or Pope against me.'

'But they will fell your wood, they have marked it out; the will be down on you, and cut it, come Ognissanti,'

If this seems to you, gentlemen, exceedingly stupid, you must try and realise what people are like, in a

country place, in the green heart of Italy. They are full of intelligence of their own kind, but they do not

understand the new ways of freedom; and they are primitive enough to fancy that a man can do as he will

Under the Liberal governments of this latter half of the century this is an impression which is rapidly being

improved away all over Europe: but it still lingers in old countries and old people as lichens cling about oaks

'They'll not touch my trees,' said the miller, positively, and he passed whole hours at his milldoor, looking

up at their columns of autumnal foilage, and listening to the rustling of the leaves as he had never done in any

He had always been fond of his boschetto and proud of it, and grateful to it; being wise enough to know how

it helped to keep the stream deep, and save it from absorption of the sun's rays, save the sun from drinking it

up as he was wont to phrase it: and he had deemed this wood of such use and import that he had never

followed the common foolish custom of lopping the branches to sell for fireing; a custom which is penny

He had always loved his wood, but now it was with an almost savage sense of possession, an almost painful

tenderness of affection, that he looked up at the quivering leafy pillars, full in spring of song of birds, and in

'It would be like stealing my daughter,' he said, with his face dark and sullen, as he leaned over the halfdoor

'But they'll not touch them. No they'll not touch them, that I promise you,' he would say again and again to his

children. Sore as his heart was for Carmelo, he almost chafed more at the thought of the wood felled by

No one did or said anything else about it to him. The due summons had been served upon him, and of course

no more was needed. But he himself made sure that the thing was abandoned and forgotten.

'Did I not tell you that they could not do it?' he said to his daughters and sons. 'Nay, nay, the State is not a

Messer Nellemane going by with his cigar in his mouth for an evening's stroll, used to see him thus gazing up

'The hotheaded old madman,' he thought. 'Well, there are straight waistcoats for all such.'

Messer Nellemane had a mind at ease. He saw that the face of the maiden who had rejected his honours had

grown wasted and pale; he knew that the little Casa del Madonna was mortgaged, which is as good as gone;

the lad Carmelo was in prison, and the wood was doomed. What could be better? Borgia had poison and the

Tiber for those who thwarted him; the methods of Messer Nellemane were more refined, but I am not sure

As he stepped along one evening he had to step across the little brook that escaped from Pippo's house and

ran across the roadway into the weir. It was now October, and rain had swollen the little stream, and it

moistened the boots of this great man, who was a clerk at fifty pounds a year, and yet practically ruled over

He stamped his feet angrily, shaking off the moisture, and seeing old Pippo, who was sitting at his threshold

to keep the poor little fettered dog company, and who was staring aimlessly at the river, and doing nothing, as

he could not afford to buy osiers to make things that perhaps no one would take, he paused in his walk, and

Showing his boot, as you show a dead rabbit to a poacher, as pi�ce de conviction of his crime, Messer

'Signor Mazzetti, for some months past you have been admonished and fined for allowing this water to run

across the road and annoy the public. How much longer do you intend to defer compliance?'

Pippo got up, and took off his hat, from that respect for authority which is strong in the Italian; a good

sentiment whose endurance is daily and hourly being strained and whittled away by the oppressor rusticorum.

'How long do you intend to defer compliance with the municipal injunction?' said the great man.

'Eh?' said Pippo; he looked sullen and sad, and his head never seemed to him now to be right: 'there's a swarm

'How long will you let this water obstruct the public way?' demanded Messer Nellemane, driven in his

'I have nought to do with it,' said Pippo at last, doggedly. 'Dominiddio set it running; He can stop it if He

'Such trifling is merely insolence,' cried the other very angrily, and losing something of his dignity, and of his

suavity all. 'Yours is a contravention of the most odious kind. You have been warned, mildly chastised,

reasoned with in every way; you are obdurate, obstinate, and blasphemous. Do you, or do you not, intend to

'I can do nought,' he said doggedly, and he covered his head as he spoke. 'With one thing and another of your

accursed laws you have taken from me all I have. The roof over my head is wholly mine no more. You can

'You have made slaves of men and beasts,' he said, 'but you have done your worst to me already; you can't get

The water rippled and bustled brightly in the sunset light, and toppled over into the river below, as though no

presence of a great man were there to trouble it. Messer Nellemane struck his cane into it as though it were an

'The laws will force you to respect them, ' he said furiously. 'That you will find, and to your cost.'

'You can't get blood out of a post,' said Pippo. 'I have bartered my house to pay you, and I'll do no more. Get

As he spoke he threw a pebble down the road, and bade the little dog run after it; Raggi ran, nothing loath,

'The dog will ne'er be tied again for you,' said Pippo. 'We pay, and you hurt us just the same. For me, I can

Messer Nellemane said nothing; he opened his notebook and wrote in it, and went away in silence.

Raggi played with the pebbles, and the cooper's children ran out and played too, and shouted and spun tops

on the riverside; and Pippo clapped his hands and encouraged them. An old man, a little dog, and five small

boys and girls made up this scene of anarchy and revolt, and broke the com munal laws in a way that was

'Laugh, children, laugh while you may,' cried Pippo; 'soon you will starve, and then the Law will laugh at

Excellencies and Ministersyou think Messer Nellemane does not matter; that he is only a clerk and his

place is only a village; you think that these people are all poor clods, and know not their right hand from their

left; in your high place, whether you were born there, or whether you climbed there, it is so far below you,

that poor, little, dusty village, with its stone walls and its narrow rooms, where the people die like flies, and

no one cares, and Sheriff's officers, on the Pale Horse, make their rounds together night and day, and no one

hears the death cries, for the voices are too feeble and the roofs are too low; you think it does not matter, and

you turn away your eyes, and you manufacture your pretty phrases, and you take your armchair at the

Congress table of the Nations, for all that does matter to your thinking is only la haute politique. But you

Louis Quatorze made just such a mistake; and the scaffold was built for the children of his blood.

But the Roi Soleil had many an excuse. He was born in the purple; he was reared in oblivion of the people; he

honestly believed that God had made him of ivory and them of clay; but youis it so long since you left

your cabin in Sicily, your desk in Piedmont?are you not sons of the wars of independence?were you not

lulled in your cradle by the shouts of 'Morir per Libert�!' Would you not be nought, unless the people made

you all? unless, with their blood and sweat, they had cemented the mortars of your houses, and with their

Once in office, Lethe never gave more utter oblivion than this oblivion of yours. Your portfolios won, what

Let these people toil, and groan, and die; let the taxgatherers seize the last rag off their naked and starving

bones, wring from them every poor bronze coin that they have gained by the labour of their limbs, and claim

impost off the crust of black bread that their hungry babies gnaw; what matter? it is only the peopleyou,

You are in office; you speak with elo quence in the Chamber, and you have your place in the councils of

We must be a great Poweray, though in every house lies a corpse, in every river rots another, in every poor

man's mouth is a curse, and over all the land there spreads the plague of want, the putrefaction of despair.

IF you have only killed your father or mother, or sister or neighbour, that is a trifle, which may well stand

over for a year or more; and unless you were caught redhanded in the act, you may go scot free meanwhile.

This sort of murder is a merely personal affair, and scarcely concerns anybody. But if you have put your hand

upon the sacred person of a guard, ay, though he have been, as often happens, a whilom thief or an exforger,

then indeed you have committed something very like high treason, and you must be tried and sentenced as

Italy is like M. Gambetta; with the cap of liberty on their heads they both set up a policeman and say 'worship

It seems hardly worth while to have upset all the old religions and all the old dynasties only to arrive at this.

The crime of Carmelo having been therefore so heinous, the usual snail's pace of the law was hastened, and

by what was almost a miracle of rapidity, he having done this crime in sultry June, was actually brought up to

trial at the beginning of October, having spent only four months in prison on suspicion, which is, as things

The Pretore of Pomodoro put on his black cap and robes, and mounted his curule chair, with his mind already

made up as to Carmelo, before this state prisoner had ever entered the courthouse.

Like the wolves in the 'Animaux Parlants,' lawyers, guards, secretaries, chancellors and syndics make a

compact party, sworn never to quarrel, and to grip all that comes in their way. The Pretore, Gino Novi, had

never seen either accuser or accused in his life before, but before he had heard two words of the case he had

made his mind up against Carmelo; all these officials are little Gambettas, and the Law is their fetish. Offend

It was with much impatience that this brisk and smart young man, who had the administration of justice in his

power over something like seven thousand people, went through all the forms of trial, as though there were

It was absurd, thought Gino Novi, not to be able to condemn the wretch offhand; but the law gave him a

trial, and he, as I say, like M. Gambetta, revered the Law; indeed, there is hardly anything to which you may

not stretch it, and hardly any end it will not answer; when you hold it as a schoolmaster holds the taws you

get quite fond of it. It is so unpleasant to others, and so elastic and omnipotent. Carmelo's advocate was

fainthearted; he was equally sure of his fees whether his client were sentenced or set free; and he was afraid

that by taking up this case he made himself obnoxious to the Pretore, and to the governing powers generally.

It is far more compromising to defend a free citizen who has been wronged by a guard, than it is to defend a

His advocate was fainthearted, and his witnesses were not overwise; they were his own relatives, who got

passionate and indignant, and were reproved, and neighbours, such as Gigi Canterelli and Cecco, who were

too eager in his defence to be believed. Gigi Canterelli made indeed a bad impression on the court by

swearing heartily that Bindo Terri was a 'briccone' and a 'scelerato,' but that he was set on by blackguards in

black cloth higher than himself, and that everybody knew, for the whole commune was a prey to this set of

oppressors and extortioners; for which violent enunciation of the truth the impetuous old grocer was ordered

out of court, with a bad mark scored against his name, to be of use the next, time that he should have a case at

law there, against carriers who had stolen his bags of rice, or against octroiduties falsely levelled on his

cheeses. Never again would Gigi gain any cause that would be heard at the Pretura of Pomodoro.

It is not true that no Italian ever tells the truth, as commentators on the country say, but it is sadly true that

The trial went on all through the golden October day, wasting the time of many men who should have been at

work in the vineyards; and throughout it Carmelo stood between the carabiniers, faint and sick from past

confinement and present fatigue, and his old father and his brothers and Pippo listened trembling and

When questioned, the prisoner said only, 'I would do the same tomorrow; he poisoned my dog.'

But of this there was, alas for Carmelo! no proof, and if there had been, what would it have served? It was the

law of the commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda that the guardian of the public morals should be the poisoner of

'I would do the same tomorrow!' said Carmelo with eyes that flashed fire from out of the weary pallor of his

Gino Novi looked at him from under his black cinquecento cap of office, and scowled and shuddered.

It is certainly the stuff that made Tell; but the Pretore did not think of it in that sense.

Carmelo's attorney had summoned two or three men whose dogs had been poisoned, and who had traced their

death to Bindo; and had also summoned Squillace, the apothecary who had supplied the poison; but when the

people came up to the tribunal they were frightened, and hemm'd and haw'd and prevaricated, and scratched

their heads and blew their noses, and ended in sheer fright by being sure of nothing, while Signore Squillace

perjured himself as handsomely as if he had been a deputy arraigned for bribery, instead of a poor devil paid

So the long, dull, sad, terrible day wore away, with the sun beating at the thick panes of the casements, and

the dirty, garlicscented crowd of Pomodoro pressed together behind the bar, thick as bees in

swarmingtime. The advocate's heart was not in his work; it put him in bad odour, and every now and then

the eye of the Pretore menaced him, and then he lost the thread of his subject, and began to think that a few

months in prison would not hurt a young fellow, and to remember that he himself was a very poor man with a

He examined his witnesses badly, he helped to hushhush Gigi Canterelli, he pleaded loosely, spoke at

random, showed he thought ill of his client, and had not courage to bring into evidence any one of the many

It was one of those trials common enough in Italy, where the verdict is a foregone conclusion. No one except

the Pastorini boys and old Pippo was astonished when Gino Novi, with his sharp black eyes glittering like

lancets, sentenced Carmelo to seven months' imprisonment for his assault upon an officer of the law. He

would have been better pleased to give seven years, but he was a wise young man, who never let his passions

All the bitter winter, and part of the lovely spring, were to pass over the young head of Carmelo in the narrow

When he heard, he opened his great blue eyes, with a frantic terror in them, his lips grew blue, he shivered all

over and dropped down in a dead faint. He had eaten nothing all day, and he had been standing many hours.

The elder Pastorini, a strong man, shook like a woman; his veins swelled on his forehead; his eyes grew dull;

the men around him forced him out into the open air; they thought he would fall in apoplexy.

'This is for what we toil!' he shouted, 'this is for what we give our last coin to the taxgatherer, and our last

child to the barracks, and our last breath to the hospital! God above us! We are meeker, duller, stupider fools

than any sheep that crouches to the shearing! Men, you have known me all my life. I have been peaceable,

neighbourly, respectful to law and State, heedful to pay debt and impost; you have known me all my life. I

have reared my sons in honesty and simple worth. I have done no harm, I never wronged man, woman, child,

or beast. Have I deserved this that they do to me? Men, as God lives, this night would I bear steel and torch

through the kingdom to kill these wretches that ruin us, these worms that crawl to their masters, but sting the

poor as the viper stings. As God lives, I prayI prayfor revolution, for red blood, for bitter battle, for

Then his voice choked, and he lifted his arms in the air, and the men caught him to save his fall.

Meanwhile, in the court old Pippo had risen on trembling limbs, and with his hat doffed, and his white hair

shining in the sunshine, called aloud to the judge, 'Dear sir, most illustrious, you cannot mean it; you cannot

have the heart to mean it. The lad is good as gold. You cannot brand him felon and bracket him with thieves?

Dear sirhonoured judgedo hear me. He is to marry my daughter. His marriage lines are all drawn out,

and the girl sits at home weeping, and the bridal gown lies in a drawer, and the orange flowers are all yellow

and shrivelled, and they lie on it to keep it from moth. Good sir! Most high and honourable sir, do hear me!

The dear lad already has suffered four mortal months in the town gaol. It is enough. It is too much! He did no

harm. If you only but knew the rogue, the thief, the impostor, the villain, that they make a guard'

'Take that old madman out of court,' hissed the Pretore; and Pippo was hustled and pulled down by the

officials from where he stood, and thrown, as if he were a stone, through the doors.

'Defamation of an officer of the law,' muttered Gino Novi, as he closed his great case of papers and hurried

from his throne, as twilight dimmed the court, to go and eat a supper of robins and tripe, fried ham and

lentils, in his own room behind the chamber of justice, where he had invited Messer Gaspardo Nellemane and

Messer Luca Finti to pass a jovial hour with him, and lost a friendly coin or two over draughts and dice.

'Very insubordinate and revolutionary people in this commune, I fear; no veneration for authority,' said he;

and his two guests, who quite forgot that but for revolution they would at this hour have been respectively

selling their father's battered iron and rotting fish, shook their heads and said there was a bad spirit

For these good gentlemen were like all their class, the very oddest mixture of Prussian despotism and Parisian

radicalism. They hated all those who were above them, and despised all those who were below them; there

was only one stratum of humanity that they thought worth consideration or preservation, i.e. their own.

When Italy shall purge herself of these, the opportunists of public benches and public desksthe licensed

and registered brigands of the public pursethen, and then only may she. lift off the burden of her taxes, and

breathe freely, and have title to be a voice in Europe. Will this day ever come? By the educated will of the

Nepotism and Impiegatism are as thorns in her flesh; fixed there in festered wounds, and maybe, past all

surgery. They are as thorns that pierce, as leeches that suck; when the flesh is bloodless, then it rots and the

ALL the winter would roll away ere he would behold the eyes of his betrothed; he who should have wedded

her in the midsummer months, when the crickets were chaunting in the trees, and the magnolias and the

roselaurels were all ablaze with bloom. During the four months since his arrest he had striven to keep his

reason and his patience, saying always to himself that he would be set free at once when his cause should be

The sentence had been passed; the doors had closed, the bolts been fastened on him.

Ah! judges and gentlemen of the council, who put youths in your prison cells for bathing in a river in the

heat, for rescuing a dog from the slaughterer, from begging for a coin when their old mothers or their young

babes starve and perish, how much I should like you to taste that prison yourselves! The Bastille was the

royal dungeon of the noblesse, and scarcely deserved the rage of the people; but these petty bastilles all over

the land, where by petty laws the honest, the poor, the helpless, the courageous, for every trifling act of life

are thrown to break their hearts as they may, and from which they can only issue with blackened names and

ruined characterswhen will these accursed places, that mingle the righteous with the unrighteous, the godly

and the innocent with the thief and the assassin, surrender to the summons of the nation, and be dismantled

Never so long as Messer Nellemane and his kind shall reign; and make of every brave impulse of pity, of

Carmelo, lying on the hard narrow bed of the prison cell, recovered from his swoon, stared with dull aching

eyes up at the ceiling; the prison had been an old palace once, and on the ceiling, which was a section of what

had been once a grand and vaulted roofing of a banqueting hall, there was still in unfaded frescoes a little

Those angels seemed an innocent mockery to Carmelo; the innocent lad to whom the saints and the sons of

God had been no whit less real than the poplars on the river shore, hated them now, and thought them cruel

'If they were really up there beyond the sun, they would not let these things be,' he said between his teeth,

lying on his back, and knowing that for seven long months he would be a prisoner, treated like a felon,

Carmelo had always been in the open air, up whilst the skies were still dark, on the road with the mule, at

work under the trees, fishing in the Rosa water, dashing the ruddy grain down into the black mouth of the

shaft; on feast days and holy days strolling through the lanes and fields with a flower behind his ear, or

thrumming his mandoline in the moonlight under the porch; a free life and a happy one, doing no harm and

thinking none, enjoying vaguely but intensely, as the bull enjoys the pastures when the springtide grass is

sweet in the dew of dawn; a natural life and a wholesome life, with free movement of the limbs and

unpolluted air in the lungs, dumb in outward expression, but keen to inward pleasure from scent, and sight,

To him every moment in this close den, without a breath of air, with scarce a gleam of sunlight, was despair.

A day in a prison to a freeborn son of the soil, used to work with the broad bright sky alone above his head,

is more agony than a year of it is to a cramped cityworker used only to the twilight of a machineroom or a

workshop, only to an air full of smuts and smoke, and the stench of acids, and the dust of filed steel or sifted

coal. The suffering of the two cannot be compared, and one among many of the injustices the law, all over the

world, commits is that it never takes into consideration what a man's past has been. There are those to whom

a prison is a hell; there are those to whom it is something better than the life they led.

Carmelo lay on his rough sacking, and stared at the painted angels that the last glow of the sunset had

illumined, and he thought that on the morrow he would be a madman and know nothing. That was his fear.

His brain boiled and burned in his skull, and his heart seemed to pant and leap like a wounded hare springing

When the gaoler looked in at morning, the lad was in high fever: they called the parish doctor of Pomodoro,

he pronounced it to be congestion of the brain. They took him in a litter to the infirmary, a dark, foul

smelling, illkept place, where the doctor tried experiments on the patients as he pleased, and cut up dogs and

When will the truth be written of hospitals anywhere? If ever it were written, the faculty would swear it all a

No one hardly ever recovered in this infirmary, certainly none were ever the better for it. All Carmelo's

auburn locks were shaved off, and many ounces of blood were taken from him, and little else was done; he

was a prisoner, and really it did not matter. His father, who was not allowed to see him, drew his last franc

out of the Cassa di Risparmio1 to bespeak the doctor's care for him and the doctor took the fees; secretly, as

'The dear lad, he has ruined me!' thought the old man, who was feeble and broken in health since the fit

before the Pretura, and who had spent nearly his all over the long account of the notary; 'dear lad, he has

The miller was not a weak man, nor given to such weaknesses, but the hot tears rose in his eyes and fell down

his furrowed cheeks as he left the hospital bed. He was not allowed to stay there, nor to send any sister or

brother of Carmelo's to him, and he felt as though his tough heart would break, as he got up behind his good

grey horse and jolted over the ruts of the road in the twilight of the November afternoon.

Why had all this ever come upon him? Who put these thieves and tyrants there on those stools of office?

The Government had done, he supposed. To him, the Government meant the King. He cursed the King. How

could he tell that the King had no more to do with these things than with the melons and pumpkins that had

It is the White Cross of Savoy which the ink splashes of Messer Nellemane's documents stain in the people's

The King caused it all, and set Messer Nellemane on that office throne; so thought Demetrio Pastorini, and so

think tens of thousands; but the thought failed to console the old miller as he went along the dusky road that

he knew so well; indeed it made his pain the more bitter to him, because he had lost a dearly beloved and

only brother in days when they were young, in those wars against the 'stranieri' which they were told had

So weary were his thoughts and so preoccupied, and so dim were his eyes with tears, that if the good grey

horse had not been acquainted with the way for fifteen years, he might have missed it for aught that his

'H�o! Ouf!' cried the old man to the horse in surprise, as his own millhouse loomed through the grey

In the mist of the autumn night that was closing in, he could see the figure of his eldest daughter as she ran

out to him; she was sobbing, and the sound of her sobs was borne to him through the cold, quiet, misty air.

'Oh father,' she stammered, 'Oh father!' and then she came to the side of the cart, and lifted herself up on the

He said no more; he got down off the cart and threw the reins of rope to the youngest boy.

'Lead the horse to the stable,' he said unsteadily. 'The trees? what of the trees?'

There was very little light but the gleam of the moon as the clouds swept by; it was enough to show him what

'Oh father!' said the girl catching at his hands once more. 'We did all we could to stop them, but they would

not wait. There were six of them with hatchets, and an overseer. They said they had the right by law. Oh

BEFORE the week was out the trees were all down, and the wood by the mill was a thing of memory alone.

Demetrio Pastorini was powerless. He had misunderstood his own rights and the ways of the laws.

When the woodcutters and the overseer came on the morrow, he was like one beside himself. He got down

his old gun from the shelf, and would have shot the first man that dared approach the boschetto, but his young

sons and daughters weeping about him made his nerve and his purpose fail; they got the weapon from him,

'Patient!' he cried to them. 'Shall we be patient while we are stripped alive as the live lamb is stripped of her

skin, she bleeding at every pore? Patient? you are poltroons! You eat the dust! You are no children of my

But they clung about him notwithstanding, and pleaded that better was it to suffer wrong than to do it, and

sweeter in heaven's sight; and so besought him, in the name of Christ and of their own, that he, being a

religious man, and one most affectionate, gave way at last, and dropped into his wooden chair and wept, and

bore as best he could the sound of crashing axe, of falling trunk, of wrenching wood, of shivering leaf.

'Must the King, who has dominion from sea to sea, over all the land and the greatness of it, must he grudge

me my little all?' he cried in his agony, as he heard the blows of the hatchet on the trees.

BEFORE the week was out the poplars were all down, as I have said, and the birds that had made their homes

The municipal soul loves destruction. Whether it beholds a noble and fair monument of ancient times being

changed to dust and rubble by the hammers of masons, or whether it sees a gracious sylvan haunt alter to a

desolation of sand and stones beneath the hatchets of woodcutters, the municipal soul is equally full of an

Messer Nellemane, who possessed the municipal soul in its entire perfection, was thus happy now; and his

happiness was further pointed by the acid pungency of a grudge paid off, a vengeance accomplished.

It was a sad sight to other eyes than his: the mossy bank where Toppa had used to roam stamped down into

mud, the brave trees felled, their yellow leaves churned into a paste of earth and water, the branches piled in

squares to be sold for firewood, the tall trunks trimmed and set in rows to be disposed of as timber; all the

place unsightly, naked, miserable, where all had been so lately freshness, and peace, and forest loveliness.

The white wall of the millhouse stood bare and ugly, no friendly shadows cast on it from waving boughs.

The heart of the miller seemed broken in his breast; he could scarce bear to pass his door; he could not bear to

'Is it well, father, that they should sell the wood like that? They have not paid you.'

'If they sold your sister to the brothel would you squabble to share the price? Pay? no, they will never pay.

After a while the timber was carried away, and the boughs also; no one knew where they went; it was

understood to go to the City. No one ventured to inquire, since the stern lips of Pastorini were dumb.

If he had spoken he would have learned little: he would have heard that the engineers had valued his

possession, and the municipality had contracted to pay for it: that was all he would have been told. He did not

know that he was highly honoured, and that they were treating him exactly as the princely owner of Farnesina

This destruction of the boschetto, which had been a favourite haunt for feast days with the neighbours, and

the dread of the iron way that was to follow it, harassed and saddened all the people in Santa Rosalia, and

added to the gloom of a wet and stormy November, which was in turn followed by an unusual and severe

The harvest had been good, and so had been the vintage, and so also proved the olivegathering, rain

notwithstanding, and as foreign papers innocently wrote, nothing was wanting to the happiness of the

But the foreign papers only read the statistics of corn, wine, and oil, and did not try to see any further; indeed,

having started with this fixed idea of Italian happiness, would not have believed any explanations proving the

contrary. Foreign papers did not understand that, as the local taxes always go up in proportion to the

excellence of the harvest and vintage, that excellence is not the unmixed gain which it is supposed to be, and,

The more you have, the more I take, say the municipalities to the communities; there can be no more

IN Santa Rosalia the winter was hard and, for this country, long. Snow came; not the snow of cold countries,

with all the glories of an iceclad, frosthung world; not snow pure, serene, beautiful, with hollyberries red

against it, and firtrees dark, not the snow of lands where snow means No�l, Santa Claus, or Father

Christmas; but snow that fell in the night and melted in the day, and left a muddy, slushy, watery, slippery

slough of despond in its place: snow that killed the olive, broke the arbutus boughs, withered into death the

passion flower, and changed to putrefaction the aloe and the cactus; snow that blurred out all the sunny

In this sort of wintertime the poor are the first to pine and perish everywhere, but soonest of all in this land

The impetuous Rosa was as over full of water as it had been low and shallow in the midsummer; it ran out

over its banks and flooded the fields, where Science brought in with Liberty had felled the trees and hedges

There was no work in the flooded or in the frozen fields; the contadini wanted no labourers; there was

nothing to be done anywhere; there was a score of empty hands ready if ever such a little job needed the

The houses, all built for warm weather, with their open loggie and their illfitting windows, were swept

through by the north wind as though they had been canvas tents. There was scant fuel; the old times were

gone when they could glean it on all the hillsides, for the best reason, that nearly all the woods were felled.

Wine was so dear no poor man could drink it, and bread was frightfully dear, too. The people cowered over

their little brown pots of lighted brace, and did not complain. When anyone gave them a coin they were

Most winters they suffered like this; but this winter the suffering was greater than usual. A few said

something about getting work in the Maremma, where all the work is done in winter; but they might as well

have spoken of getting work in the moon; they could as well get to the one as the other. They had no idea

how to travel there, and nothing to travel with; besides, ninetenths of them were women and children, for

Of course these people were very thankless and unreasonable. There was a railway twelve miles off, there

was going to be gas in Pomodoro, and there was Messer Nellemane in their midst, all three monuments of

But these silly people persisted in feeling that they would prefer cheap wine, cheap bread, and stomachs full

The winter is never very long in Italy, yet this seemed very long indeed. The mill wheels, after having been

immovable from drought, were now useless from ice, and the miller, from a plump, jovial, strong man, had

become thin, haggard, and silent, feeling the weight of bitter sorrow and the aching of moneycares.

In Pippo's little house the blue Madonna heard no laughter and saw no firegleam.

The old man had grown taciturn and irritable. Misfortune is no sweetener of temper or of bread. He would sit

long together, crouched in a corner immovable, and his lips were at such times always moving inaudibly; he

was counting up the sums of which they had robbed him; counting them again and again; a hundred times a

They had but little to live on: no one bought straw plaiting in winter, and, as he could not cut the osiers in the

When they could have a dish of oil and beans they were very thankful; when they could not they boiled a

Now and then they had a drop of bad coffee without milk: that was all: as wine they had mezzovino, that is,

the last juices of the alreadysqueezed grapeskins diluted with water, a drink to which vinegar were

The Italian poor know as little of the bacon, and potatoes, and tea of the English labourer, as they do of the

In summer time they can do well enough: there is the gracious sun shining on them, and there is always work

to be had; but in winter there is terrible suffering, the more terrible, I think, because so quiet: the people die,

In Santa Rosalia there was great want, and there was nobody to succour it: the nobles of the province were

away in the City keeping carnival, and no fattore ever cares for the poor: he gets labour cheap if he requires

Vezzaja and Ghiralda possessed a charitable society; it was named after that purest of all saints, the

Confraternit� di San Francisco di Asissi, and it dated back to the thirteenth century.

Originally it had been a very noble society, and had owned broad lands, of which many estates still remained

to it. It had been selfdenying, generous, religious, in the highest sense of that word, and gentle and simple

had been proud to be its ministers; but of this character there did not now remain to it so much as there did

remain of its revenues. The rich were very willing to be on its staff; but the poor were not very willing to

apply to it; it had a way of considering a case for three months, and then ordering as relief a few pounds of

bread, which, when a whole family was waiting, and starving, and dying, was a little too dilatory to be very

But the fraternity of St. Francis still had its old palace in Pomodoro; still had its historical archives and its

pious repute; still had nobles and gentlemen on its committee; and if it only gave a little bread now and

thenwellpauperism, they say, should not be encouraged; and if its funds were never very clearly

accounted for, we know these medi�val institutions cannot be worked in the medi�val way nowadays: St.

Francis saluted Lady Poverty; but we keep her well outside the door while we ask for her certificate.

Now old 'Nunziatina had an attack of bronchitis at this time, and though she recovered, which was little short

of a miracle, she was by no means so strong again as she had been; and her draughty room under the tiles,

scorching in summer, and frozen in winter, shared with three other old women, and without any stove, or any

glass in the window, was not an abode to favour convalescence. The vicario of Santa Maria seeing this,

bethought him of the Fraternity of St. Francis, and gave her a letter to its committee, urging her age, and

honesty, and recent sickness, as fit reasons why she should benefit by this noble charity.

There was a quantity of money locked up in the revenues of this Fraternity, and it had been intended for the

poor; but then the present age, the age of Messer Nellemane, knows better than to spend it on the poor.

Those old times were so different to ours: different methods of administration become a necessity in modern

days. The Fraternity made a great flourish, and printed long reports, and still charmed the province into

subscriptions and donations; but if St. Francis could have been present when the accounts were made up, his

Annunziata blessed Dom Lelio, and took the letter and the sixty centimes he gave her for the diligence, and

betook herself, and her staff, and her broad hat, and her short petticoat into the rickety vehicle with much joy

and hopefulness of spirit. If she could get a certain little pension, if it were only a franc a week, she felt that

she could praise heaven with a full heart. Her trotting round to all the outlying farm houses and villages with

Now, the President of the Fraternity was a certain most noble Count Saverio, who had a high repute as a

The Count gave his services, which were highly appreciated, nominally for nothing, saying, with much

eloquence, that all his life was dedicated to service of God and the poor; and if he did do a good deal at the

Bourse, and buy a great many terni at Lotto, that was his own affair, and in no way concerned St. Francis.

Besides he did it through agents; and his own name never was heard except in connection with philanthropy.

This very noble and pious gentleman received old 'Nunziatina, who made him a nice curtesy, and wished him

every blessing in her cheery cordial way, which was as pleasant to hear as a bird's chirping; he was sitting

surrounded with ledgers and folios, in the muniment room of the castellated house of this ancient

brotherhood; and he spoke so prettily and amiably to her that she felt quite sure of ten francs a month.

He was a long time looking over her papers and reading the priest's recommendation; and then he smiled, and

fussed about, and rang for his clerk, and whispered with him, and scribbled something and slipped it in a

drawer, and then, finally looking across his writingtable at Annunziata, said very pleasantly:

'Moneycharities we never give; but come again on this day month, and we will see if any exception can be

made in your favour. I will put your case before the board: my compliments and reverence to the good Dom

The old woman made him another deep curtesy, and went away with a cruel disappointment nipping her old

'Oh! by the way,' said the Count, 'one of the people of your village was sent to me today by the vicario.

Perhaps you can tell me something of her, for Dom Lelio's heart is apt to run away with his head. He wants us

to grant her permanent weekly relief; an old woman, an oddlooking old trot, by the name Taormina

'Dom Lelio is very unwise,' he said gravely. 'The person you speak of is one of the worst people in the borgo.

A professional beggar. A confirmed beggar. She is very well off, they tell me; but she has that passion and

'Dear, dear!' said the President. 'That is terrible. We must never encourage mendicancy. Dom Lelio should

'What would you, Signore Conte?He is a priest!' said Messer Gaspardo with that scoff which is always on

The President smiled a little deprecatory smile, for of course he was a Liberal too, but as he was head of a

The month passed over Annunziata's grey head painfully; it was very cold, and she could make but little way

about to those outlying farms where they had given her the most food. But her niece spared her all she could,

and she said to herself every day, 'The gentlemen promised he would think it over; he will be sure to do

something for me when I go;' and being of a very sanguine temperament, she managed to live on hope.

Her most dazzling idea was that they might allow her half a franc a day, but that she felt was too brilliant to

be realised; if she got ten francs a month she felt she could ask nothing better of the saints in heaven or the

It was with a glad spirit that she set out to Pomodoro on a chilly morning on the day appointed; she had

smartened herself up as well as she knew how; she liked to look respectable. She had her black hat tied under

her chin, with a yellow handkerchief and a blue woollen skirt that a fattoressa up in the hills had given her at

She was very smart, indeed, for Annunziata was far above the idea of a professed beggar, that rags and dirt

were more likely to provoke charity than cleanliness and order. She was no beggar at all; she never stretched

her hand out for a farthing; she was old and people were kind to her; that was all.

With a smile of happy expectancy she stood once more before the Signore Conte Saverio in the muniment

But the President had no smile in return for her. He looked up with a stern glance from his books and papers,

'You were so good as to tell me to come this day, sir,' said the little old woman, as he remained silent. 'You

were so very kind as to say you would give me something, and all the month I have been living on your word,

Count Saverio, who had such a milkandhoneyreputation to lose that an act of severity was disagreeable to

him, coughed and cleared his throat, and then said with the air of a father reproving a child: 'Cara mia, it

pains me very greatly to have pained you, but I can say only that the good Dom Lelio has been very much to

blame. This honourable and charitable fraternity is established on the scope and to the end of reliefthe

judicious reliefof the deserving poor, of the honest poor, of the laborious poor. It was never intended to

'No sir?' said Annunziata, puzzled and not following his drift, for she never thought of herself as a beggar.

'It was never intended to encourage mendicancy,' pursued the President, gathering a heavier frown as he

warmed with his theme. 'Mendicancy is a curse of the country. It is the heaviest sin to foster it. All our efforts

are directed to its suppression. The first qualification to be fit to claim the aid of our society is never to have

begged. Now youyou are an habitual mendicant; you habitually subsist on public alms. No doubt some

frightful improvidence in your youth has brought you to this pass in your old age? With that we have nothing

to do; all that concerns us is to obey the laws of the Fraternity. You are not eligible for election; you are not

Annunziata stared hard at him, her little bright birdlike eyes wide open with amazement.

'A beggar, sir? I?' she stammered. 'No, that I never was. People are good to me and I bless them. As for

spending when I was young, sir, that I never did, for I was left a widow when I was fortytwo, sirmy man

fell off a housetop, and I had to bring up four children, and I did bring them up well, sir, all beautiful grown

men and maidens, though every one of them are in Paradise nowand I always was very poor, sir, though it

is true that when I was young the land was happy and the people too, not starved, and pinched, and squeezed

like lemons in a presser as they are nowadays. But spend I never could, sir, because I never had but just

enough to keep life in my children and me, and now that I am old, sir, seventysix come the blessed day of

St. Peter, the people that have known me all my life are good to me, and may the saints remember them for it,

'Enough!' said the Count sternly. 'You may gloss it over as you please, you are a beggar; you have no other

'No, sir; and that is why I come here,' said Annunziata, who was not without a spirit.

'Beggars are ineligible,' said the President impatiently as well as severely this time. 'You are a beggar. Dom

Lelio committed an offence against the law in recom mending you for the charity of this community. We

have nothing to do with you. Our rules would forbid us if we were inclined. You had no business whatever to

'I beg your pardon, sir; pray do not hurt Dom Lelio for me. He meant what he did in all goodness,' said

Annunziata with a quivering lip; and then she dropped her little curtesy and went out, and going across the

street, at the cold dark shelter of the opposite church sank on her knees on the pavement before the nearest

We who eat and drink as we wish every day, and on the score of our appetites suffer nought save perhaps

something from the Nemesis of dyspepsia, we can ill realise what the disappointment is of a denial that

refuses daily bread, and leaves an old and painful life alone to the menace of a death by hunger; we cannot

understand, try how we will, what they meanthe empty cupboard, the cold hearth, the bed of sacking, the

gnawing pangs, the famine faintness, the slow, long, cruel hours that creep on from dawn to dark, from dark

These all faced Annunziata in her future: that poor little sorrowful future that stood between her and her

Rheumatism racked her bones, and she knew that soon she would be bedridden, and thenwellthe people

gave to her when they saw her cheery face and her empty basket, but when she lay in her bed, and they saw

They would none of them come to her, any more than they would go to her tomb, when it should be made, a

The world does not take into account people who have nothing. They should be provident enough in their

youth, and save money even if they have not enough to hold body and soul together, and never enough to

Stentorello is the type of Italian on the stage, and the people in truth are perhaps too miserly and fond of gain;

but is there much wonder at that in this country? There is no poor rate, and no workhouse, and nothing for the

That is not a prospect to strengthen bare arms in the battle of life, or moisten parched lips dry with toil. The

dead wasp is thought of by its kind, but the dead poor have no such remembrance from theirs.

Viola was watching for her as the diligence rolled heavily into the piazza at Santa Rosalia. The girl sprang to

'Yes, dear,' said Annunziata with a quiver in her voice. 'They think I am a beggar, and that I never am and

never was, as you know, for I never ask aught; never, never! they give me what they like to give me, and I am

'When you have nothing, how can you help that?' said the girl, with a sob of indignation.

Annunziata bore up somehow or other against her lot and endured her hard pallet, her damp chamber, her dry

atom of bread, because she still believed, against all witness to the contrary, that her God cared for her; that

somehow or other when her soul should leave her little shrivelled, brown body, she would see the light of a

She was an old woman, and had been bred up in the old faiths; faiths that were not clear indeed to her, nor

ever reasoned on, but yet gave her consolation, and a great, if a vague, hope. Now that we tell the poor there

is no such hope, that when they have worked and starved long enough, then they will perish altogether, like

bits of candle that have burnt themselves out, that they are mere machines made of carbon and hydrogen,

which, when they have had due friction, will then crumble back into the dust; now that we tell them all this,

Will not they, too, since this short life is all, insist at any price of blood that it shall be made sweet and made

Will not they seize by violence on violent drugs, and drink themselves drunk on the alcohol of communism?

Why should they not? Since there is nothing beyond this life, why should they toil that you and I may be at

The philosopher stands at his desk in the lecture hall, and demonstrates away the soul of man, and with exact

thought measures out his atoms and resolves him back to gas and air. But the revolutionary, below in the

crowd, hears, and only translates what he hears thus to his brethren: 'Let us drink while we may; property is

MEANWHILE in the prison of Pomodoro, Carmelo, thanks rather to his youth than to his leech, recovered

despite the bleeding, the camomel, the stench of foul drains, the diet, and the obscurity; in six weeks' time he

was almost ready to go back to his prison cell, he looked but a shadow of himself; he was thin and pale, his

eyes were moody, and cast downward; his ruddy, suntanned skin had grown pallid and yellow.

He had recovered, but he had a worse poison in him than even the poison of fever, for in the bed next to his

there was lying a German with anemia and other ills, and this man talked to him in his own tongue by hours

together in the long watches of the night, when they had no other companions than the newts and the rats and

the beetles that ran over their couches. The German, a travelling mechanic, was a socialist and an

internationalist; and into this ignorant virgin mind of Carmelo, all seething and fermenting now under an

unendurable sense of wrong, he poured the black stream of his own beliefs and desires.

Carmelo did not understand a tithe part, but he understood enough, after many a night's colloquy, to breathe

in eagerly this vengeance on society which looked like justice, this insanity for equality which looked like

reason. Until wrong had been done to him he had been a perfectly contented lad, troubling himself about

nothing outside his own duties and occupation, for scarcely knowing how to read, he knew nothing of any

other world beyond that of the millhouse. He had been bred up to be respectful to the gentry and the clergy;

to be decent and honest in life, and to be quite happy so long as his father was pleased with him. This had

been always Carmelo, until that hapless hour when poor Toppa had been treacherously done to death.

But injustice and despotism change the pure blood of youth into a dark and sullen current. Carmelo who had

only rightly punished a poisoner, was treated like a criminal and thrown amongst thieves and assassins.

One of the cruellest sins of any State, in giving petty and tyrannous authority into petty and tyrannous hands,

is that it thus brings into hatred and disgust the true and high authority of moral law.

'Where is God? He cannot hear, He cannot care; nor can the saints, since He and they let me lie here and

make a king of Bindo Terri,' thought Carmelo, lying on his bed, with all the bright and vigorous force of his

If they were indeed throned in heaven, as the priests always said, would they let the poor suffer, and the

scoundrels thrive, and the fines be wrung out of starving bodies, and the parasite of the public torture and

Carmelo still shrank from the bold blasphemies of the socialistic doctrines; but the German was wary and

skillful, he softened for this foolish young Christian the atheism of the texts he quoted upon all religions, and

only recited again and again their condemnations of all existing laws, and their invitation to a perfect future,

Carmelo listened, and his sick soul was seduced by the dangerous stimulant of these doctrines, whose greatest

danger lies in the fact that there is in all their exaggeration an essential, an undeniable, truth.

He was at war with all the world, with all these unknown, unseen, forces which had been stronger than he; his

ear and his heart were open, to words that told; him of the tyranny of property, of the favouritism of law, of

The German, exiled from his own country for his opinions, was a keen and restless student and an ardent

propagandist; he was a disciple of the most extreme creeds and deemed, as most of those men now do, all

Well aware that he was dying, and a prey at times to great agony, he beheld in the young Italian his last

proselyte, and threw all the last energies of his waning life into the rescue, as he deemed it, of this dumb soul,

into the effort to give light to the blind eyes of Carmelo, for he found that Carmelo was ignorance itself;

thought heaven had placed the king upon the throne; thought heaven had made one set of men to toil, and

another set to do nothing and enjoy; had a vague idea of the Government as of a sort of god hedged round

with cannon; fancied the good weather and the bad came from divine pleasure or wrath, and was certain that

grain would not come up unless the priest made the round of the fields and blessed them.

The autumn nights were long and cold; in the infirmary they were allowed no charcoal and no light, but the

fiery utterances of the Internationalist lit up and warmed the darkness. Carmelo who knew naught that

occurred outside the hedges of Santa Rosalia, listened as in his childish days he had listened to the priest's

wonderstories of S. Ursula or SS. Cosmo and Damian, to the recital of the movement going secretly onward

in Italy; of the insurrections of San Lupo, of Gallo, of Calatabiano; of the 'Circoli Barsanti,' and the section of

the 'Figli di Lavoro;' of the memorable words of Garibaldi in 1873, that were there a society of devils to

combat despotism, he would join it; of the Internationalist federa tion of Rimini which decrees 'the earth to

who cultivates it, the machine to who uses it, the house to who builds it;' of the programme of Piacenza,

'everyone has right to what is necessary, no one has right to what is superfluous;' of the declaration of the

fraternity of Montenero, Antignani, Ardenza, and San Jacopo that 'the State is the negation of liberty;

authority creates nothing and corrupts everything; change of government is useless; if a man have a thorn in

his foot, it is of no use for him to change his boots, he must pluck out the thorn;' and, with these, of many a

burning and bitter paragraph from the Plebe of Milan, from the Petroleo of Ferrara, from the Proletario of

Turin, and the unhesitating dictate of the Campana, that 'all authority, human and divine, shall perish and

The innocent soul of Carmelo revolted from these arguments which tore down his Christ from his crucifix,

and dashed his stoup of holy water to the ground; yet the wrong that festered in him made his mind open to

all these dreams of freedom and of justice, all these promises of a millennium upon earth.

If such minds as Rousseau's, Fourier's, Proudhon's Bakounine's do not see the falsehood that is mingled with

The Italian is as I say, not by nature a revolutionary, but when he is one he goes beyond all others, because,

perhaps, he has more than all others to suffer in the contrast between his dead hopes and his present misery.

No one seems to remember that the Italian Socialists have rejected Marx and decreed Mazzini a reactionist,

whilst they subscribe blindly and without change to all the terrible creed of Bakounine.

No one seems to remember this, or heed it; yet Bakounine's is a creed of nothing less than universal

destruction. The disciples of it grow every day in numbers throughout Italy, but since the arrests of 1874, they

No one is afraid; and the State continues to give them justification by leaving in every commune the breed of

'It is a question of hunger,' the Marquis Pepeli said once of the revolts of Budria and Molinella.

Perhaps partly: not altogether. But who makes the hunger? who keeps the stomachs empty, the hearths cold,

Here is the thorn that must be pulled from the foot of Italy if the canker and fester of it are not to spread

Carmelo, of course, could not understand a hundredth part of what the German unfolded to him, but the

vague meaning that he gleaned dazzled and awed him, and the poison of injustice already given him to drink

Carmelo was a brave lad, a lad honest, cleanliving, and harmless in thought and deed; he was dealt with as

if he were a criminal, and the bitter sense of his wrongs made it precious to him to hear of sovereign rights

He had been dimly conscious of a right to live in his own way so long as he did no harm to his fellows; he

had been by nature independent and of fearless spirit; but of late the petty tyrannies enfolding the lives of the

poor had been to him like a choking chain, and he had begun to tremble. He saw men impoverished, and

hunted down to beggary, or death, by this thing which they called Law, and which he knew only to be

extortion; and he had lost hope and manliness; and in the stead of these there had come on him a moody and

He was as ready for the tempting of his teacher, as clay is made moist for the hand and the wheel of the

One night, when the moon was shining in through the grated hole that served as casement, the German

Carmelo was too feeble to rise; he sat up in his bed and saw the ghastly agony, and heard the deathrattle, of

this man, who seemed to him his only friend. He strove to call for help, but his tongue clave to his mouth, and

when at length he could find his trembling voice he shouted in vain; no one heard.

He dragged his weak limbs out of bed and strove to hold the man in his convulsions, but death was stronger

With the moonlight on his ghastly face the German struggled with his doom, choking and vomiting blood.

Once only, with consciousness in his eyes, he stared upward in the eyes of Carmelo.

Carmelo was alone through all the long chill night with the body of the dead man beside him.

AFTER her fruitless journey to Pomodoro, Annunziata could not get about at all, on account of snow that

She had but little blood in her veins, and but little bread in her cupboard; she and the three other old souls

huddled themselves together over a single scaldino of charcoal that they clubbed their pence to get, and spent

most of their time in bed, in hope of so keeping their slow circulation frown absolute stagnation. They were

four miserable little palletbeds, one in each corner, and the spiders and beetles and mice ran over them, and

Dom Lelio did all he could and Viola went daily, and denied herself that she might keep her greataunt from

starving, but when all was done that could be by these two, Annunziata had but little of all that old age needs.

Dom Lelio had but a franc aday, and in Pippo's house want was a ghost that had no rest and gave none.

'They cannot call her a beggar now,' said Viola bitterly, as she stood beside the hard bed in which the old

The heart of the girl was sick with hope deferred, and that vague fear of something yet worse to come which

It was now the end of February and the weather, as it often does here, grew colder by far than it had been

when the days were short. The village was a sorry scene, the illmade roads were little better than bogs, and

the angry river went swirling and rushing, yellow and muddy with all the clay that it washed down from its

'One would say the Rosa were mad to think the boschetto is gone,' thought the eldest girl Dina Pastorini, as

the north wind, without that screen of trees, beat with all its might against the millhouse.

He was never irritable, because he was a sweettempered and just man, who could not bear to farther afflict

But all the honest mirth and cheery content were gone out of him; he who had been so loquacious and

mirthful now never smiled and seldom spoke; his brow was always dark and his eyes were always dull.

Missing that glad and pleasant shade, so green through three of the seasons, that had been before his eyes

ever since he had opened them at birth, seemed to him to have made him halfblind.

Besides, he was always saying in his thoughts: 'How shall we tell Carmelo? how will he bear it when he

sees?' Carmelo, who beyond them all had loved the bright boschetto, and had passed so many a holiday hour

sitting on the mossy edge of it with his square net floating on the stream below, and white Toppa sleeping by

The father dared not think of it. He had suffered greatly himself, but he feared that his son would suffer yet

As for such solace as might have come to a man struggling with many burdens from the help of money, none

was given to him. The municipality had offered a certain sum of money indeed for the riverside wood, but

they had not paid it. In Rome they were five years paying for the Farnesina gardens, destroying them, as it

were, on credit; in Santa Rosalia they would probably be twice as long paying the miller.

If he wanted to make them pay he would have to go to law with them, and that no one of the class that the

Pastorini belonged to would ever dare to do, knowing the remedy to be worse than the disease. The Giunta

was supposed to deal with these matters, but in reality it only met to give adhesion to what Cavaliere

Durellazzo said, and what he said was what he had been prompted to say by his right hand and chief

Now, as everyone will understand without saying, they could scarcely be expected to find money for

Demetrio Pastorini, since they were obliged to pay beforehand all those gentlemen who had opposed the

So the miller's empty pockets were not the heavier by a coin at the present for the expropriation of his wood,

and he suffered in a time of peace and, as the foreign newspapers had it, of prosperity, precisely what he

would have suffered had an invading army encamped in Vezzaja and Ghiralda and burned it right and left on

'Ah, my girl,' he said once to Viola, of whom he had grown fond in their mutual trials, 'I almost would sooner

our dear lad stayed on in prison than that he should come come to see what he will see.'

Viola sighed heavily, and did not say that she felt otherwise, only in her young heart there was that hope

which is in youth like the golden gorse, always in bloom, even in bad weather and on barren soil.

She thought always: 'When Carmelo comes home things will change; all will be well.'

It was now the close of February; she was counting the weeks, the days, the hours till Carmelo's release.

She could not read much, but she had one of those little calendars which are the oracles of the poor, and she

could make out their signs and the days of the months, and in this she had marked each cruel week as it

There were only two months more now to divide them, and though Carmelo truly would return to trouble and

Yet so many sorrows fell upon them, that the bit of charcoal with which she marked evil days in her calendar

Early in the year her grandfather had received a long and formal printed paper, calling on him to remove the

nuisance of the water before his door. Pippo had crammed the thing on to the top of the live cinders in the

A few days later Pierino Zaffi had been seen about the place, examining the little spring and measuring it, and

in the name of the commune had entered the house and traced the offending water to its source amongst the

In a week's time there had come another document, and that Viola took to Cecco to read, her grandfather

This one ordered Filippo Mazzetti forthwith to execute works that would direct his spring underground; to

cover it was forbidden, because no means by which it could be covered would fail to obstruct the public path.

He was ordered to commence this work within thirty days; if delayed, the offender would be fined for every

The spectacles rose on Cecco's nose, and the hair upon his head as he read, and his face grew aghast with

'After all that money that I paid for Pippo,' he gasped; 'after that bit of paper which set him free of all!'

'What does it mean?' gasped Cecco wildly. 'What does it mean? Can your grandfather pay masons and

'It means ruin!' sobbed the girl. 'He has nothing in the world; how can he put the water under the earth? And

Of this new calamity they were compelled to tell Pippo. He heard quite quietly, but there was a savage wild

He stretched his hand out and took the paper and folded it up once, twice, thrice; then the held it in the palm

It blazed a moment, then curled up, and became a little heap of black ash on the stones of the floor.

'Never a word,' he said, 'never a word. If they send me a hundred such, so will I treat them all. They cannot

Half an hour later he looked up from his weaving, and his eyes were shining savagely from under his white

'Girl,' he said to his granddaughter, 'I call to mind a night before you were born. There came news of a great

battle; they called it San Martino.1 They told us to light up; so did we all. In your little window I set the oil

A LITTLE while after that, there came a hue and cry of mad dogs in Santa Rosalia. These cries are very

If any dog be hunted by boys, be thirsty for water he cannot find, or be gaunt or faint from hunger and

illtreatment, straightway is he declared arrabiato, and up on the walls there appear placards that every dog

seen about will be killed. Then Bindo, with his poisoned polpetti and his pistol, is busy and happy all over the

A woman was bitten the other day by one of these mad dogs, and was recovered by the bone of a saint being

laid by her pillow, but present municipalities are not desirous to bring out the virtues of saints, and they do

like to sell the skins of dogs; so they scream at every possible wag of a tail or sign of a growl, and fly to

Such a panic seized the municipality of Vezzaja and Ghiralda in this month of February, when Pippo was

being summoned again and again for little Raggi and putting the summons in the fire.

If you tunnel a mountain and stifle a score of men you are a public benefactor; if you keep a factory, in which

no one lives over thirty years of age from the notions dust or noxious gas inhaled in the work, no one finds

human life at all too precious for you to use up as you like in your own interests; but if ever a dog snap at

somebodyah! then of what sanctity is human life! what horror is anything that menaces it!

Messer Nellemane, in the absence of Cavaliere Durellazzo, who was at his candlewarehouses, took fright

now, nothing loth to do so, and had placards stuck up, announcing that the guards were authorised to destroy

The dullest imagination can conjecture the 'lovely time' that Bindo and Angelo had in the commune, and no

one dared to check their slaughtering hand, remembering the fate that had befallen Carmelo.

Viola, terrified, kept little Raggi in the house, and shut her up in the house, and kept her out of danger all she

could, and at night would start up and feel for the little floss silk curls of the dog as it lay at the foot of her

'I said the dog should never be kept in for those devils,' growled her grandfather: but the girl pleaded to him

The old man let her do as she would; he was growing apathetic, yet desperate; though he had burned the

Giunta's order about his brook, the memory of it and the dread of what they might do to him haunted him

night and day. And he was so very poor; he did not so much mind depriving himself of wine and tobacco, but

it hurt him terribly to see Viola's clothes mended till they were but patchwork, and her feet going bare.

Viola had always been the neatest and cleanest as well as the comeliest maiden in the province. Clean she

was still, but neat you cannot be when you are so very poor that even to buy a few pins, a little thread, a bit of

This is the poverty that the world does not understand, and, not apprehending, does not pity; famine it

understands, the famine that desolates Cashmere and Bombay, but not the poverty which can just put enough

in the body to keep life alive uncomplainingly, but has not a coin beyond for any need or pleasure of life.

It was a great sorrow, too, to Viola not to be able to be decently dressed for mass as she had used to be; but

she did not think so much of that as she did of her inability to give her grandfather a scrap or two of meat in

At Christmas she had sold her little string of seed pearls to a richer maiden, the big butcher's daughter, and

the money they had fetched had long since gone in charcoal and bread for themselves and soup for

One morning whilst the placards concerning dogs were still upon the walls, and the reign of terror still

dominated all Vezzaja and Ghiralda, Viola had her week's washing to do. She needed not to go for this, as

most had to do, to the edge of the river, or to the springs on the hillsides, because the brook that offended the

There she washed the sheets and shirts and other linen that she and Pippo used, and washed her greataunt's

linen, too, if such poor little rags can be dignified by the name; and she was at this work all the chilly

forenoon with the bitter north wind whist ling round her head and nipping the red flowers of the almond

She had shut the house door, and Raggi was with her running loose about the little place; Pippo was out

Viola looked often for the little dog and saw it lying out of the wind under the wall, but about eleven o'clock,

having wrung out her linen, she was so busied hanging it up on the clothes' line, tied to the delicate almond

trees, that she never heard the wind blow open the entrance door, and when her work was done at noon she

The little dog never left her side usually, but Raggi had a little friend in Cecco's youngest boy, a gentle mite

Whenever Raggi heard the tictac of the poor little man's crutch, she always trotted out to it, for Lillo, as they

called the child, would share his bread and milk with her, and throw his little wooden ball to please her, and

loved her dearly. Raggiperhaps with that divine pity which dogs havedivined the sad destiny of crippled

This forenoon she heard the sound of the crutch on the stones of the threshold, and got up and went to it, not

Lillo, delighted to see his playmate, covered her with kisses and hobbled along to his father's house, and there

got a bit of bread; and hobbled farther with the dog by his side out to the few willows that there fringed the

Lillo and Raggi were very merry, indeed, about nothing; seeking stones in the grass, making a feast of the

crust, and playing with the dry twigs that the wind scattered so plentifully. Raggi's yellow curls blew, and

Lillo's blew, too, and the one barked, and the other sang and laughed, and both were as happy as two little

mortals could be, with that sweetest of all happiness which is born out of nothing beyond the mere glad sense

But along the road by the river there came a grim shadow; the shadow of a man in grey clothes, with a feather

His eyes flashed over the little child and the little dog sitting together under the willows, and his ear caught

People ran out from their houses, and Bindo Terri walked away as one who has done his duty and earned his

Blood was pouring from its mouth, but it moved its little curly tail feebly in welcome and farewell. Then the

little bright eyes glazed and seemed to sink into its head, its heart beat convulsively through a few seconds

Never more would Lillo laugh under the willows, and break his bread with Raggi. Never more would Raggi

dance to the children's piping. And little Lillo, never very wise, was imbecile from that hour; a frightened,

But what mattered that? The law had asserted its majesty and vindicated its rights.

When the old man Pippo dug a small grave under the blossoming almondtrees, and laid the bloodstained

body of the little dog in it, covered with moss and grass, he groaned as he turned each sod.

'Assassins and thieves are set above us, and work their wicked will, and no one cares. How long, O Lord?

AS by a very irony and wantonness of cruelty, that very night there was left at his house by the usciere a

mandate from the court of Pomodoro to pay the sum of fiftyseven francs on account of the little dog.

As he had neglected to answer the summons for contravention, the charges against him for contumacy had

been taken as usual to the senior court, and had been proved and assessed against him with costs.

Two francs for every time that poor little Raggi had been seen loose soon told up to a high sum total, and the

public accuser who officiates for the commune on such occasions had stated that, but for the mercifulness of

that administration, the number of summonses would have been much greater. They regretted, they said, to be

severe on a poor man, but the law must be respected. The law must be respected, said all the officials in a

'They may kill me as they killed the little dog,' said Pippo; ''twould be less trouble, and done once for all.'

Viola was weeping as though her tears would, to use Dante's words, destroy her very heart; and in the

cooper's house a sad mother sat by a little bed where a goldenheaded child, with vacant, terrified eyes, was

pointing for ever in the air, and stammering uncouth, shapeless sounds, and then shivering as though with

Brighthaired Lillo's body lived, but his mind was as dead as Raggi's, buried in her grave underneath the

'Carmelo must not know,' said Viola over and over again in the darkness of the night, sobbing and missing

her little furry friend, who for seven years had slept upon her bed; and when the morning dawned she begged

of Lillo's mother and father, and of all about the house, that never would they let Carmelo know that Raggi

All promised her, but she could not be sure that the promise would be kept, for she knew how every little

story leaks from the dry cask of empty heads, and she was afraid, terribly afraid. Sometimes she thought that

Her father, too, was for ever saying, 'Let them kill me as they have killed the dog. They have made me a

The cold was passing away. The damp was drying up, the corn lands were green with young wheat, and soon

amidst the grass the violets were giving place to the daffodils, and on the hillsides the peachtrees and

peartrees were throwing out their sprays of blossom, making the steep slopes beautiful.

But spring brought no joy to the small house of the Madonna; and by the mill upon the river, in lieu of lovely

pillars of lightest green, thickening and deepening with every day, in lieu of that leafy screen, full of the nests

of doves and merles and nightingales, there was a waste land of mud and shingle, barren spot, of no use or

Nothing had been done with it. The holes yawned where the trees had been uprooted, and the waterbeetles

crawled undisturbed over the heaps of mud. The tramway was not made; the foreign speculators and the

home municipalities were quarrelling, and until their quarrels were ended the work could not be begun. The

speculators said the municipalities had cheated, and the municipalities gave the speculators a tuquoque. It

Of all these things the population of the commune understood nothing; they were like a horse who has his

mane docked and his chin singed; he feels uncomfortable, but he does not know what is done to him.

Italy is always being docked and singed; being amiable, she does not kick her groom, but she is always

The sweet spring came; and so sweet is it, here, that it is joy enough to live only to go out into the fields all

laden with blossom, and feel your heart dance with the daffodils in the full sense of Wordsworth's words.

But the poor have not leisure for this, nor have they insight for it, and the spring brought no solace to Santa

Another trouble, and a yet greater anxiety, fell on Demetrio Pastorini at this time.

There was another miller on the other side of the village, who had never done very much work, because the

water was so much shallower there, and who indeed did not care about it, being a very welltodo man,

owning an oilshop and warehouse in Pomodoro. His name was Remigio Rossi; he had never been looked on

But one fine day four oxen appeared on the riveredge dragging a huge, black, shapeless, uncouthlooking

object behind them; and a few days later, Pippo and Viola, looking out of their house door, saw a long black

chimney, and a cone of black smoke, coming out of the roof of Remigio's mill, which was within ten yards of

Pippo ran and shouted with all his might that the place was afire, but people standing on the bank, looking

Demetrio Pastorini, who was a homebiding man, and never went to publichouses of any kind for gossip,

and so never heard anything that was going on until a dozen days after all Santa Rosalia knew it, saw this

black thing spitting smoke, and heard all at a blow, as it were, that the miller Remigio Rossi had obtained a

steamengine from the city, by means of which he could grind grain in fair weather or foul, and snap his

The steammill was a hideous blot on the landscape, and its ugly iron chimney vomited filthy odours and

darkening vapours over all the green country and glancing waters, and made a mass of ash and cinders and

general blackness and sootiness all about the pretty grass bank on which the building stood.

The engines were set going with plenty of last year's grain, by favour of the Cavaliere Durellazzo; and

hearing their whirring and booming, and seeing the heavy veil of its smoke, the eider Pastorini turned away,

How could he wrestle against this thing? he with his mill wheels high and dry, for five months out of the

'So you bring devils of fire and iron to ruin your old neighbour, Remigio?' he said reproachfully when he met

Remigio, who was a goodnatured man, though, like most of them, he loved money too well, looked

'I do not wish to injure anybody,' he said, with some embarrassment. 'But one was sorely wanted now the

Rosa is such a captious thing; and as the Giunta find half the cost, it being for the good of the place'

'Oh, the Giunta find half the money, do they?' said Pastorini, with his heart sinking heavier and heavier. 'And

The next day Pastorini, who was by no means behind the scenes in these matters, went and asked innocently

for an audience with the Cavaliere Durellazzo: it was the syndic's day for audiences.

As usual, the Cavaliere Durellazzo was absent; but his secretary would see anyone. After a little delay the

miller found himself in the presence of Messer Nellemane, who smiled affably, and, without rising from his

Then Demetrio Pastorini, not being glib of tongue, except under pressure of excitement, with some hesitation,

and with great repetition and amplification, related the object of his coming, and set forth the fact that his

people had been millers on the Rosa water over three hundred years, well counted and proved, and very likely

many more; and then he proceeded to urge that having thus a kind of inherited fief and ancestral right as it

were in the stream, it was beyond all justice, not to say all law, to have a steam mill set up in face of him.

Messer Nellemane listened very patiently; and when at last the miller paused for want of breath, said gently:

'You are under an entire misapprehension, my friend. Did not Remigio Rossi occupy the mill by the piazza

'Excuse me,' said Messer Nellemane, 'that is quite beside the question. If it had done, you could not have

'I never should have asked it,' said Pastorini. 'Live and let live is my motto. That mill was an honest thing. It

Messer Nellemane grew a trifle impatient; the obtuseness of the public always irritated him; but he kept his

'All that is beyond the question. You contest the legality of Rossi's mill. Now, whether it be a water mill or a

steam mill, it has, or it has not, the same rights to the ground it stands upon: you do not seem to me to see

that; yet, if you reflect a moment, dear sir, you will be persuaded that the manner of working the mill has

'Merciful heaven!' cried Pastorini, goaded into torture by this mild and logical reasoning. 'It has everything to

do with it. The mill had the same rights as mineno less; no more. When Rossi was content with the seasons

'A moment ago you claimed it as the property of your family,' said his listener very gently: the miller did not

'Fair contest I would never be a foe to, nor would any son of mine,' he said, a little hotly. 'Come rich, come

'More pity,' said Messer Nellemane, whose propriety was often offended by little, live, dancing amorini bent

'The river's a free thing; but use it fair,' said the miller, growing heated. 'Don't put a hissing boiler on it, and

grind, when it's God's will that the water's out; why do you come on the river to do that? it's like the men I've

heard of that blow fish out of the waters with gunpowder, and rob all honest anglers with their nets and rods.'

'Then why do you allow the steam mill?' pursued Pastorini. 'It's to me what the blasting is to the fishers. One

man will gorge, and all the others starve. I never said I had a right to the Rosa; but I do say I have a right to

grind grain for Santa Rosalia and all the farms around. This thing isn't fair; it isn't honest; it will eat me up,

and make my children hunger; for, of course, all the folks will go where the work is done quickest.'

'You have precisely expressed the reason of its invention,' said Messer Nellemane blandly, and toying with a

pen. 'In these times work, to please the public, must be done quickly, and done at any moment. It is most

painful to me that this innovation should be displeasing to you; but we are compelled to think of the general

interest, not of individual aims. It is absurd that, in these times of great inventions, a whole commune should

have to wait with its harvests unground because a little river has run dry; so many complaints have been made

on this subject to us that we have deemed ourselves bound to find some remedy for them, and as Remigio

Rossi was a publicspirited man with some capital, the most excellent the Cavaliere Durellazzo and the

Giunta decided on giving him some help to the better carrying out of this project.'

Pastorini stood confounded and dumb. He had intended to cast the loan for the steam mill in the face of this

representative of the municipality; but lo! it was boasted of to him as an act of public utility and benignity!

His slow gentle wits were not quick enough or keen enough to combat those of Messer Nellemane.

He stood turning his straw hat in his hands, and stammering stupidly: 'But the thing's not honest, It's not fair.

It is to be beat by devils' till his auditor amiably reminded him that time was precious, and that there were

'Damn the Giunta, and damn you!' said Demetrio Pastorini bitterly. 'You have thrown my poor lad in prison,

Messer Nellemane rang a little bell, and Bindo Terri appeared, and showed the miller the door.

'All that family is a little amiss here,' said Messer Nellemane, touching his own forehead with a

THE miller went to a lawyer in Pomodoro; and the lawyer told him he could do nothing; he could perhaps

So Pastorini bade him, in mercy's name, draw up the petition, which was done, and cost forty francs.

The Prefect's secretary read it, and referred it to the Consiglio Provinciale; the Consiglio Provinciale referred

it to their engineer, who was the engineer of the commune, one Pierino Zaffi. He informed the Consiglio

Provinciale that the mill was necessary, not insalubrious, and very advantageous to the commune; the

Consiglio Provinciale said so in turn to the Prefect, and he certified that he could not go against the decision

The steammill would take all his custom away, and now that the trees were felled, the water would most

likely be shallower, and sooner shallow, every summer. Besides the Pastorini felt themselves growing

friendless: for the first time for many years the big butcher had been asked to direct the procession of Corpus

Domini instead of the miller; people were cool where they had been cordial. Without more selfishness than is

common to human nature, Santa Rosalia felt that it was perilous to be good friends with a family so marked

'A tinkettle threshing the corn, and an iron pot grinding of it! Oh Lord what times!' said old Pippo, as the

Messer Nellemane was in good and affable spirits; all things were going well with him. The new deputy, not

unmindful of the tampering that had gone on with the election lists, and the plurality of voting achieved by

the gendarmerie, and other signal services to the State, in which the secretary of Santa Rosalia had been of no

small use, both in invention and execution, was more than cordial to his humble ally, and predicted all

'In a free country like this,' said Signore Luca Finti, 'industry and talent can never long fail to obtain

recognition. When these miscreants are out of office, and our turn of power comes, you will not be forgotten,

And Messer Nellemane was so clever that the Prefect of the province, who had been put in his place by the

miscreants, also commended him for his discretion and zeal in certain things that had been convenient to the

'So long as we are in power, you, I promise, shall not be forgotten. Such servants of the State as yourself are

quite invaluable in these times when we have so much to fear from the Reactionary and Clerical element, and

Messer Nellemane said earnestly that he had no feeling except of horror either for Clericalism or

He thought the good of the State required the strictest moderation and impartiality, and, as he said it very

truthfully, he felt quite safe whether the Ministry went out or in, and especially as the new deputy and the

subprefect would never compare notes because they abhorred each other as only Ministerialists and

Messer Nellemane's Utopia was like that of most Liberals of the present era; it was a neat cutanddried

despotism, which should call itself a democracy, and in which the people should have as little voice as the

nobles, and the church be only permitted to exist if it became a schoolhouse for the semination of State

This Liberalism keeps one eye on Gambetta and the other on Bismarck, and is so absorbed in these two, and

in trying to combine an imitation of both, that it never sees coming after it with sevenleagued strides the

IT was the day for Carmelo to come out of prison; it was a lovely May morning, as May is lovely in this land

Plentiful rains had fallen in the night; the tall, greenwaving wheat, the mulberry and walnut trees, the

willows along the river, the mossgrown grass between the poplars, all were green and sparkling with

moisture; here and there an acacia rose up in blossom like the white column of a fountain, here and there

glowed a Judas (circis siliquastrum), with the roseate blush of its abundant flowers; over all was blowing a

'He will see us all well,' said Viola, with a true woman's belief that this must compensate for all.

'The lad is sorely changed,' said the father with a sigh; 'remember that, Viola. When wrong is done to a man it

changes the honey of the human heart to gall. He is no more the bright, soft, innocent youth that you and we

'I will try my best,' said the girl, 'I will try to win him back to his old self, and teach him to forget.'

'That is not easy,' said Pastorini; 'when the mildew is on the grain, who shall make it fair wheat again? And he

Then he kissed her, and got ready the grey mare, and Dina walked back with her to her own little house while

'That young Pastorini will be out of prison today,' Messer Nellemane was saying at that moment to the

brigadier; 'you will keep him under your eye, for I think he is a dangerous character.'

Once in prison, you are for ever down in the books of the police, and subject to examination and interrogation

at any word or act that seems to them to be suspicious. You never wholly escape. You are as a bird let loose,

and flying with a recallthread tied to its foot. Human justice is a sadly deficient thing.

Pippo and the Pastorini, father and sons, went to Pomodoro to meet him; Viola stayed in her house; there is

enough of the old sentiment amongst the people, still, to make them think women should not parade their

When they greeted Carmelo, and the formalities were fulfilled that set him free, he grasped his father's hand

and Pippo's, but said never a word. He walked out into the open air, into the broad sunlight, with an uncertain

step as if he were purblind; his face had a stupid look, and his mouth, that had been so fresh and smiling, was

pale and sullenly compressed. All his youth seemed to have gone out of him; he was wasted and thin, and his

clothes hung on him loosely, twice too large. Only twelve months before he had borne the Maggio so merrily

'You have had a long time of it,' said the Usciere jocosely to him. 'You will take good care how you touch a

Carmelo looked on the ground; there was a fierce fire in his eyes; he kept a sullen silence.

'My son has been cruelly wronged,' said the elder Pastorini with tears in his voice. 'If there were any justice in

'The real good honest law perhaps does not,' said Pastorini, 'but these rogues who make laws out of their

'Hush! or they will lock you up,' whispered Pippo, who ever since he had mortgaged his house had been timid

At the maiden's name a momentary light passed over Carmelo's face and into his heavy eyes; but it soon

faded and left again unillumined the sullen gloom that months of imprisonment had brought there.

'Let us go,' he said, and glanced back over his shoulder with a shudder at the prison.

They had brought the millhorse and cart to meet him, and he felt a sob rise in his throat as he saw the

familiar old grey beast, and heard the whinny of pleasure with which the poor thing recognised him.

Their hearts were rather heavy than joyful as they drove behind the grey along the dusty road, with the

vineyards on either side of them, and the long low azure forms of the mountains beyond those.

The father felt a bitter pang that one of his sons should go back thus to his birthplace; his name had always

been stainless, and though he knew that Carmelo had done no wrong, still in all prisons there is a taint of

The young man never spoke; his brother had the reins; he sat behind with old Pippo, his face turned

backward, so that he saw the red roofs and dusky towers of Pomodoro grow less and less, until the rise of the

'Accursed place! accursed place!' he muttered once; then his head dropped on his breast, and lips never

unclosed till the cart had jolted over a bridge that crossed the winding Rosa and entered his village. Then he

He stood an instant, and looked at the white, square, bald building that was the Palazzo Communale. He

'I would do the same again were the time to come again!' he said solemnly. 'My poor dead dog! do they think

His face was very pale and very stern; his eyes had a great darkness and yet a great fire in them, as the skies

'Let him go to his girl. She will be his best cure. We should but do him harm. You will bring them both up to

It was early morning; no one saw Carmelo return. He went across the threshold of the house of the Madonna,

'What will he say of the trees?' he cried in a sort of despair. 'I have not broken it to him. What will he say?

Pippo answered nothing: he thought the trees but a trivial woe beside his own dead weight of ruin; but he

would not say so; he had a kind heart, which was awake, though his head was failing.

The miller drove on slowly through the village; and Pippo slipped down and glided away by himself, and sat

It was early, and no one scarcely had seen the miller's cart come through the village, and those who had seen,

had kept behind their doorposts and their casements, saying to themselves, 'Will it be prudent to be friends

For whosoever would be friends with the liberated criminal, the whole borgo knew well, would be marked

and cashiered in the black books of the oppressor rusticorum. Their hearts were altogether with Carmelo; he

had done thoroughly right, so they all thought, but who would dare to say so, or dare to act as if he thought

In these modern times of cowardice, when great Ministers dare not say the thing they think, and high

magistrates stoop to execute decrees that they abhor, it is scarcely to be hoped for that moral courage will be

a plant of very sturdy growth in the souls of carpenters and coopers, and bakers and plumbers and

daylabourers, who toil for scarce a shilling a day. A bad name with the guards, a series of fines and taxes,

the loss of municipal work or gentlemen's patronagethese soon ruin a poor tradesman or workman.

So we will not be too harsh against the little folk of Santa Rosalia that they hung back somewhat, and were

not quick to look out of their doors as usual when the miller's wellknown grey horse trotted slowly through

Only Gigi Canterelli ran out of his shop and waved his hat, and shouted, 'Bravo! benone!' and fearful Cecco,

who was standing at the entrance of his workshop, having no work to do, seeing Pippo sitting disconsolate

amidst the rushes, ran to him and cried, 'Dear friend! Is he home? Oh the joy of it! Never mind the gaol now;

And when Pippo, who did not think it right to leave the youth and the maiden together more than ten minutes,

got up to go into his house, Cecco would go with him, and shook the hands of Carmelo, and kissed him on

both cheeks, and said, 'Now you are home all will go well,' and then kissed Viola and went on his knees

before the crucifix and blessed Christ, and got up again, and laughed and cried, and sang and danced, and

behaved altogether so foolishly for a staid old cooper of sixty years, that Pippo could not help laughing too,

and the young man and maiden were glad of this cover to their own too great emotion.

Carmelo, with Viola's hand in his, looked more as he had used to look; his eyes had a soft and tearful light,

and his lips had something of their old smile on them. He spoke but little: even for her he had few words.

But when Pippo said to him that it was time they should be going to the mill, and thereon the three went out

from the house into the piazza, the harder, darker look came once more upon his face, and his eyes grew

'I could kill them all!' he muttered, and his hand clenched hard on the hand of Viola.

'She died ofofold age,' said Viola between her sobs; 'don't talk of her, please don't.'

'Of old age?' said Carmelo doubtingly; 'She was not a pup, to be sure, but she was so full of pranks and play.

His face grew overcast again, and the gloom of it did not lighten as he moved into the street and saw the

'Come on, never mind them. They are afraid the guards are looking, that is all. It will all be again just as it

used to be when you shall have been home a week,' said the cooper hurriedly, and they passed across the

It was now the hour when all Santa Rosalia was up and doing; when every door was open, and every window

unshuttered, when the children were trotting to school, and the mothers gossiping as they made their small

purchases for dinner at noon. But now the women hustled away into holes and corners, and the men became

suddenly very busy with casks or barrels, with brushes or pails, with meat or flour, with a mule in a cart, or

an ox at a butcher's door, with anything and everything so that no one saw Carmelo.

He raised his head higher, and his eyes grew sterner and fiercer: he knew very well why these lazy

There was only Gigi Canterelli who ran once more out of his shop door and welcomed him with both hands.

'The beasts of the Municipality will never sup or dine in my back room any more,' thought he, 'but what

matterthey must ruin me if they wish; I cannot let the good lad go by without a greeting.'

But his was the only greeting that welcomed Carmelo in all the length of the village street, though women

and men both looked wistfully after him and said one to another: 'Poor lad, he was in the right; will it do to be

'Oh, the shame of them! the cruelty of them!' thought Viola, trying not to let her tears fall. 'Instead of giving

'Men and women are just like sheep,' thought her father. 'A crack of the whip and they scatter: they never stay

'It is not to be expected that they will get into trouble for the lad,' thought Cecco; 'and yet one would have

Now on the steps of the Palazzo Communale there was lounging Bindo, in his guard's uniform, with his short

sword swinging at his side, and his big memorandum book bulging out of his pocket; his hat was cocked on

one side, and his moustaches were curled up to his eyes, and he looked very much as if he had stepped off the

He saw the four persons coming past the building on their way from Pippo's house to the mill on the Rosa. He

said to a carabinier who was also at the doorway, 'Come along with me, there is that blackguard out of

He swaggered down the steps and stood in the middle of the road so that they were obliged to pass him.

The face of Carmelo grew crimson and then livid as he saw the poisoner of Toppa.

'Here is this gaol bird,' called Bindo Terri out loud to the carabinier, as they went by. 'He will think twice

before he assaults us again; but I will be bound he will end in the galleys. Keep your eye on him, brigadier,

But for the pressure on his hand of Viola's entreating gesture, and the low supplication of old Pippo's

quavering voice, the municipal guard would once more have measured his length on the dust under the

For their sakes he mastered the passion that convulsed him. They passed on in silence, submissive to insult

and to injury, as the people have always to be before the petty tyrannies that are called Law.

'Heed him not, my beloved,' said the maiden near him. 'Be calm and strong. That will be your best

Old Annunziata met him now also. She had begun to hobble about again with the warm weather; she cried as

she welcomed him: 'Oh my dear lad,' she said, 'I shall always think it was myself with that basket of eggs that

'Not you,' said Carmelo, kindly. 'Eggs or no eggs, these beasts would have done for me somehow.'

'Yes, with lies tacked to it as you tack paper to a kite's tail to carry it higher,' said Cecco the cooper.

Carmelo, full of bitter thoughts and tender memories, did, indeed strain his eyes eagerly along the road for the

'There it is!' he cried eagerly as a turn in the riverroad brought the white building with its redtiled roof into

'Has father cut them down?' he cried, staring all the while straight before him.

'They were taken by the municipality, dear; it seems there is some public thing to be done; they want the

She was dumb, as one of the terrible oaths of Italy that burn and harrow like vitriol, rolled out of Carmelo's

He uttered nothing more, but walked on towards the millhouse where his father and his brothers and sisters

They hung about him, and they kissed him, and wept over him, but he made them no caress in answer; he did

not respond to them by any word or sign; even his youngest sister, little Isola, clinging about his knees, got

no kiss from him; he looked only at his father, and from his father to the heaps of rubbish where the wood

'Son of mine,' said the miller, humbly and wearily, 'could you fight against the pricks? I could not.'

Carmelo dropped on the wooden bench by the door above the stones where Toppa was buried, and buried his

The day was beautiful; the fields were in all their first summer greenness; the waters were green, too, with the

reflection of them; the air was full of the scent of newmown hay and of the vineblossoms. His sister had

made ready a plenteous meal; blackbirds and chaffinches sang in the hedge of arbutus and bay; the old place

looked bright and kindly, but nothing changed the cloud on Carmelo's face, nothing made him smile.

He had been wronged, and a great wrong is to the nature as a cancer is to the body; there is no health.

Carmelo leaned his head on his arm and noticed none of them. It seemed to him that twenty years had rolled

over him since the morning when, thinking no evil and fearing none, he had gone out on the grass to call the

dog for his bread. It seemed to him that his very soul had been changed, and that in the stead of his heart there

He loved Viola; the old happy, innocent, simple affection was still very sweet to him, but even that was

dulled and dwarfed by his own immense anguish and wrath. A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it

All pleasure in his future was gone out of him; all joy was dead. Some animal passions had awakened in him

during his long isolation, but all peaceful serene happiness had perished. He did not reason on this, because

he was but a simple unlearned youth, but he felt it, and he hated the world of men and doubted God.

The cooper Cecco, and the elder Pastorini, and the youngest of the sons tried to make a little mirth and

gossipry; but in vain old wine was poured out, in vain the men strove to laugh and chatter; a great heaviness

of sorrow and of dread was over all. Viola's face was as white as the narcissus poeticus hanging their fragrant

bells in the strip mill garden, and Carmelo scarcely tasted bit or drop. In the midst of the meal his youngest

Carmelo looked up and his mouth and eyelids quivered. He rose, caught the child in his arms, and hurried out

by the open door, and there, on the old oak seat above the stone that covered the body of the dog, he bent his

Within doors Demetrio Pastorini struck the wooden table heavily with his clenched fist.

He had all his life been a most peaceful man, and a more harmless, jovial, kindly, easy in temper, and patient

from sense of duty and love of quiet; but now all his blood stirred darkly within him.

'We are mules and bats, blind and dumb, and knowing not when we are smitten,' he said, with a deep rage in

his thickened voice. 'We are more foolish than the beasts that perish, since we live and submit to our

THE Italians are patient to a great degree. There is here as much hunger as there is in Ireland, and there are

proprietors as indifferent as the absentees, but here there is no agrarian crime, no revolt against masters or

'Our people do not understand their rights,' said a prefect to me. I thought: 'When they dowell,there will

This is the fact: they do not understand; they let their sons go to the conscription, their bread money to the

municipal extortioners, their last tool in fine to the taxgatherer, their last shirt in pawn to the Monte di Pieta,

and then shut themselves up and die of hunger secretly, or throw themselves in the river without a word of

complaint to anyone. They do not understand their rights, and they are not at all envious of the pretty happy

people driving by with prancing horses. The cursing envy of Irish or French poor is not in the Italian; if he

can sit in the sun and cut a slice of melon in summer, a slice of sausage in winter, he is content, and ready to

Foreigners judge the Italians by Menotti's restless emigrants and Mazzini's mystic disciples, but in real truth

these make up but a small portion of the nation; to the great bulk of it revolt is alien, and a goodhumoured

Now, no doubt it would have been far better had Carmelo gone elsewhere to seek a living. But to the higher

sort of Italian poor it never occurs to leave their home. The same love that bound Dante to the cerchio antico

binds the Italian cotter or workman to his native village. When they are taken perforce away as by

conscription they hunger ceaselessly till they see their hillside farm or cottage in the plains. Emigration does

not attract them; even a change to a near city or a neighbouring province appals them as a kind of

'I want to go to my native country' (paese nativo), said one of the men in my employ. 'It is such a longtime

By his native country he meant an olive clad hill that rose in sight about two miles off; he had not been there

The paese nativo is what they love, and to this sentiment their rulers owe their incredible and illimitable

patience which forbears from revolution. Leave them in their paese nativo, and you may do almost any

Therefore neither to him or his did it ever occur that Carmelo would do well to leave Santa Rosalia. Besides

he was the elder son, and had always been promised that the mill should pass to him, after an old rule of the

The eldest Pastorini had always had the mill, and the others had always lived there if they liked, and worked

at other trades; and Demetrio Pastorini was strongly conser vative, as indeed every rural Italian is in mind

and blood, abhorring change, and never understanding it, or being willing to allow for it in any way.

Therefore, as I say, there was no thought that Carmelo would do well to put some breadth of strange land

between himself and his foes; but although things were going so ill at the millhouse, his marriage was never

'They have suffered enough,' said Pastorini, 'and nothing will chase away the gloom that has gathered upon

'My son,' he said therefore to Carmelo that night. 'You are come home to us in evil times. The trees are down,

and never a soldo will I see for them. That is certain. The steam mill of Rossi's is taking all our custom away;

some go because it gets done quick, and more go because they think to please the Syndic, and the gentlemen,

that set it up there. I am not at all sure, my lad, that the place will bring us bread a year more. And I owe

money, that I will not deny to you. I owe money, but I have not heart to stand in the way of the only joy you

So the very morning after his return, all formalities having been gone through wellnigh twelve months

before, they went quietly and with no mirth up to the church of San Giuseppe, and were wedded before the

There were few dry eyes there amongst their friends: she had thought of little Raggi, and had put an almond

sprig in her bosom off the tree that grew by the little grave, and the two old men stood beside her, careworn,

Would these two, whose lives were made one, find anything in the future except toil and pain? Would their

children be begotten for anything beyond hunger and care? Would they be allowed to see their years go by in

such peace as sweetens labour? Would not their hearts be harrowed and their cupboards bare?

There would be enough if they were let alone, but not enough for tax and fine, for torment and extortion.

Carmelo said very little. He felt scarce any joy. The dull, sullen shame of his captivity was still on him. The

bitter rage of his wrongs suffocated almost all gentler thoughts, all tenderer emotions. He loved the maiden

who had been so true to him; but the days of dalliance seemed gone for ever from him: he said to himself,

'Have I a right to procreate innocent creatures to be as wretched as I have been, and to bear the burdens that

For he had learned to think, in the long watches of those nights, in hospital and in prison; and all that the

The marriage service was said and over very early in the morning, for they wished to make no fuss, and draw

no eyes upon them, save the kindly ones of a few old neighbours who had known them both from their birth.

The child Isola had gathered a great bunch of the wild narcissus, which filled the church with its fragrance;

that was their only rejoicing. Viola wore the grey gown she had laid aside in the past summer; and the good

vicar blessed them with a quiver in his voice, and they went as quietly and sadly home again; the stick of old

Then every one went to his work again, and there was no attempt at any kind of festivity: it would have been

He and Viola went home and with the old man to the little square house to break bread with him ere she

departed for ever. They had offered to live with him there a few months before taking up their abode at the

mill; but Pippo had refused the offer, sweet as it was to him, for he said to himself: 'They will distrain all I

He had a little meal for them, and they sat at it silently: no one had appetite to eat. It was like a funeral rather

than a bridal feast. None of the broad jokes common at such times were heard, and no levity could lift its

It wrung the heart of Viola to leave the old man all alone to do his chores, and make his bread and bed; but

Pippo, harshly at the last, said that he would have it so, and so best liked it: and she submitted.

The mill was but a halfamile off down the river: she promised herself that she would run in to him a dozen

times a day to do all that was needed. With the miller's three girls there would be little for her to do in her

'My girl,' he said gravely; 'be as good a wife as you have been a good child to me, and you will be as a vein of

gold to those you go to dwell with. You have had sore trouble here. May it never find you where you go now.

Demetrio, drink with me: health and long life to your son and your son's sons when you and I be underneath

Then with twilight, the young people went away to the millhouse, where there were now no nightingales

safe in leafy trees to sing through the hours of their nuptial night; and old Pippo was left alone in his little,

dull, and quiet place, where there was not sound but of the Rosa water breaking on the sand beneath the

'My wee dog,' he said to it. 'I shall soon be like you now. Let the thieves come and seize; they cannot get

blood out of a post; and it does not matter for me, since you and the girl are gone.'

Then he sat him down by the cold hearth, with his hands on his knees, and his head on his breast, and never

WITH the return of mild weather Annunziata had lost her rheumatic pains, and had been able to get off her

bed and put on her huge leather boots, that had once belonged to a cattle dealer, and begin to go about again,

The poor soul had always been certain in her own mind that her basket of eggs had been at the bottom of

Carmelo's troubles, and she never could forgive herself for having complained about them, especially as

when the case was brought on at Pomo doro, where it had been sent by Messer Nellemane, she had been

forced to attend as an accuser, and had cried so much that the Pretore had abused her, and had felt a great deal

more remorse than Pomp�o of Sestriano did when they ordered him six weeks' imprisonment.

'And know another time, you, that it is a breach of the law to conceal a theft, and that such concealment on

the part of the person robbed makes such person liable to heavy penalties,' had thundered the young judge at

Annunziata, who had cried again as if her heart would break, but, being an obstinate old woman, would insist

on answering that she could not for the life of her see why anybody should mind her being robbed if she did

'That shows how lamentably, how culpably, ignorant you are of the first rudiments of morality and public

duty,' said the Pretore, who was as like Messer Nellemane in his ideas and his expressions of them, as a green

bunch of grapes is like a ripened one. He was exactly like him, without his mellowed suavity, and exquisite

patience with foolish people, which were gifts of time and nature that Messer Nellemane had carefully

cultivated with a view to the future, when he should be a Minister, and hold the heart of the State in his

Annunziata had still gone on crying, having seen the smith of Sestriano led off by carabiniers.

'And he will murder me when he comes out,' she had cried, 'and small blame will it be to him, the poor thing,

'If he murder you, he will go to the galleys,' had said the guards as they took her away.

'And what good will that be to me when I am dead?' had said 'Nunziatina. 'And he is a good man enough

On the whole, the ungovernable resolution to have her own way, and the answers that she had thus made to

those in authority over her, had produced an impression against her in the minds of all the officials, who had

'If there were but a Vagrant Act, I would consign her to the lockup at once,' had said the Pretore to Messer

'I think the Cavaliere Durellazzo will bring something of the kind; we are overrun with beggars; but, of

The Syndic of Pomodoro was the elder brother of that excellent Count Saverio who was the president of the

'Are there many mendicants about?' the Syndic had asked his brother, after having been spoken to by the

Count Saverio had thrown up his hands, implying that they were many as the sands of the sea.

'They are a great anxiety to us,' he had added, 'for they are always applying to us, and you know our rules do

not permit us to relieve beggars. If there were any law by which one could deal with them'

'There ought to be one,' had said the Syndic of Pomodoro. 'I will speak to Durellazzo.'

So in the council chamber of the Giunta in the Palazzo Communale, Messer Nellemane had known very well

that it was the marriage day of Viola, but was at the same time enjoying such a victory of reason over

prejudice that he had no time to indulge in any of the sentiments of a passion disappointed and outrivalled.

By his representations to the Cav. Durellazzo, and the Cav. Durellazzo's representations to the Giunta, he had

succeeded in having adopted for Vezzaja and Ghiralda, as he and the Pretore had desired, the laws of the

There had been a strong prejudice against this course in the Giunta; for Italians, until their humanity is

effaced by Impiega tism, do not incline to severity; climate and custom alike making them lenient.

But Cav. Durellazzo read a report prepared by his secretary, and endorsed by himself, that presented quite

appalling evidence of the persons who lived by beggary or alms of some sort. The order of which Messer

Nellemane is the type, is never greater or happier than when preparing a report of this kind, which, dealing

with the exact science of statistics, deals a deathblow to those unproductive and erratic classes which every

The report concluded with a short moral essay on the beauties of providence and industry, and the patriotism

and public spirit that were required in all members of the public to enable them to extinguish their individual

sentiments and private pity, and look on the question from the higher standing point of general interest and

It was a very warm day in March; the council chamber was small, and, as children say, stuffy; the Giunta was

half asleep, and all that was awake of it was longing for a flask of wine; the voice of the Cavaliere Durellazzo

was sonorous, but provocative of somnolence; the Giunta assented to the new law with the pliancy of men

whose bodies are moist, and whose throats are dry; it was embodied in an appendix of thirtyfive new

The Prefect approved of course, naturally; first of all, it was not his interest to quarrel with the commune;

secondly, he assented to these new rules without even thinking what the long documents forwarded to him

The prefect's secretary sent them to the Home Minister, but he was in all the fiery heat of conflict on

Montecitorio, and had much to do to keep his own place, and had no time to give to the affairs of a remote

municipality hidden away under corn and vines. He assented too: it is always the strongest possible point

with ministers and prefects that the country communes are autonomous. When somebody remarked to him

that they were ill governed, he said it was their own fault: if they chose to elect asses, they must; it was no

business of anybody's. So the law against vagrants was incorporated into the code of Vezzaja and Ghiralda,

and was pasted up upon the walls in large letters, which, as ninetenths of the popula tion could not read,

There, alas! were a great many old folks too old to do anything, who lived with their families, and who, to

avoid being a burden to them, went about to all the villas and got pence here, bread there, a cup of

mezzovino, or an old bundle of scraps, as it might chance. If you had called these people beggars, they

would have been amazed. They were all well known, never asked for what was not offered to them, and had

been hardworking man and women until their sight or their limbs had failed them.

They did no harm; not a mite of harm; and as the State provided no poorhouse for them, they could not see

that there was any such very great guilt in taking from their richer neighbours a little aid that the richer were

But, in these days, Christian Europe decides that not only the poor man lying by the wayside, but also the

Samaritan who helps him, are sinners against political economy, and its law forbids what its religion orders:

people must settle the contradiction as they deem best; they generally are content to settle it by buttoning up

their pockets and passing by on the other side. This was the consequence of the new rules for the suppression

Now the suppression of mendicancy is a very good thing; but, as you never can suppress poverty, it would be

I know a very good man last winter who gave away souptickets to all who asked him; and he could not

understand how anybody wanted anything more. Now a bowl of soup is a very good thing; but I never knew

anybody who could live on it, and I have known a good many who felt ashamed to present the ticket and take

the soup there in public. Why are you expected to have no sensitive nerves and no pride because you are

starving? I cannot see why you should be myself; but it is a fact that such things are not permitted to you.

Messer Nellemane went a step farther than my good man: he thought people should not have soup at all

His rules were framed on this principle, which he considered to be a sound and healthy one; and as they were

also adopted for the larger commune of PomodoroCarciofi, he thought they would sweep the land as clean

As none of the old men and women involved, understood anything at all of these fresh laws, printed up in big

type on the walls of the Communal Palace, they were swept into the net as easily as quails are at Naples.

If a regiment of the blind, the infirm, and the very aged would have been any use to the Minister of War, he

But, alas! they were of now use for anything; and, being nigh their end, so took it to heart when they were

locked up that most of them died incontinently; and thought nobody really would believe it, for it sounds too

absurd, many a humble little home under the pines of the hillside, or down amongst the maize and vines of

the level ground was the sadder, because an old granddam or grandsire sat no more on the wooden settle

These laws came into effect on the first day of June, just twenty days after Carmelo and Viola were married,

and one fine afternoon, as Annunziata was trotting about with her stick, feeling happy because her

rheumatism was gone for the moment, and because her girl was happily wedded, she was touched on the

In vain she wept, and prayed, and sobbed, and moaned that she had always been an honest woman. She was a

mendicant under the Act; she had no private means of subsistence, nor did she work for her living; she was

She was taken off to the guardhouse with her basket, full of scraps and pence and odds and ends, as proof of

her guilt, found upon her, and without any more words or any hearing at all, was carried away to Pomodoro

'It is the new law,' said Bindo, and that was all he would say to her: he was very stern and very arrogant, and

'Do not tell Carmelo; for the love of God , do not tell, or he will come burning the town down to get me out!'

And so distraught and wretched was this poor old trot at the thought of the disgrace and sorrow she should

bring on those she loved, that she fretted herself in half an hour into such a state of body and mind, that the

gaoler forthwith pronounced her in his own mind to be mad, and sent her to the same hospital where young

It was precisely for such cases as hers that the Confraternit� di S. Francesco had been instituted, but, as the

modern moralities of that society forbade them to encourage beggars, the Count Saverio, though he heard of

He was, indeed, at the moment he heard of it, occupied with his stockbroker, who interested him much

'A vagrant; a confirmed mendicant. Now we could not interfere; it would be an injurious example. We are

Meantime, Bindo hied quickly homeward and said to his young brother, who resembled him as one pea

'I took up the old 'Nunziatina this morning. Let some lad go say so at the mill house; best not go yourself.'

The lad winked and ran off; half an hour later, as the family at the mill were sitting down to their frugal

noonday meal, Viola and Carmelo at the places that would be theirs all their lives, a grinning youngster

'Your old woman is in prisonthe new law's out today!they have taken her to the town'

'It cannot be true. It cannot be true. They never would touch 'Nunziatina. All the world knows her!'

'No!' said Demetrio Pastorini. 'Get not yourself into more trouble. Most like it is but an idle word. Stay you

'Nay, Father, that cannot be,' said Carmelo. 'It is Viola's aunt that is in peril and misery. Come with me if you

'Be it so,' said Pastorini. 'But remember, for the love of the saints, no violence. You are not alone in life now.'

Carmelo looked out of the door at the bank of mud, where once had been his bright boschetto.

Viola entreated to go with them, and, being not a month after her marriage, neither man could find heart to

The way to Pomodoro, as the way to all things southward, lay along that river road which was to be

disfigured by the tramway at such time as speculators and municipalities should have finished their

squabbles. There was a short cut that passed by her grandfather's cottage, too narrow for waggons and

But as they drew nigh the cottage, close enough to discern the blue Madonna, Viola, whose eyes were

Carmelo checked the horse and sprang to the ground: his cheeks grew very white; his teeth clenched; he had

caught sight of other figures than Pippo's amidst the chairs and tables, the mattresses and saucepans, the

The figures he had seen were the Usciere and his assistants, two straggling donothings of the place, who lent

themselves to this despised office for sake of the two francs a day they got by it, and the pleasure of seeing

the pain of better people than themselves, which is a joy to scoundrels, always.

'Your grandsire is only cleaning, Viola,' he said hurriedly. 'Only cleaning his things. I think I will go and help

'They are selling his things!' she said, with a piercing scream, and ere either man could stay her she had

sprung off the cart on to the shaft, and from the shaft on to the ground, and had run onward across the path

The elder Pastorini threw the reins on his grey steed's back, and got down likewise. Carmelo was already on

'Oh nonno, nonno, what is it?' cried Viola, as she ran into the entrance room, and saw her grandfather sitting

there in his basket chair by the cold hearth, just as he had done through all the long, lonely evening of her

'They are selling the old things,' he said. 'I thought they could not get blood out of a post, but it seems they

'Oh, nonno, nonno!' she moaned, 'Why did you not let me stay with you? I would never have left you if I had

'No,' said the old man, with his mouth quivering a little on the pipe stem that it clenched. 'I knew well you

wouldn't, my lass. You were aye thoughtful of me. But you could have done not a mite of good, and you

On the threshold Carmelo had seized by the shoulders one of the men who was carrying out the bed that had

'Thief, and the servant of thieves, let go! Carry off one of these things from this house and I will brain you

'Carmelo, son of Demetrio,' he cried in a stern loud voice. 'You are wedded mate to my girl, but you are no

master of mine, and in my house have no voice. What I bid you to do, do; but nought else. Come quiet to my

Obedience and respect to elders are fine old primitive virtues that are strong, like the olive and the chestnut

on their hills, in the heart of the Italian. Carmelo heard, and hesitated a moment, then took his hand off the

'Where is the good of resisting? When you cannot make resistance good, it is but a silliness and a paltriness.

They are stronger than we. They take the goods. Let them, and go your ways. Make not your wife mourn for

you in the Murata; that would be harder to bear than loss of cup and platter, bed and board.'

Outside the elder Pastorini was speaking with the Usciere, begging for delay, and praying of him to put back

The figures that he saw were a total of nigh two hundred francs, nigh 8l. if you put it in English sovereigns,

and Demetrio had no money at home, nay, was in debt to more than one, now that the steam mill took from

him the wheat of more than half the peasantry; for folks will run to what is new, and what is popular, and

He stood irresolute, meditating whether he could raise money by any means, and the men went on with their

work, hauling out into the open air the poor sticks that made the furniture of Pippo. Rich and rare things look

sorry when thus treated and thrown together in the sun and dust; these poor little things of Pippo's looked

'They give us all this trouble,' said the Usciere, like an illused man. 'They give us all this trouble with their

obstinacy, and we take all they have, and then when it is all put together it is not worth a kick from a dog.'

He gave a shove as he spoke to the mound of things, and a copper vessel or two rolled down in a clatter.

They were all silent; the assistants were making a great noise bringing down the steep stone stair an old chest

of drawers, older than Pippo himself. It was the chest in which Viola had kept her mother's wedding gown

until the day of her own marriage, with the orange leaves and the lavender to drive away the moths.

Viola, on her knees by the old man's side, was rocking herself violently to and fro, weeping.

'Why don't they get out the guns, and set us all in a row and fire us down? 'twould be quicker done, and

'It is the new law,' said the voice of the Usciere, who was lending a hand to get out the walnut drawers.

'Law, law, law!' muttered Pippo, with his eyes savage like a wild cat's, under his white eyebrows. 'There's law

for this and that and t'other, till all the land is sick; but there's no law against the poor starving to death:

there's no law against their dying naked on the naked floor. Will you tax the mother's breasts next, or the

babe's swaddling clothes? You're ripe to do it. But the mothers should cheat you, and dash out the brains of

their sucklings on the house wall, ere they be old enough to sweat and pine and drag the cannon for the State

'Get you all gone to Annunziata,' he said, as he forced Viola roughly from the ground. 'Get you gone to her,

and leave me alone with the thieves. I have the roof above me yet, and I am not a maiden to mourn for a lost

lookingglass. I can lie on the floor well enow, and a bit of dry bread needs no platter. Get you gone.'

They had no choice but to obey him. Carmelo's downcast lowering eyes, and compressed and pallid lips told

his father with how violent an effort did he keep down his arm and his words; his father knew, too, that this

effort was strung, nearly to breaking point, and he was thankful that Pippo's will set him free to carry away

They got up into the cart again, and drove on by the edge of the river; Viola was still weeping convulsively.

'Grandfather, who has led such an honest, hardworking life, and never owed one penny!' she said amidst her

tears. 'And what is it all for? It is not a debt. It is no debt, and who has any right to make these claims?'

All the words of the dead German were echoing in his ears, and he was saying to himself, as Pippo had done,

'If I had let Messer Gaspardo make a bad woman of me, all these my dear ones would not have suffered thus.'

But what shall we say of the State and the Law that make Messer Nellemane possible?

THE cart drove on, and the old man Pippo sat himself down in the chimney corner, though it was a warm

day, and fine of course, and saying never a word, and making no sign, he let the plunderers carry on their

work of pillage. The spirit had gone out of him; something of vacancy had come over his face and into his

And so on through all the numerals; he was adding up all the sums that the municipality had claimed from

him; those that had been paid by him and those for which the law was now seizing his goods.

He sat there till it was quite dark; long after the distrainers had ransacked every hole and corner, and carried

off every pot and pan and gone away leaving him nought but his four bare walls and the roof above him.

When it was quite dark, and the stars were beginning to tremble in the summer skies, the cart came by his

She was shivering very much and sobbing. Pippo did not either hear or see her at first; the figures were in his

ears, in his heart, in his brain before his sight. She had to shake him by the shoulder to rouse him; and even

'What did you find? he said then, and he thought his mouth moved with difficulty, and his tongue seemed

'We found her locked up,' sobbed his granddaughter. 'And we could do nothing, nothing. They will not let her

out, and she is so wretched, and I feared all the while that Carmelo would break into some violence; it was all

'Yes! And she is always crying to them to let her see the sun!' and Viola's tears choked her voice as she

'They have locked her up, have they?' said Pippo stupidly. 'And they have taken all my things. Well, I do not

know, my lass why folk should try to be decent and honest; we are fools for our pains.

'Let me stay with him this night; I cannot leave him alone; indeed, indeed, I cannot!'

'I will stay too,' said Carmelo; and he came down from the cart, and bade his father drive home.

There was no light but from the moon, for the men of the law had taken away both lamp and oil. There was

Viola, checking her bitter sobs, sought in the old wallcupboards she knew so well for a broken plate or a

bent spoon, but all was gone. There was only a little rusty tin can and a halfloaf of bread; nothing else

Carmelo stooped down and made a little fire with some charcoaldust that lay in the stove, and she pumped

some fresh water, and put it, with some of the bread, and an onion, from the garden in the little pot to boil.

All this while Pippo was busy counting. The young people crouched together on the ground, and the old man

sat on the wooden settle; the white moon shone in through the square window; the room was full of smoke

and bad smells from the steammill; in other years at this season every chamber had been sweet with the

Suddenly a mouse ran across the feet of Pippo; the mouse roused him; he lifted his head from his breast and

saw the figures of his children crouching together on the stones in the moonlight.

'They have got blood out of a post; they have got blood out of a post, have my gentlemen. They think I'll kill

myself like Nanni. It's four hundred and sixtyfive francs in all, and I am to drive my brook underground, and

spend all my mint of money on masons and engineering folk. What would the king say? what would the king

say? And the old woman locked up like a purselifter or a trull. This is what we lit up our oil for the day after

San Martino! There's the moon, but where's the lilacs? I don't smell them. What's that smoke coming in my

house? What smoke is that? Get out, you foul thing, get out! They have sold me up, but I am master here yet!'

He got on his feet struck at the smoke wildly, beating the air with his hands; then, finding nothing resist him,

'Why wait you here?' he said thickly. 'Go you home, my dears. You are lovers still, and the night is sweet to

you; get you home. Nay, I would be alone. I have my house over my head; I am not out in the street yet.'

And he would take no denial, but thrust them away almost roughly, and shut to the door; then he sat himself

down again, and again began counting, 'Two and three make five, and four are nine, and six make fifteen,'

and so on through all the figures they had brought against him, repeating them over and over again, all

'He will lose his mind, saying over those figures!' sobbed Viola, as they stood in the night air, no more, as of

THE law has been compared by some writers to Fate. It may, perhaps, be accurately compared to the

Juggernaut, which rolls on regardless whether it crushes straw or diamonds, youth or age, beauty or

The Juggernaut having been set in motion by Messer Nellemane, it rolled over Pippo quite regardless of his

circumstances; and a few mornings after the Usciere had taken away everything except the little rusty pot, the

law, which is never conscious of being ridiculous, served a summons to this old destitute man to pay sixty

francs for a month's delay in executing the work above the running water commanded by the commune.

Pippo could not read, but he knew the look of the summons paper with the arms of the province atop of its

long pages. He laughed a shrill, hard little laugh, and twisted the paper up and lit his pipe with it.

He had a stupid and vacant look on his face, and he was very taciturn; and when alone at work could always

be heard muttering over and adding up those figures; but he had set his back up straight against his lot; he

He went on with his basketwork and vegetable garden; one neighbour brought in an old chair, and another a

kettle, and another some cracked plates, and Dom Lelio lent him a mattress; and so Pippo began life again at

nigh seventy years of age; an age when hope is only a remembered thing, like a fair bird flown away long

They had been allowed to see 'Nunziatina once more, but the interview was but added pain to her and to

themselves. She was almost distraught; her dim eyes were streaming with tears, and her voice was hoarse

with screaming. She could be made to understand nothing; she could not fancy anything except that they

'Let me get out; let me go free!' she was crying with all her force. 'I want the air; I want to see the sky. This is

the day I am always to go to Varammista for my bread, and the pretty foreign child comes and gives me

something more herself, and smiles with her blue eyes; let me get out; I have got a rose at home on purpose

for the little miss; let me go to my own home. I shall die away from the my own house.'

The little musty place where she had cooked and worked, and eaten and slept for forty years, ever since her

'Dear lad, don't you get into trouble for me,' she said to Carmelo. 'But let me out they must. I have done no

harm at all. I only want to go home; I don't want a cart or anything; I can walk every step of the way.'

But no one would let her out; and there they had to leave her. But for the entreating pressure of Viola's hand

upon his arm, Carmelo would have done that day what would have lodged him anew in the Carcere of

Carmelo had only one thing of any value in the world; it was a watch that his grandfather had given him,

leaving it to him by will as to his favourite. It was an old silver watch, two hundred years old, with fine

r�pouss� work of cherubs and foliage around it: it went well still, and was as big as a peach. Carmelo loved

and honoured it so that he never wore it except on feastdays and Sundays. He wound it up only on those

rarer occasions; at other times it lay in his drawer, wrapped in a silk handkerchief.

The day after he had seen Annunziata for the second time, in the prison of Pomodoro he waited carefully till

Viola was busy washing linen and his father was out of sight; then he stepped upstairs, took the watch out of

'I am going to take that flour back to Varammista,' he called in at the kitchen window.

The flour had been ground for the fattore of that place. His brothers helped him up with the sacks, and he

He drove to Varammista (where unhappily he found the owners who liked Annunziata were absent), and left

his sacks with their fattore, then on into the town that he hated. His face was flushed, and he carried his head

There was a shop in the place that was a jeweller's and an antiquity seller's, both in one, kept by a man of

whom in the happy weeks before his marriage Carmelo had brought some little coral and silver earrings for

The jeweller stared, and took the watch in one hand; he had often seen and often coveted it.

'Twenty francs?' he said, hesitatingly. 'You know it will only sell for old silver. No one will buy a watch that

'That is a lie,' said Carmelo, 'for you told me yourself that all that work round it made it of value; yourself,

'I only said that to please you,' said the jeweller, who, however, longed for the watch.

After chaffing and disputing a quarter of an hour, Carmelo was sick of heart, and said passionately:

'Give me fifty francs, and you shall have it. You know well enough I would not let it go but for some dire

'You are always in trouble,' said the jeweller testily; but he paid the money and locked the old watch up in a

desk: he knew a collector of such things who would give him ten napoleons any day for it.

Carmelo went out of the shop; his face was a dusky red; he felt ashamed. But he kept to his purpose. He took

the fifty francs and went to the prison. If anyone would pay so much caution money as guarantee that the

'My father has sent me to pay the money for 'Nunziatina,' he said unsteadily to the gaoler. 'May she come out

Nevertheless, they were obliged to abide by their own rules, and the next night Annunziata, weeping and

After that action something of the gloom and bitterness that had been on him, lifted, and once or twice he

smiled his old merry smile, and little Isola threw her arms about him, and cried:

And so he would, and, thus forgetting, would have been a blameless, useful, and contented man.

But the State, which creates Messer Nellemane, does not care to have useful, harmless, and contented men in

its cities and communes. It thinks it of far greater importance that no dog should be seen in the streets, no

poverty be exempt from a tax, and no man be able to call his soul his own; it likes to have its gros bataillons

of unwilling conscripts, and it thinks it more profitable to have its galleys and its hospitals full than to remit a

PASTORINI grew very anxious; his many boys and girls had always been as much as he could find food and

clothes for in the best of times, and now they were very heavy on him. Dina indeed was to marry in a year or

so, but her betrothed was poor. The other girls were all young and, though handy and helpful, could not bring

in anything; and though, when plenty of grist came to the mill, he could make ends meet, now that Rossi's

iron servant took twothirds of the grain away he grew very harassed, and afraid, especially as he foresaw, as

I have said, that with the summer the water would be shallower than ever now that the trees were gone; and in

effect it had become so as early as June, a thing never known before, and the big black wheels stood high and

dry with the weeds on them dying in the sun, whilst farther below on the Rosa the black devil, as the people

It was a hideous blot on the landscape; it spread dirt and dust and poisonous vapours all around it; and the

little children near it grew pallid and sickly little things instead of the Correggiolike loves, all rosy and

brown, that they had been. But Messer Nellemane, sitting before the Nuova Italia (though, if had confessed

the truth, he was choked by the smoke as well as lesser people) said to everyone:

'What a pleasure it is to see that pillar of progress arisen in our midst;' and all Santa Rosalia understood, by

his look and his smile, that whosoever would wish to please the municipality must carry his grain to Remigio

The place had been, of yore, sweet with the scent of the flowers on the riverbank according to each season,

of the meadowthyme and the fragrant yellow tulip, of the vineblossom and the sturdy rosemary, of the

acacias and the catalpas, of the magnolias and the Chinese olives; now there was only a stench of oil and hot

iron, and the smoke of burning lignite; but the present generation has been taught to think this is a change for

An engine smelt sweeter to him than a lilacbush; and he thought hurry, strife, noise, and moneymaking

Dear Old Leisure, with his smile of peace and hands of blessing, was but an oldfashioned obstructionist to

The last day of the past month of March had been the day on which the first halfyearly payment of the

interest of his mortgage was due from Pippo; an interest of fifty per cent., which, on a loan of three hundred

francs with all the costs thereofas he phrased it, a hundred scudiwas a hundred and fifty every twelve

Pippo had by no means understood what mortgages were; the law of hypothec was Greek to him; when the

day came round, of course he had not the money, and truly had never in any way realized the arrangement to

which he had put his cross before witnesses. The time went by without any great dis quietude, except that

uneasy sense of debt and burden which was so new and horrible to him. His head had got muddled, and as he

When the Usciere had seized his things he had said to himself: 'I shall have to tell the advocate down in

But his head never seemed right now; he forgot things, and could not recollect words very often when he

wanted them, and so the matter kept slipping his mind, and when he remembered it he thought to himself:

The lawyer neither sent nor wrote to him, so naturally he was confirmed in his delusion. It was now August,

and in his empty home he was making a good fight against fortune. His work brought him in, on an average,

'If my health only will serve,' he said to himself, weaving the osiers that he had now to buy, 'I should like to

That fancy kept up his spirit, though his head would always buzz. The child would be best unborn, he knew,

Now to Messer Nellemane there were a perverseness and almost an insolence in this old man, so very small,

poor, and helpless, presuming to live on, and lift his head up again after such a series of deserved

To see Pippo sitting at work in the doorway was irritating to him, and not atoned for by the fact that Pippo

was surrounded as he sat by all the foul fumes and vapours of the steam mill across the river. And there was

the running water, too, always bubbling across the roadway, and the months slipping away one after another,

with the old man still at liberty to sit in the air and mock the municipal majesty by disobedience.

Messer Nellemane was for ever turning over the problem in his mind, and even stooped to the humility of

asking the advice of the deputy of Pomodoro, who was in the neighbourhood, being on the point of marriage

'I should have the work executed if really necessary for the public good,' said Signore Luca Finti gravely, 'and

then I should debit the offending proprietor with the cost of the works. That is the usual course taken in

Messer Nellemane thanked his distinguished adviser cordially, and proceeded to get out several blank forms,

signed by the Cavaliere Durellazzo, which it was needful to fill in before acting.

The whole of Santa Rosalia was in a mess with public works; those for the steam mill had left heaps of black

rubbish about, those for the tramway had left many mounds of as yet unlaid iron rails; the old bridge, which

was as firm as a rock, and quite wide enough for the bullocks and mules that alone passed over it was being

pulled about and widened by the Giunta; altogether the pretty little green village had that dusty unkempt,

stony, desolate look which so many 'improved' places have in Rome and Venice, and which is an aspect

always as sweet to the municipalic mind, as the wasted province is to a conqueror.

The conqueror sees his victories in the smoking fields; the Municipality sees its commissions and

So one day Pippo had several workpeople whom he knew, masons and plumbers and the like, come about his

premises; and they made as though they would pass through the house into the kitchen garden behind where

'No, no,' said he, 'they have taken all I had out of it, but the four walls are mine still. Into it not a man comes

The men beat on the door, and told him through the door that they came to work for the municipality.

'You don't come to work for me; and into my house you come not,' said Pippo. 'A hundred scudi your

municipality has robbed me of, and I do not open my door to the thieves of a thief. Get you gone.'

Most of the workmen were old neighbours of his, and were for going away in silence, but amongst them were

two masons from another part of the world, employed and brought there by Pierino Zaffi.

These called to him to let them in, in the name of the law, and, as he made them no reply, they went and

To them Messer Nellemane replied: 'I do not love force; it is the weapon of the barbarian. I think we will wait

So he postponed the execution of the work, and counted up the days that had elapsed since Pippo had been

ordered to begin the work; and the many times he had been summoned to appear and answer for his

transgressions; all those various summonses which the old rebel had put in the fire.

Then he took the diligence over to Pomodoro, and had a little talk with the advocate Niccolo Poccianti, who

'I am afraid for your grandfather, carina,' said the cooper to Viola. 'Always alone like that, and the house so

miserable, and over the wall I hear him always muttering, muttering, muttering those accursed figures over

'And I too,' said Viola, with a sob in her throat. 'But what can we do? Carmelo and I would go and stay with

'I am afraid for him,' said Cecco. 'He is made of stouter stuff than Nanni was, but the best pipkin breaks with

She would have gone through flame and water to help her grandfather, and would have borne any trouble to

Sickness, sorrow, trial burdens of poverty and pain, these the poor can understand well enough; they are

familiar companions that have rocked their cradles and will go with them to their graves; but these

oppressions, these exactions, these harassing debts that they are sold up for, yet which they know they never

owed and never ought to pay, these bewilder them, break their nerve, and dull their brain.

Viola would have gone and besought the mercy of the Syndic, but she knew that she would only see his

She took a pilgrimage barefoot to a famous Madonna ten miles away on the hills, and there knelt and prayed

humbly, and set up a candle in the shrine, all glittering with exvotos, and the gems and metals of similar

'For Carmelo and I are young,' she said to herself, 'and we love each other, and we are together: that is so

Whilst she was still on her knees in the chapel on the side of the mountain, with the plain below like a sea, so

grey was it with olive woods, the inspiration came into her to go and find the Prefect of the province at his

It was to her as strange, as daring, and as distant, a travel as it would be to us to go through the terrible ca�ons

of the Colorado, or scale the height of Chimborazo's summit. She had never been even so far as Pomodoro,

and the mere thought of the great glittering city whose domes she could just see on the farthest edge of the

Nevertheless, when she came down in the twilight from the holy place, and met her husband at the foot of the

hill, her mind was made up, and she said to him: 'Our Lady has told me to go to the city and see the Prefect,

'You may walk barefoot, my love, from here to Rome; nothing will avail, until the people write their rights in

'It is what we must do,' he answered gloomily; and they spoke but little more, as they trod the long tedious

A day or two later she had her way, and her fatherinlaw drove her to the city. Carmelo stayed within the

She had put on her grey gown that she was married in, and had an ambercoloured handkerchief tied over her

raven locks. She looked very pale, but she was a beau tiful woman in all the charm of youth, though

They started very earlyat dawn, indeedfor the sake of Bigio, and the way seemed very long; Viola's

heart beat hurriedly, and with fear and hope alternately, as she saw the great marble dome of the basilica of

Santa Maria, famous in history and in art, rise with its golden cross higher and higher, as Mont Blanc looms

'And I will say a word for myself, too, if we get audience,' said the miller, as they drove under the massive

brown gateway through the crowd of chattering people, and the marketcarts waiting for the weighing and

Before the city can eat anything, drink any wine, burn any fuel, the countryfolk who bring in what it wants

are treated as contraband traders, and made to wait through vexatious hours of heat, or rain, or snow, as it

may be, till they are taxed and fined. In this year of grace 1880, the machinery of the State is still so clumsy

that it can devise no wiser means to maintain itself than to employ the antiquated dragon of the Octroi, which

often obliges the people, and their horses, and mules, and cattle, and fowls, to wait all the long wet night in

the highroad, so as to be ready against the opening of the gates. They have pulled down all the fine old towers

Viola was awed by the noise, the width, the height, the crowds around her, but she was scarcely sensible of

any of the grandeur of the frowning palaces, the foaming foun tains, the spacious bridges, the marble

statues; all her soul and mind were absorbed in her errand. A great purpose gives a sense of invisibility.

Pastorini stabled the grey horse near the market place, and then they sought the Prefecture. There it was in the

centre of a square, a grand, solemn mighty place, that in olden times had been the abode of mighty men; half

fortress, half palace, built in the thirteenth century and faced with variegated marbles, and with one once

The miller and Viola entered the vast courtyard where water was rushing from the open jaws of stone lions:

the Italian peasant has nothing in him of the vulgarity of trepidation before greatness and its emblems; the

instincts of liberty and art are in him, all stifled though they be, and he stands graceful and unabashed before

They asked to see the Prefect: they were told his Excellency was out; what did they want? They were sent

here, sent there, a servant saw them, a clerk saw them; they were indolently told to wait.

They sat down in the court; a janissary, splendidly clothed, and with a gilt stick, told them they could not sit

Pastorini knew that the Prefect had in his day been a soldier of liberty, that he was very liberal, even 'red' in

his opinions; that he had all the medals and ribbons of the wars of independence on his breast; that he was a

trusted friend and ally of that advanced Ministry which the party of Messer Luca Finti was always trying to

dislodge: Pastorini had heard this, and he hoped much from this soldier in power. His own brother had died at

San Martino; the miller was simple enough to think this must be a link to all the Liberali.

They went outside and sat on the stone ledge that ran round the pediment of the palace. They sat there one

hour, two hours, three hours; then they grew faint; they went into a little bystreet, and took a bit of bread,

and a little wine; then they turned back to the Prefecture and sat there again. Troops went by, cartloads of

flowers, carriages with fine liveries, a band passed playing, the great sonorous bells of the cathedral boomed

So many hours had at last gone by that their patience, even the illimitable inextinguishable Italian patience,

had begun to get ruffled. Pastorini had got up and gone so often to the gorgeous guardian of the doors to

know if the Prefect had come home, that the functionary at last got angry and in ir� veritas.

'His Excellency has never been out at all, simpleton,' said he. 'But you do not suppose he or the secretaries are

here for the like of you? Mercy alive! If once they began to see the public, they would have the whole

province here screaming. He has never been out, I tell you. He has got his guests with him. He will now be

'He is coming out soon,' he said: 'they told us a falsehood; we will wait and watch the staircase. We cannot

By this time all the long golden drowsy day was drawing near its close. Viola felt feverish and stupid; her

head spun with the coming and going of the crowds, the noise of the carriages and carts, and the unwonted

closeness of the city air. Her peachlike complexion grew yellow with the heat and fatigue, and her great eyes

Presently there came into the courtyard a handsome equipage, with liveried servants and fine horses; it waited

at the foot of the stairs. 'Now is our time,' said the miller; and he and his daughterinlaw stood up by the

In a little while there came down a lady very superbly dressed in surah of old gold colour and laces of price,

and behind her a goodlooking, smiling man, with long moustaches and a glimpse of ribbon at his

Breaking past the janitor of the gates the girl rushed to the foot of the stairs; her fatherinlaw behind her.

'Oh, let me beseech of his Excellency to hear me,' cried Viola, stretching out her arms with a piteous gesture;

'What is it, Cuccioli?' he said, glancing interrogatively over his shoulder to a slim young gentleman behind

Cuccioli murmured that he did not know; he would inquire; and he looked unutterable furies at the porter.

Meanwhile Viola was sobbing so that she could not speak; and Pastorini, with his head uncovered, said

'Oh, a pension, a claim?' said the Prefect, lighting a long cigar. 'Based on military service? My good friends,

'But I thought,' stammered the miller, 'I thought that as his Excellency fought himself'

Now, unhappily, there were few periods of which it pleased the Prefect to be reminded so little as this period,

far behind him, when he had been a soldier of fortune. He frowned a little impatiently, and moved to get into

'Oh dear, my lord,' she pleaded; 'if you would but hear me: my grandfather is such a good honest soul, and all

he has is sold up, and he never owed anyone a penny, and he is going mad; and if the money could be got

'Cara mia!' said his Excellency caressingly, because she was a woman, and handsome. 'Believe me, these

matters are not in my department. If I listened to petitioners I should be deluged with them. What is it you

'It is not a pension,' said Pastorini. 'It is the cruelty of the municipality, your Excellency. They have ruined

me; taken my ground; never paid me; and this poor old soul of whom the girl rightly speaks has been

'Oh, I cannot hear anything of that sort,' said the Prefect very decidedly. 'The communes are autonomous.

Whilst they are within the law no Prefect has any right to interfere in any way. Your commune, wherever it

is, is selfgoverned: if you do not think it ruled well, change your Giunta; change your Syndic.'

Which was as though he had said to one who complained of bad weather: 'Change the sun; move about the

'Make them understand this, my dear Cuccioli,' said the Prefect with a wave of his hand towards the slim

youth: then he smiled affably on the upraised face of Viola, and hurried to rejoin his wife in her carriage: the

tall highstepping horses pranced rapidly from the court to the street, and he was gone.

His Excellency had a rough time of it in those early wars, and he wanted to enjoy himself now. Why else

'It is quite beyond our department. No one can interfere with municipal administration. It is quite impossible.

You have your Syndic. You must rely on him. Pray be so good as to remember in future that the Prefect never

'Well, no one exactly: you see the government of every commune depends on itself. Nothing can be more

satisfactory. Each commune has the rule it desires. Good day,' said the youngster; and he too slipt down the

steps, and went his way to saunter in the park, and turn his eyeglass on the ladies.

'We must go home, Viola,' said the miller with a groan: he would not reproach her; but in himself he thought

if the Virgin could not help them better than this she might as well reveal nothing. The cost of the horse's

stabling and of their own noonday meal was all that this pilgrimage in search of justice had brought to them.

Viola stole down to her grandfather's in the moonlight, weary and worn out though she was, and made a little

'It is a hundred scudi they have taken from me in all,' said Pippo to her for the five hundredth time, following

the old mode of coinage that he had been used to as a lad, and which indeed country people most naturally

'A hundred scudi; it would buy a cow,' muttered the old man, with his hands set on his knees, and his eyes

fixed on the boiling pot. 'I am sorry to hear you are with child, my dear; there'll be no bit or sup for it when it

grows up; and it will have to sweat, and toil, and hunger, and then at the end they'll sell the bed from under it.

Viola could not see the burning charcoal nor the little brown pot, for the thick mist of her tears.

It was true: what use or joy was there in the children coming to the birth to know only pain, and privation,

In this lovely land that brims over with flowers like a cup overfilled, where the sun is as a magician for ever

changing with a wand of gold all common things to paradise; where every wind shakes out the fragrance of a

world of fruit and flower commingled; where, for so little, the lute sounds and the song arises; here, misery

looks more sad than it does in sadder climes, where it is like a homeborn thing, and not an alien tyrant as it

Then, whilst so lovely is the land, most unlovely does this tyrant make the homes of the poor; the alternate

dust and mud of the roads, the greedclipped trees, the human filth strewn over the fields as compost and

putrefying in the sun, the dark, grimy foulsmelling houses, the starved and beaten animals panting in the

heat or shivering in the cold; these all come in the train of this alien misery, and are more horrible and

comfortless here than anywhere else on all the earth. More so because, as you look on it all, you know that it

is the greed of the State, and the greed of the landlord and his steward, which, working side by side, and

striving to outwit each other, do it all. Get away from the grasp of these, and it is the Italy of our Raffaelle

still, and smiles as his childChrists smile, with a light on its face that is of heaven.

The months went on and brought the winter round and the spring. Things went ill at Santa Rosalia. The place

was littered with dirt and lumber from the public works so nobly begun in it; the people did not dare say their

souls were their own, with the guards striding up and down the roads and lanes, or watching from the

winehouse windows; the tramway company had made up its quarrels with the Municipalities; monies had

passed quietly from hand to hand; a few schemers had got the richer, and the rails had finally been laid two

thirds of the way, and soon would be completed; the diligence man said he would cut his throat come Pasqua,

and no one was content except Messer Gaspardo Nellemane who found all the new laws and new inventions

working well, from the steammill that poured its black vapours down the once bright Rosa water, to the

mendicancy clauses which had cleared the land of some scores of useless old people.

Messer Nellemane, sitting behind his desk, felt that he had in him the soul of a statesman. In his mind's eye as

in a magic mirror, he beheld himself already at Montecitorio, already with his portfolio, demanding a hundred

millions for military manoeuvres, and increasing the grist tax by an added third.

He was only a clerk, it is true; but what of that? He had studied to perfection the modern science of success,

and he knew that he had in himself all the modern requirements for eminence. Already the prefect and the

subprefect had murmured to him, 'You are wasted here, you shall not be forgotten;' and already Luca Finti

Here in the little room of the communal palace, with his maps around him and his piles of papers before him,

Messer Nellemane, though his imagination was slow, was almost deluded into imagining himself a minister

Besides, Messer Luca Finti, with his fatherinlaw, were bringing into notice a scheme for turning the

catacombs of Rome into an underground railway; he had got a syndicate of Jew, American and Scotch

bankers to consider the matter, and he could trust to his own party's power of worrying the Government into a

concession. The sale of concessions is as flourishing nowadays in Italy as ever was of yore the sale of

indulgences, and Messer Nellemane, in a strictly private manner, had been associated in this great project

There was a fine flavour of desecration and utilitarianism about it which would be quite certain to take with

the Press and the Bourse. All the Liberi Pensieri would be delighted at the use made of the early Christians.

To an age which has decided that martyrdom was a kind of hysteria, and faith a sort of meningitis, there

would be something peculiarly fascinating in making of SS. Gianetta and Basilla a booking office, and of St.

Hippolytus a junc tion. To drive an air shaft and a corkscrew stait straight through the soil that Scipio and

Gracchus trod, down into the twilight, where the ashes of S. Agnes and S. Felicita rest, would be an

enterprise full of peculiar sweetness and suitability to a generation that submits to the March Decrees, Irish

Europe, as it is at present constituted, would be seduced in a second at a prospect that would turn the Quattro

Santi into a chief station, and make of the Callimachuslast resting place of so many martyrs and early

Messer Luca Finti knew the motto of his generation was a paraphrase of Voltaire: 'Souillez, souillez, souillez!

And when M. Jules Ferry is a Minister, and M. Herold lives in the Louvre, why should not Messer Nellemane

be a statesman and Messer Luca Finti date his letters from the Consulta or the Palazzo Braschi?

The deputy had that first and most useful of talents: he knew how to hit the tastes of his own times, and he

foresaw that the Catacomb Metropolitan would be a name to seduce the world and sell a million actions. He

had paid Messer Nellemane the great compliment of divulging this grand scheme to him and even employing

his command of florid language in the composition of a prospectus. Messer Nellemane had proved himself

equal to the task, and was assured he should be entitled to preference shares. He felt that he was already

passed many milestones on the high road to public greatness, and when he slept at night dreamed of

As for his passion, he had conquered it with that strength of will which was his characteristic. Messer

Nellemane was nothing if not moral; when Viola Mazzetti had wedded another, he had said to himself

virtuously that it would never do to compromise his career; besides, after all, she was very thin, and her

mouth rather large, and she had been only a common, hardworking girl: so he dismissed her memory and

saw her reality pass by him without emotion. But passion departing left hate behind it; the not uncommon

The little square house with the blue and white Madonna was a blot in the landscape to him. True, he had

accomplished much against it; the mill smoke drowned it night and day in black vapours and foul smells; the

tramway cars would plunge right across its very doorway, and to lay their rails down, the trees of the bank

Yet the sight of the little old man sitting on the threshold weaving his rushwork was to the eyes of Messer

Nellemane as the vineyard of Naboth to the great king. Old Pippo was not crushed into the earth, his sturdy

little spirit was not stamped into the dust; he was very miserable indeed, and his brain was dull and his hand

infirm; but still he lived on, and seemed to the irritated pride of the ruler of Vezzaja and Ghiralda to have an

As Messer Nellemane sat this day before his desk, he perused some long law papers with satisfaction; 'a

quarter of a year more,' he thought, 'and that stubborn old fool will know what mockery of the State costs

For through all these months he had had not been idle. He had been on the contrary constantly employed in

the affairs of Pippo; constantly engaged in the courts of Pomodoro in the old rebel's affairs; the impudent

brook still ran across the road, and the impudent old man still existed: but in three months Messer Nellemane

Law is a slow and complicated luxury to indulge in everywhere; in Italy it is especially so, but Messer

Nellemane loved it, and in this great love knew how to caress it and cajole it, so that it became for him a

pliant and almost quickfooted thing. He had not been clerk in a notary's office without learning how to get

on the right side of the Law, and it was this knowledge especially which made him so efficient a public

Now again and again had legal summons of all kinds been brought to Pippo, but he was all alone now; there

was nobody to see what he did, and he lit a match and burned all these papers and chuckled as he did so.

'They can't get bark off a peeled pine,' he said to himself. 'They may call, and call, and call; they won't get

And the simple old soul thought that if he did not answer, they would get tired of calling, and he never knew

'It is all along of the water,' he said to himself, and thought so; but what could he do to the water? 'And I

One day Cecco the cooper said to him: 'You have never paid your interest on your mortgage have you,

Pippo?' and the old man answered him: 'Not I; he will have the house after me; where is the harm? I have not

got any money to pay with, he knows that; if I get a bit and drop, and a snip of tobacco in my pipe, it is all as

Cecco scratched his head thoughtfully; he was afraid. He did not understand these things, but he knew that

Pippo's name was often spoken at Pomodoro, and he was afraid, Pippo gave him no heed; he understood even

'My house is my house,' he said doggedly. 'They will get it when I am dead. They can't get it before.'

Hypothec was as Greek to him, and of all that these lawpapers said which rained in on him and which he

burned, he had no idea. He could go about, and he could make his wickerwork, and he could do his little bit

of cooking and mending, but he grew rather childish, and no one could make him understand things.

When the priest sadly reproved him, he said always: 'I don't see as any one of them cares about me.'

By them he meant the Trinity in which he had been taught to believe, and all their holy army of angels, of

'For sure nobody ever would disturb you, and you nigh seventy,' said Cecco the cooper a little uneasily, for he

'Disturb me? what mean you, you ass?' said Pippo hotly. 'The house is mine, it is all mine. I pay no man rent.

I thought it would go, when I die, to my girl, but I suppose now it will go to the lawyer. He will want

'Take it?' said Pippo fiercely. 'Take it? you longshanked fool. How can they take it? It's mine, and I carry the

key on me always when I go out. Take it! one would think 'twas a basket of eggs.'

The cooper said no more, being a shy soul, and not at best clear as to what he had heard, or what were the

measures and powers of law. Pippo was huffed, and would not speak of the matter any more. He went and

His head felt queer whenever he stooped, and his ears had always a sound in them like bees swarming, as he

said himself; but he would never complain, and he managed to keep his bit of ground tilled, and in order. ''Tis

Meanwhile, at the house of Pastorini things were nearly as bad as with him. With the unequal rivalry of the

steam mill no watermill could compete, and all that the year had brought to Carmelo's people were debts,

'Your children will come on sad times,' said Demetrio Pastorini to his son; 'God knows whether they will find

A great despondency had fallen on the mild and mirthful man; he grew helpless and weary, only not

apathetic, because of his strong affections for those about him. The accursed iron rails had been laid down on

They knew very well that he could not go to law to command it, and that if he did there would be long delays

granted to them, for they called themselves 'public utility,' and so claimed public respect.

Like the Duca di Ripalda before him, he saw his trees carried away to fill the furnaces of factories or rot in

To the municipal mind of Italy all that is new and artificial is good; all that is old or natural is worthless.

They say of Rome like M. Cardinal: 'C'est une ville � faire dispara�tre de la surface du globe. Je n'ai jamais vu

The great wheel of the Pastorini mill was motionless on nine days out of ten, for there was no work; novelty

Cesarellino, the next son to Carmelo, came home from his conscript's service much the worse for it, as

country lads usually are; they go away innocent, homely, laborious, dutiful youths, and they return from the

camp and the barracks too often vicious, lazy, discontented, contaminated by vice, and utterly unwilling to

'As well send a lad to the galleys as to the army,' say the country people, and they are right.

You cannot take a man away from his duties for three of the most impressionable and important years of his

life, or even for the lesser term of eighteen months, and expect him to return to those duties the same docile

and industrious creature that he was. He will have brought with him many a low sin, many a foul oath, many

a vile memory; he will be unhinged, moody, good a little; that conscription does not make a blackguard of

every lad that falls under its curse is due to the good and kindly temper of the nation, not to the system, which

Cesarellino, coming home to the mill, with bad words in his mouth, coarse talk on his tongue, and a nature

for ever stunted, soured, and vitiated, added to the gloom of the household; the youngster had seen Milan and

Turin, and was disposed to be insolent and contemptuous of the stayathomes. Now that Cesarellino was

home, the third son, Dante, had to go; he was a gentle, timid lad, and suffered greatly.

'What a pack of slaves we are!' said the father bitterly. 'Has a man not a right to refuse the flesh and bone he

'There is no war going on, father,' said the returned conscript with scorn for his father's ignorance.

'Then where is the excuse to take our boy from us?' said the old man. 'Nay, nay, we are a pack of slaves! no

But kicking against the pricks was of no avail. The drawing of the year had given Dante a bad number; there

was no money to buy a substitute, if even they had dreamed of such a thing, and the poor little fellow went

'If it were not for Viola,' said his eldest brother, 'if it were not for Viola, I would wish I were of the age to go

'But Viola you have, as you wished to have her,' said his father, 'and many children, I daresay, you soon will

have too; you must do your duty at home, my son. Would to heaven it had not been made so bitter to you.

You have to eat fennel with sour bread, but you must bring a man's courage to it.'

'I lack not courage, father,' said Carmelo simply. Then with an effort he added:

'What cuts me to the quick, is to see the old man so poor and ill dealt with; and you so tried, and the mill

wheels motionless, and that rascal Bindo strutting to and fro as a cock on the green:father, sometimes I

'Yes you will,' said his father tenderly; 'yes you will for your wife's sake and mine. But you brood on these

'Thinking may make free men,' muttered Carmelo; he dared not tell the miller all he dwelt on; all the

schemes, and hopes, and views with which the German mechanic on his sickbed had filled his mind. Carmelo

knew that down in the city there were many of the same way of thinking as himself, and not long before he

had received a secret bidding to join an association there that was a branch of the Figli di Lavoro: that

international league to which no one pays any heed because it has so harmless a title.

All the nature of Carmelo, all the temper he had been born with, bound him to his native soil; to a simple and

pastoral life, to innocent affections and pastimes, to the old rooftree, and to the familiar ways and habits that

The Italian is homely and strongly con servative, as I have said often before, and Carmelo, let alone, would

have asked nothing better than to live and die as his grandfather had done before him, by the Rosa water. But

it is the policy of Messer Nellemane to let no one alone anywhere; and the result is that the peaceful become

restless, and the patient become restive, and in the stead of content there is rebellion, or at the best a profound

I believe he would curse the oppressor rusticorum as he never cursed the Austrian or the Frenchman, the

ALL those papers that Pippo thought he abolished by burning them as he lit his pipes, were rising in a heap

over him, in truth, at Pomodoro, till they grew into a mighty mound of contumacy, and under this pile justice

In a word, as he did not appear and did not reply, and no one appeared or replied for him, the lawyer who had

his mortgage, and the lawyer who acted on behalf of the municipality, had it all their way, as no doubt they

would have managed equally to have if he had appeared and had replied; and after the many ceremonies and

formalities of the law had all been observed, he knowing nothing of it all the while, due notice was sent him

that his property would be sold to satisfy the just demands of the mortgagee, and of the debts due by him to

the commune for works not done by him, and repeated contraventions and fines for the same, all unpaid for a

But as this notice also took the form of a paper half printed and half written, and was delivered by the

Usciere, Pippo twisted it up, set light to it, and pushed it blazing and smouldering under the little earthern

The lawyers and Messer Nellemane had had a great deal to do at Pomodoro in this matter, and all the engines

and battering rams of the law had been set in motion against the poor little house by the river, but Pippo knew

'They can't get bark out of a peeled pine,' was all he said; and when the man of law left these long papers

upon him, with all their formidable array of writing and printing that he could not read, he set light to them

'They will tire before long,' he thought. 'They can't get anything more out of me, and they'll give over.'

Pippo often went days on only a bit of bread, and once passed twentyfour hours without eating at all; but he

shut up his pains in his own breast and would not take them to worry the girl: she was always the girl to him.

To Carmelo he did speak a little, for he and the young man were victims of the same torturer.

'Lord's sake, lad,' he said one day, 'when I was a middleaged man, even so near as that, the land was all at

peace and fed us all. Winewhy you could get it for the asking, or buy it for a soldo a flask. Breaday,

there was bread for the dogs and the pigs then; loaves were as thick as stones in Rosa's bed. We were all quiet

and happy. The gentlefolks didn't go roaming away to foreign parts, and didn't dine nigh midnight as they do

now. They all got their dinners at three, and there was plenty for a hundred, if a hundred came by and wanted

sup and bite. They bided in villa all summer, and they went down to their own city, whichever it was, for

winter. Oh, lad! Then the cities were alive and pretty, with all the money spent honestly in them, not taken

out to this, that, and the other foreign place as it is now. All the old feasts and fairs were kept, and the

laughing and dancing all winter, and the pranks and bravery of Carnival kept the cold out, and, Lord! on a

holy day, what poor soul denied himself a chicken in his pot. It cost but two soldi. Now a chickenwhy you

might almost as well talk of getting down the moon to eat. The fowls are packed off to foreign parts, and here

'I can tell you the wrong of it,' said Carmelo, his mind reverting to all the German communist had told him.

'The pot has boiled till all the scum is up; the knaves are saddled on us because they bellow "Liberty!" while

they cudgel our bare bones. As our gentlefolks don't care how we starve so long as they go and cut a figure in

Parigi, so the knaves don't care how we perish so long as they get soldiers and ships, and put money in their

'I know twenty years ago there was a rare screaming about "Italy for the Italians;" and who's got Italy

now?the Jews,' said the elder Pastorini. 'Jew here, Jew there, Jew everywhere; and the poor sicken and die

and what dd Jew dog of them cares? It is all the fault of the gentlefolks; they flare through their money to

look fine, and then, when they're all burning up to waste, the Jews come in behind them. I never knew much,

but that I do know. Look at what the old Marchese was, Palmarola, I mean; every soldo spent by him

amongst his own people, and every hour spent by him here on his own soil. What's his son? A

monkeylooking thing that scarce ever comes nigh his land, squanders all he gets out of it in Rome, or that

place you call Parigi, and is whittling away every bit of the old property in gaming and harlotry, and trying to

look like a foreigner. It's all the fault of the gentlefolks. Why didn't they send them adrift with the stranieri?'

'Ah,' said Pippo. 'Palmarola died in time; it would have broken his heart to see that youngster, always

dwelling with foreign folks, and keeping bad women as they say he does. And what a finelooking man was

the old Marchese, and what a shrivelled up looking monellino is this youngster! It seems to me as if the men

'Of course they are,' said the miller. 'They smoke at fourteen, and they keep bad women as you say, at sixteen,

and they gamble all night long, and they drink strong spirits to get their courage up in the morning. Of course

they are weaklings, that is all that the foreign craze has done for our nobles. And those who don't do that, are

like Count Saverio there in the town; all they think of is buying scrips and stock, and they would sell the

Madonna herself to get a share or two in a foreign railway, or be the first to suck the gilt off a bit of jobbery

down in the city. But I don't know what we're to do; I have heard that the Inglese and the Americani have

done it all, bringing in their mad ways and midnight dinners, and their craze for killing things: it maybe.'

'I've heard tell the Inglese worship foxes. They're heathens then,' said the cooper Cecco timidly. 'I never knew

'This I do know, for I have been told it,' said Carmelo scornfully, 'that they're such poor shots that, if they

want to hit a bird, it has to be shut up in a box, and let fly right in front of them! But oh! father, not Inglese

nor Francese nor anybody would be able to hurt our Signori if they bided at home as of old, and had human

hearts in their breasts, and clean hands. But they have not, they have not! They will not trouble themselves

about anything, unless it is to get money, and they give us over into the claws and teeth of the Impiegati as a

shepherd gives over his lambs to the butcher's knife. They do not care whether we live or die. What they care

'I remember a chicken two soldi,' said Pippo, reverting to his original thoughts. 'Two soldi, and fine and fat;

not a thing blown out just for market. And now they send all the poultry away by the rail.'

Then he fell to recalling in silence all the easy plenty and merry, simple festivities of his youth, when black

Befana had knocked at all doors at Epiphany and when the Maggioli had brought in the spring to every

Carmelo with a sigh got up in his cart and went on his way; he had some sacks of 'torbo' (lignite), to leave at

one of the very few farmers who still were bold enough to show friendship to the Rosa millhouse, and

employed the young Pastorini in divers homely ways; the 'torbo' was wanted for the threshingmachine that

would soon be in motion on the hills; one of the 'pillars of progress' that came to break up for ever the old

gracious pastoral ways which were like pictures from the Bible, and, making labour less, make hunger more,

The farm was many miles off; on one of the green hillsides, clothed first with the olive, and higher with the

umbrellapine, that stretched along both sides of the plains through which the Rosa wound.

It could be seen from the valley, a long, low, white house with an old tower, and the pines standing all around

and above it. The way to it was steep and long; a good, wellmade Roman road of the ancient times when

work was not 'scamped,' since engineers 'scamping' it, would have been beaten with rods or hung to a cross.

The mule was fatigued, for the lignite was very heavy, and it had been fetched from Pomodoro.

Midway on the hill road Carmelo, who was by nature merciful to beasts, checked the poor thing, lightened

the cart of three sacks and set them down by the roadside, meaning when the mule had, thus relieved, climbed

to the top of the steep slope facing it, to carry them up one by one on his own shoulders.

The road wound through wild scrub of myrtle, and cistus, and arbutus; young chestnut trees were growing in

clumps; it was quite solitary; no one ever scarcely came there except a woodman, a sportsman, a hill hare, a

Carmelo left the sacks by the wayside and began to walk up beside his mule, encouraging it in its toil with

He was busy thinking: very simple, honest thoughts; of how best he could labour in the future for his own

children, and his brothers and sisters, for Carmelo foresaw that, with six months more, the millhouse would

most likely be no more over their heads, his father being no more able to pay his way. He had a stout heart

and strong affections; he tried to think how best he could carry his father on his shoulders away from the

He never saw coming through the myrtle and bay the figures of Bindo Terri and old Angelo; their pistols in

their hands: when they had any leisure from tormenting the public, they took a turn at shooting thrushes and

Carmelo glanced up, grew red, then white, and continued to pace beside the straining mule.

The men went in front of the beast and checked it with a jerk; the incline was great; the cart recoiled, the

mule reared, the lignite rolled most of it on the ground; it was with a great effort that Carmelo saved the

animal and the baroccino from destruction. He clenched his hands and ground his teeth in his struggle not to

'You are in contravention,' he said, with pert authority. 'Your sacks are lying on the public road. It is an

offence against the municipal police. See Art. XV. of Rule 103. Angelo, inscribe the dereliction.'

Carmelo, whose heart was heaving and whose whole body was shivering with rage, stooped over the fallen

He would have given twenty years of life to have been able to wrench the pistol out of the hands of the

murderer of Toppa, and blow his brains out on to the turf. But he remembered Viola, he remembered his

father, he controlled the justice of his bitter wrath, and bore in silence all the insults and jibes of his

tormenters. Tired at last, as they could provoke him to no retaliation, they left him alone with his mule and

his fallen lignite and went away across the chestnut woods: the land lay within their beat, being within the

The next day the Usciere served a summons on Carmelo, citing him to appear for contravention of the law in

ANNUNZIATA, since she had come out of prison, had never been quite the same. What she had thought the

dire disgrace of it had gone deep into her honest old soul, and had ploughed it up as vitriol ploughs the flesh.

'If my poor dead man knew!' she would say, with a burst of sobbing. It seemed to her as if she were branded

All the winter she was very quiet; quiet perforce, because her old enemy of the 'rheumatics' seized her and

pinned her down on her low palletbed. Carmelo and Viola and the Pastorini children did their best for her,

and the old women in her room were always sisterly and kind, though racked themselves with nearly every ill

that flesh is heir to; and in her exceeding joy at being at home in that cold tumbledown corner of a room

again she was quite content, and bore her pain and nibbled her bit of bread cheerfully, Dom Lelio being as

usual good to her, and going with a patched cassock and a rusty hat that he might spare from his meagre

No doubt it seems a very stupid and incredible thing, but old 'Nunziatina was happy so long as she could see

those four walls and the square casement, that was filled with the poplar boughs, and hear the other old

women chatter, and chatter too, and see the scrap of charcoal in the copperpan warming the pipkin of

breadsoup. Yet it is a fact, and it is a fact also that life, which goes out of youthful queens, and bright

children, and cherished heirs, who have all done to save them that wealth and science and love can dream of,

'You must never go about, dear, again to the villas and the farms,' said Viola, weeping, to her. 'They will be

All the winter she had kept perforce quiet from her rheumatism, and Viola begged and prayed her so that

even when the tulips were all yellow in the fields and all the force of old instinct and old habit moving her,

she still kept within doors, or only just went and sat under the deep shade of the old ilex that had the shrine

She cared not at all for the municipal laws, this old rebel, but she cared to please the girl, as she still called

her, 'who was getting so near her time that one can't cross her,' she said to her four old friends in the little

And indeed with the March tulips Viola's little son came into the light of the bright spring days, and promised

to resemble his father in his big blue eyes and fair complexion, and was a happy little child that seldom cried.

This child was a source of great occupation and absorbing interest to its old great grandaunt, and

'Nunziatina spent most of her time at the millhouse with the little closelyswaddled bundle on her knees.

But also, indirectly, it was a reason for her to be more restless, and to wander afield again; for she said to

herself that now there was a baby, and no doubt dozens to follow, and so much trouble and straits at the

millhouse on the Rosa, she could not and would not rob them of so much as a bit of bread, when all the

people on the hillsides and down in the valley farms would be willing to give to her out of their plenty.

Carmelo and Viola endeavoured to make her understand that this taking of free gifts was her offence in the

eyes of the law, but they could not succeed. She could not understand that she did anything wrong, and the

By vigilance and persuasion they kept her in a few weeks, but their lives were too full of work for them to

have leisure for perpetual watching. 'I never did do a bit of harm,' she said to herself, and she could not stay

indoors this bright weather of the opening summer, and though she left her basket at home, as they told her to

do, she began to wander about as of old. She was much weaker than of yore, and, like Pippo, her head

'It's always like the bees in the acacia trees,' he and she agreed, sorrowfully. She did not readily comprehend

what was said to her, and she confused names and dates. 'I want to be in the air,' she said to the old women,

her companions in her little square room. 'I have always been in the air all my days.'

So she took her stick and trotted hither and thither, and naturally her feet, of their own accord, wandered into

the old familiar paths, and up to the old houses. All her old friends at the farmhouses were delighted to see

her, and gave her bit and drop as she wanted it. She would not take anything home.

'No, they tell me not; the dear lad who took me out tells me not,' she said always, and all she would do was

eat a plate of soup, and drink a little mezzovino when it was offered her. Her brown wrinkled face, all

crinkled up like a walnut shell, had lost its mirth; her mouth often trembled, and she had grown very deaf; but

She was a picturesque little figure still in her round black hat, and her clothes that were made of all colours,

One day, when Viola's boy was some three months old, and the weather was growing sultry, she had been up

in the hills to a massaja, 1 who was very fond of her, and she had done some work up there with the poultry

by way of payment for sitting and eating at the long table where all the contadini dined off maccaroni and

salad and broth, and on her way home was so tired that she sat down to rest above the village, on a felled pine

There was a pony carriage coming slowly up it, and in it, with a servant, was the pretty foreign child with

blue eyes, who lived at Varammista. When the English child saw her, out she sprang, and came lovingly up to

'Oh, 'Nunziatina!' she cried to her, 'We have been away all the year, and we are just come back, and we have

'Yes, carina; it is true,' said Annunziata. 'They took me the very day I was coming to bid you goodbye, and I

had got a rose for yousuch a beautiful rose. Yes, dear, I have been in prison, and perhaps your mamma

'Oh, mamma would!' said the English child, with a quick breath of indignation. 'You never did anything

'No, carina, not I. I took what they gave me, and they said that is begging. I never have understood it.'

'Oh, what a wicked thing!' sighed the child, with her fair cheeks hot. 'I will tell mamma. Do you come up to

Varammista and see her, and, dear 'Nunziatina, I must not stop, because it grows dark so soon, but take this

'Is it your own to give me, dear?' said Annunziata, holding the twofranc note with hesitation.

'Really my own,' said the child. 'You know I have so much money; and buy something nice with it, will you?'

'The saints bless you, carina,' said Annunziata, 'and I'll tell what I will buy with it. I will buy a little shirt or

'Oh, do!' said the child, 'and you will come and see us soon, Annunziata; tomorrow, won't you? I will tell

Then the glad little girl went away up over the hill, with her little rough pony, and the old woman went down

'I will buy something for Viola's child,' she thought, and slipped the money in her apron pocket.

That night, when Carmelo drove through the village with some flour, Gigi Canterelli ran out of his shop and

'Do you know they have taken 'Nunziatina again?' he said to him. 'They say she was begging; they say they

saw her take money on the hill yonder, just coming into the town; she is gone to Pomodoro.'

'What has that to do with it?' said the grocer. 'They have got her again. They will want eighty francs this

'How shall I tell Viola?' said Carmelo, and he trembled like a girl. 'Oh my God! Oh, my God, Gigi!when

'My lad, we have big ships, and sham battles, and a hundred men in every office door to kick us out when we

ask a civil question,' said Gigi Canterelli. 'That is as much as we shall get for twenty years to come, I am

thinking. Your mule is tired; I will harness my own beast, and go over and see where 'Nunziatina is. Go you

Carmelo thanked him, and drove to the millhouse with a bitter spirit, and a broken one; the old grocer did as

There he found that the old woman had been taken by Bindo Terri, for the offence of begging for money on

the road; she was in prison, and no one would tell him more, or let him see her. He returned to the millhouse

'Tomorrow we will have her out,' he said cheerfully to Viola. 'Never you fear, my beauty. We will have her

out. The foreign folk at Varammista will stand her friends, and we will all club together, somehow or other if

Now as officials, all the land over, are convinced that the public never should be told the truth on any

occasionthe public, in fact, having no business ever to inquire for itthey had not told the truth to Gigi

Annunziata had been taken there by Bindo Terri, and told by him very sharply that nobody was ever let out

after a second offence; she, for her part, was dumb with horror and amaze, and only found her voice when

they took her two francs away from her as pi�ce de conviction, at which she screamed loudly.

'The little lady of Varammista gave it!' she shrieked, 'and I am going to save it for Viola's child!'

But no one attended to this; she was bundled away into the prison, and her case was to be heard in the

morning. However, the Count Saverio chanced to see her, and took the matter into his own hands. He had

always regretted that he had been cold to her; he was a man who set great store on his charitable reputation,

and he knew very well that he had seemed very indifferent when they had worried him about her, just as he

Now the Count Saverio was a man who was nothing if he were not charitable. He had made himself

conspicuous solely by charity; it had been a career to him, and a successful one; these professors of that

divine virtue which covers a multitude of sin are common to every country. They may be said to flourish

especially here, because there are so many fraternities and endowments in which they can plant themselves as

snugly as a scolytus in an elm tree. So he saw an admirable investment in this old woman whom he had

refused to assist, and he exerted himself so greatly, to the admiration of everybody, that he obtained her

The Montesacro was also one of those in stitutions which had come down from obscure ages, and had been

illumined by the light of modern common sense. It had originally been a purely charitable asylum for aged

folk, with large funds bequeathed by a pious prince, who was also an abbot. But the State had taken a good

slice out of it at that illustrious period of the Birth of Liberty, when Garibaldi and others were driving

Scialoja to madness by drawing cheques on the public funds every day, and this modernised Montesacro

Count Saverio said so, for his cousin was at the head of it; a few grumblers averred that the frescoes had been

cut off the walls of the vestibule and corridors, the oak seats of its chapel gone, nobody knew where, and its

altarpiece by Sodoma vanished from its place. A famous gold Reliquary, also, the work of Benvenuto

But no one can help what rats may do, and these grumblers were not attended to, and Montesacro was always

pointed out to strangers as one of the features and glories of the glorious and lovely city. It was divided into

two parts; it had youth which did a great deal of work that was sold for their support, and the profit of its

direction; and it had age which served as a reason for all kinds of donations, subscriptions, bazaars, lotteries

and theatricals on their behalf. Count Saverio, whose cousin was directorinchief of this beneficent asylum,

had old 'Nunziatina carried there in the ambulance of his own fraternity, a coffinlike cart drawn by a weak

old horse; and she was deposited on one of the narrow little beds of the dormitory, and expected to be

'What have I done, what have I done?' she screamed at every minute. 'Let me get back to my home. Let me

For his silly old woman would persist in calling her corner in a room, with her bit of sacking for a bed, her

She was in a long corridor, with those whitewashed walls, off which the frescoes had been cut; there were

some seventy iron beds all in a row; there were some lofty casements carefully blinded, with grey shutters,

through which little chinks of light blinked, as a cat's eyes blink in the darkness; as long as she would live,

she would be set in one of these big rooms, have broth and bread found her, and be allowed to go outside

Instead of being gratified and grateful, perverse old 'Nunziatina screamed till she was black in the face.

'Casa mia! Casa mia! Take me there. I am not a criminal. I won't be put in prison! I want the air, I want the

If Messer Nellemane had been there, she would have had once more occasion to moralise upon the

A female likeness of him, who was there, gently gagged Annunziata without more ado, observing that

discipline in an institute must be preserved at any sacrifice of the individual, and as the aged rebel tore at the

Then the unwilling old woman was told that she ought to be piously thankful; tens of thousands of old

woman died, and there was no account made of them; she was exceptionally fortunate and blessed in having

But as no one thought her ill, and everybody knew she was stubborn, they paid her no attention, till an

attendant shook her, made her get out of bed, and tumbled her into a bath. Annunziata, who had the common

horror of her nation as to water, shivered, and was very sick, but as she had ceased to scream, they thought

she was getting reconciled, and put her on the clothes of the institute, and placed her in the common room of

The old folks around her were busy working, some plaiting, some sewing, some knitting, some picking linen

to make lint, some only staring vacantly and mumblingwho shall say what wishes, what regrets, what

Annunziata stared with her eyes at the dull wall, the high barred windows, the great, unfamiliar, hateful

chamber, but all she really saw was her own little den with the poplars waving green against the little

window, the sunny roads where her feet had carried her so many years, the green hillside where she so long

You cannot cage a fieldbird when it is old; it dies for want of flight, of air, of change, of freedom. No use

will be their stored grain of your cage; better for the bird a berry here and there, and peace of gentle death at

When night came, and they made her go to bed amidst all those other beds again, Annunziata was very cold;

cold as marble. No one had been unkind, for she had been quite mute and passive all though this long dreary

'Casa mia, casa mia,' she murmured feebly, when they laid her down on the hard pallet: it was a stifling

She was so cold that the woman in attendance called for help: there was no doctor near at hand, and the

They tried to put some warm drink down her throat but she spat it out; her lips began to grow blue, and her

'Let me get out, let me get home,' she muttered, with a tremulous voice. 'There is no air here; I can't

The women were not frightened, for they were used to deathbeds in Montesacro; yet, awed to some show of

gentleness, they lifted her up and opened a casement to let in the coolness of the night.

But Annunziata knew nought of that. She gasped for breath still, and the little life there was in her was

chilling into stone. All at once she opened her eyes wide and forced herself free of their hold:

'Lord! let me see the sun again; let me see the hills!' she cried aloud, stretching out her arms; and in that last

Will she see the sun again, free from all cloud, a sun that never sets? Will something greater than ourselves,

and more pitiful than the State, let that poor, dumb, tired little soul of hers arise and rejoice in the green hills

If this be the last of her, this death on a strange bed, in a prison that hypocrisy calls a refuge, then let us weep

for her indeed; ignorant, valiant, true, busy and most harmless creature, almost dumb as the dogs, quite as

cheerful as the birds, having borne heat, and cold, and hunger and pain without complaint so long as she was

'Be good to me, O God, for my boat is so small and the deep sea is so wide,' is the prayer of the Br�ton fisher.

THE misery at this time grew yet greater at the millhouse; greater for this family, which had for so many

centuries been the possessors of a homely abundance, than for those who by long usage were accustomed to

hardship and penury. All Pastorini's savings had gone when Carmelo was in prison, and the mill brought in

not a farthing. People who a few years before would have given him ten years' credit now did not like to trust

him for a month. Popular favour is a fickle thing, and comes and goes alike without reason. He took the good

grey horse to a distant market and sold it, being reluctant to keep it to want; the old mule he knew would soon

have to follow; without grist to grind the mill only cost what it could not pay; the usciere began to call with

The little butcher Sandro had become bankrupt, and had disappeared from Santa Rosalia; the big one, he who

was in good odour with the municipality, would give nothing without money down on the nail. The old man

was shrunken out of all likeness to himself; the baby alone throve in the midst of the desolation, and there

was likelihood of another coming; more hungry mouths and no food for any of them was the future that faced

Carmelo and his father. The summons for having encumbered the road with the sacks of torbo had been

served on Carmelo, and as he had not appeared to answer it, and could not employ any man of law to dispute

it, it was passed as a matter of course on to Pomodoro, where the Pretore, merely seeing that Carmelo

Pastorini was in question, decided without further examination that his late prisoner had been at fault, and so

the matter with fines, penalties for contempt of court in not appearing, ran up to a matter of thirtyeight

francs. As for looking for thirtyeight francs in the millhouse till, you might as well have looked for emeralds

and rubies. After due course a gravamento was instituted for the payment, as it had been done with poor old

Pippo; and Carmelo, possessing nothing of his own in the world except a gun, his clothing, and the little coral

earrings he had given his wife in the bridal week, these were seized and taken off by the usciere. Carmelo

'He set down three sacks on a hillside road to lighten the mule for a minute!' said his father piteously. But he

himself said nothing. He only laughed till those were frightened who heard him. His father, without letting

him know it, persuaded the usciere to take some of his own clothing instead of his son's. If he had still had the

mule he would have sold that, but three months had gone by since the offence had been committed, and the

mule had now gone to other masters, and the price of him and the baroccino had brought food for the many

Viola, who could do nothing, grew so wretched that she reproached herself bitterly for having married

Carmelo; alone, she thought, he might have done better; he could have gone away, he would have had only

himself to keep. It began to seem to her that she had done nothing but harm to all she loved.

When on this day of Annunziata's removal to Montesacro they heard only that she had been once more

'Oh, Carmelo,' she sobbed, 'and it was they who killed Raggi, though I never told you!'

'Dear,' said the young man with a bitter smile, 'I guessed that long ago. These are the wretches that have hour

lives in their keeping; dogbutchers, thieves, extortioners! The people are like the steer who goes peaceably

'Who can tell?' said Carmelo gloomily. 'I have heard say that twenty years ago, when they first drove out the

stranieri, it was our people, the soldiers of the people, the leaders of the people, who were the first to plunder

and pillage all the people's treasuries. And how can we do anything; we who have no union, no chief, who

cannot read, who can only struggle blindly just as the birds do in the nets? That is the misery of it. Our people

are timorous. They scurry like mice before a uniform; they crouch and crawl before a drawn sword. Yet

anything were better than this. It would be an easier death to be shot down by artillery than to be bled to death

'Who shall tell? This I do believe, that when they deal with us as with criminals for every little action of our

days they will make us devils. If the army were with us, then, indeedI have heard tell that the soldiers are

muttering and growing restive; but alas! there will be always men found who will point the cannon on the

Viola listened, and understood enough to be alarmed and very disquieted for the safety of her beloved.

This day, made bold by the pains of what she loved, as does will be and motherbirds, she took heart of grace

and resolved to essay a last chance for help and hope. It was a very faint one, and if she had not been a

simple, ignorant, and most trustful creature, would never have dawned on to delude her for a moment.

As it was, she tied a handkerchief over her shapely head, took her little appleblossom of a boy in her arms

as a shield and prayer in one, and went straight, unknown to any of her family, towards the communal palace,

Now Messer Nellemane was growing very indifferent to Santa Rosalia; he knew very well that he would soon

leave it for some higher official grindstone under which to squeeze the bodypolitic; and he was beginning

almost to be high and might with his own master, the Most Worshipful the Cavaliere Durellazzo. Therefore

he very seldom deigned to see any petitioner of the populace, and such were always dealt with now by the

chancellor, the conciliator, or Bindo. Nevertheless, when he heard that the wife of Carmelo, the

granddaughter of Pippo, wished to see him, he bade her be shown to him; Messer Nellemane not being one of

those who believed in the virtue of women , had a sudden evil notion come up in his mind of what her errand

might be. But she would come in vain, he said to himself; such philandering was not to be indulged in;

ambition was his sole Venus; he knew the mischief that one weakness may work in a public career; he meant

to go through life with a blameless, a snowwhite morality. There is nothing more useful.

When he saw the baby in her arms he frowned, and his face flushed angrily; when Helen comes to woo, she

'Signora mia!' he hastened to say, however, with benevolent courtesy, 'it is long since we met. I have been so

Viola, trembling very much, and with her great dark eyes wide open and strained, took no heed of his words.

'I am come to beg you to be merciful to us,' she said in a low gasping tone. 'Sir, dear sir, we are in great

wretchedness. My fatherinlaw is ruined. My husband thinks of going to Maremma to work as a

daylabourer. My poor old aunt is taken again, and my grandfatheroh, my grandfather'

Messer Nellemane's black eyes shone with a pleasure he could not conceal, though all his features were

'Oh stop, stop it! you can!' murmured Viola, her whole form trembling, and clasping the baby to her

'I!' cried Messer Nellemane in amaze ment. 'I! cara mia signora! What have I, what can I possibly have to do

with the misfortunes of your relatives? Alas! would I could say they were altogether undeserved misfortunes,

'Oh, it is you!' cried Viola, forgetful of all wisdom, and borne away on the tide of her own strong feeling.

'You rule all; at a word from you all is done or undone. 'Nunziatina would be left in peace, and my husband

Messer Nellemane drew himself up, the most rigid monument of offended dignity and unutterable surprise.

'Persecute?' he repeated; 'persecute? I? Signora mia! you cannot know what you are saying! What am I here?

nothing. The mere instrument of the will of the council and the syndic; the merest pen in the hand of an

unblemished and most benevolent magistracy! You must see, if you reflect a moment, that the troubles of

your relatives all rise from their own neglect of repeated warnings that, if they pursued certain modes of

conduct, the lawthe law which is absolutely impartial and impersonalmust take its course.'

'No!' said Viola, stung out of all prudence and holding her little child close to her breast as she spoke. 'No,

no! these are all words. When I was a maiden you had wicked and cruel thoughts of me, and you have

revenged yourself on me and mine. If I had taken your gifts, and hearkened to your dishonest wooing, you

would have spared my grandfather and the Pastorini and the old woman, who has no sin in all the world

Offended majesty and insulted virtue reigned together on every line of Messer Nellemane's countenance.

'You are mad, woman!' he said very sternly. 'How dare you use such indecorous language to me? I never saw

you but twice, and then I regarded you as the betrothed of the youth Carmelo. Foolish fancies are not my

'It is because the dear old creature brought your presents back to you that you hate her, that you hate them

all!' she cried with tremulous indignation and emotion. 'It is because I feel they suffer through me that I know

not how to bear to see them suffer. Carmelo and I can do well enough; we are young and strong, and we have

love and health to bear us up; but old peoplethe old peopleand it is all because you hate them. It is all

'This is insanity!' said Messer Nellemane, lifting his hands. 'It is worse: it is defamation! You are using the

language of libel. All, I repeat, all that has befallen your family is the simple and inevitable result of their

inattention and disobedience to the laws of the land. Their contumacy has met with its natural, and I must say,

'Oh, hypocrite!' cried Viola, with her pale cheeks flaming as the sun flames in the west on an autumn night. 'I

'You are excited,' said Messer Nellemane, coldly. 'I am sorry that you ever miscon strued my charity to a

poor man's granddaughter. I should have hoped that innocent country maidens had had purer thoughts. I

fancied that it was only women of light life who put evil constructions on simple courtesies! Your child is

The child had burst out sobbing loudly. Viola pressed it to her bosom and turned and left the room.

Messer Nellemane had been to the last victorious; he had made her feel an unwomanly, unwise, illspoken

creature, who had fancied an unholy passion as existing in a mere commonplace and benevolent compliment!

'O bimbo mio! she wailed to the wailing child. 'Is it indeed only the law? Will the law follow us out in to the

sickly Maremma and seize our last crust there? O bimbo mio! if you were not so dear, so sweet, so fair,

'What a fortunate thing I resisted my momentary infatuation for her,' thought Messer Nellemane, left alone

with the prospectus and estimates of the Catacomb Metropolitan. 'Really she has grown quite plain, and how

very painfully thin! If factories were established, there would not be this class of useless, hungry and most

And he stretched out his hand and unearthed from the mass of the Catacomb circulars a plan for the Giunta to

turn the old Convent of S. Francesca Romana into a manufactory: it would be hideous, it would pollute the

river, and it would bring to the municipality a clear forty per cent. per annum. What could be more

THIS night that Annunziata died, Carmelo and his father were sitting up by the light of a threebranched

lamp, and poring over their accounts. They kept these ill; they could make clear figures, but the miller wrote

ill, and the young man, who had always been lazy in these matters, could not write at all.

Still, even their scanty education enabled them to perceive very clearly that the miller was deeply in debt, and

that, unless things mended, they would share the fate of Pippo. And there was no chance that they would

mend; the steam mill would every month take more and more. Santa Rosalia did as bigger societies have

The father and son felt this bitterly; both had fancied it would have been otherwise, for they were simple

enough to expect that, as the whole village hated the oppressor rusticorum, the whole village would have

courage to show their hatred; neither of them had great knowledge of human nature, and both had simple and

'They are taught to be mean,' said his son. 'They are ruled by a spy and a sergeant of police. What would you?

Pastorini sighed; he was thinking of all his dead brother had fought for; he did not understand politics, but it

Carmelo had his elbows on the table, and his face was resting on his hands. The yellow light of bad oil, the

dregs of the oil jar, flickered on his hair and on the papers before him. It was midnight; Viola was upstairs;

'Father,' he said abruptly, 'it is no use my staying here; I cannot help you; I only do you harm. Alone, when

Dina is married, there will be enough perhaps for you, and Cesarellino and the girls; and the others, when

they are grown up, will do for themselves after they have gone through the hell which they call soldiering.

Fathernever did I think to do it, but I see now that I must. I will go away, and try and work elsewhere, and

my girl will go with me, and perhaps the old man, for he will lose his mind where he is'

Demetrio Pastorini grew ashen white, and his breath came shortly; never in all the course of the centuries had

'It will be best so,' said Carmelo, sadly; 'there is not enough for us all. There is ruin here, he added, striking

his fist on the book. 'Unburdened, may be you may pull through it. As for me, I am strong, I can do anything

'A bracciante, if need be,' said Carmelo. 'I will go into the Maremma next month. There is plenty of work

there, they say. I do not know rightly where it lies, but one can ask. I have no money to go over seas, or else I

would. But anyhow, I have a strong arm. I will not let Viola starve, nor her children when they come, nor the

old man if he will trust himself with us. You will let me go, father? You will not say nay?'

Carmelo, if his father had forbidden him, would never have stirred; he was as obedient as though he were still

Demetrio Pastorini was silent: his mouth was quivering with an emotion he repressed:

'Do what your conscience tells you,' he said huskily. 'I would not check you, not I; I have nought for you at

He would not say that it would not be best for his son to breathe another air than Bindo Terri; but it cut him to

the quick. For so many years he and his had dwelt here, father and son, one after another, the old broad

houseroof sheltering all. That his eldest born should be driven out like an Ishmael, and be forced to wander

and work on other land than the place that had given him birth, seemed so terrible to him that, for the

moment, he thought that he would sooner see Carmelo dead upon his bed. Yet he would not say him nay.

'Go if you will,' he said to him. 'When the trees went, I knew the luck of the house went with them. As for

'Nay, nay,' said Carmelo gently. 'It is I who bring illluck to the house. Our honest hearth should not have a

gaol bird by it. Cesarellino will be better master here after you than I, father. Though I lived for fifty years,

His hands clenched as he spoke; and in his soul he cursed those who had cursed him.

He panted to be gone: it wrung his very heartstrings to leave his own land, to think that he should live no

more by the water that had sung to him since, in his babyhood, he had pattered in its shallows with rosy

He feared at every moment that rage would master him, and some utterance, or act, of it again fling him to his

foes. The glance and the gibe of the guards, the estrangement of old comrades, the sight of the waste ground

by his father's house, the shrug with which the youngsters went away and left him on the first Sunday

afternoon when he had gone to take up his old place on the palloneground, the sufferings of old Pippo and of

'Nunziatina; all these things were to him as is the fly in the galled side of the horse. He was afraid of what his

He was very young, and he panted for a fresh field, a free life, a place were he could work and play without a

He was very ignorant, and knew nothing even of other communes than his own; but he said to himself that

anything was better than bringing ruin on his father; and he felt that he had strength in him to cut a new road

out for himself, and get bread for his wife and the old man. He thought that somewhere there must always be

So little did he know, so little did even his own poverty make him realise, the poverty that gnaws tens of

That night Carmelo sat up long by the little window that looked over the river, talking to his wife of this new

hope of his. Viola had never heard of Ruth; but Ruth's heart throbs in every loving woman, and she said in

'But grandfather?' she said, almost as soon as the idea of flight to other land had ceased to scare her, for

another province to her was stranger than it would be to us to go to lands behind the sun, could we get there.

'We will take him with us,' said Carmelo stoutly. 'Nay, sweetheart, never would I ask of you to leave him.

'I think he never will come away,' said Viola with a sigh. 'His very life does seem as if it were wedded to

'Dear love,' said Carmelo bitterly, yet tenderly. 'They will soon tear him off those stones I fear. The beasts

'Then, perhaps, he would come,' said Viola, 'only he is old; you cannot get new ideas into him any more than

'Father would let her live here,' answered Carmelo; 'I know he would; he is so good; and she would have our

'As long as father lives he would always find a crust to keep an old woman out of prison,' said Carmelo. 'And

tomorrow, Viola, I will go over and tell her so; and perhaps they will let her come out if I promise she shall

She kissed him again; and as they leaned there one against another, looking at the white moonlight on the

Rosa water and the bats that were flying in and out of the ivy upon the wall, they were almost happy.

'If,' murmured the young man, 'if we can only go where we can get bread enough to eat, Viola, and where

your children will never hear that I was once in prison. Not but that I would do the same over again; just the

There is a great fair in August in Santa Rosalia; a cattle fair, a horse fair, and a merrymaking all in one, that

It comes once in three years, and so does not lose its attraction from too constant repetition. It lasts two days,

There used to be at this gathering only good chaffing and good fellowship, followed by blameless mirth; now

there is often a good deal of quarreling, in which the knife is arbiter, and a good deal of drunkenness, for

people's tempers are on edge in these days, and the wines and other drinks at the caff�s are not wholesome

and unadulterated, as they were before shopkeepers had to pay such taxes that they must recuperate

The preparations had been already made for this fair, and the booths and the flags enlivened the dusty piazza,

and there were already groups of bullocks, white, dun, and grey, shaggy ponies and lean asses, bearded rough

shepherds, and goats as bearded and rough, and lean sheep that fed on what they could crop by the

roadsides; and little, indeed, is that, in these days, when the communal regulations forbid the poor creatures

The place was full of movement, sound, and laughter, and the noise was increased by the lowing of the cattle,

and the braying of the asses, across which sounded now the chimes of San Giuseppe, and now the bells of

In other years there had also pealed from across the river the beautiful, solemn, deep tones of the convent

bells, but they were gone far away; they had been melted down into cannon which rusted on bastions that no

Carmelo, going towards the house of the Madonna to see how Pippo fared, had a heart less heavy than it had

He had talked with the cattle drivers and the shepherds, and all had told him something of different places; he

had also met with a horse dealer, bringing in a string of young horses from the Maremma, and he had asked

the road from this man, and had been assured that a strong young fellow was always welcome in the woods

there all winter. It was very far away, and very vague, but still it comforted him.

Here were men who came from the place he had thought of, and told him he might find bread there; what

they related of the wide, marshy plains, of the great blue sea, of the dark forests of pine and chestnut, sounded

to him wide, and fresh, and alluring. Surely, he thought, there would be no petty laws there to sting at you all

He was so young that any touch of hope was enough to lift him from earth like wings; he thought he would

make haste to tell the old man; it would be hard, he knew, to get Pippo away from his little square house, but

still he would try. He would urge it for Viola's sake. She never would bear the thought of leaving her

He brushed his way through the crowd on the piazza, his thoughts intent on this, and not noticing that the

people were all looking, not so much at the cattle or the booths, as at the iron rails that had recently been laid

'Take care!' said some one roughly, and pushed him off the line just as a great, black smoking traction engine

roared along with some cars attached to it. It was the first journey of the tramway.

'The accursed thing!' cried Carmelo, while the people around him stood sullen and sorrowful, and a few

partisans of the novelty tried in vain to shout and wave their hats, and excite enthusiasm.

In the cars were seated in triumph the Cavaliere Durellazzo, Signore Luca Finti, Signore Zauli, the Giunta,

and others who had profited by this form of progress; Messer Nellemane sat in a corner of the first car, a

'I'm ruined,' said the diligence man, very quietly. 'I'll as well go and smoke myself out of the way as Nanni

'Why do you let those things be settled and done behind your backs?' said Carmelo, with suppressed fury, as

his eyes flashed. 'You are like the poor sheep yonder; you go to the slaughterhouse as much as you go to

your bed. Who rules here? A few knaves who have the wit to get on your backs, and ride you as we ride an

'And that is true,' said the people, ruefully; 'but what's to be done? They talk a deal down in the city'

'Talk! Any fool can talk,' said Carmelo passionately. 'Talk is reeled out here by every rogue and every dunce,

as thread reels off the women's wheel. It is action that we want. Every householder, every honest man, should

dare to use his vote in matters of his borgo; things should not be done by a few picked knaves behind the

'Yes, yes! Bravo! bravo!' the people nearest to him said, and the cattle drivers shouted to him to go on, and

Carmelo, warmed and touched by the applause, and having all these months longed to pour out what he had

'I have thought much about these things,' he said simply. 'Prison is a rude teacher, but one that tells no lies.

There was a dying man there, who told me that we are all slaves. And what are we else? We sweat and labour

from daydawn to night, only that they may wring out of us the last penny that we have. Our mothers weep,

and our fields lie halftilled, whilst our youngsters are borne off to swell the army and starve under their

knapsacks. Our shipping lies idle in our ports, they tell me, weighted with taxes, till their owners dare not go

afloat, and their timbers rot in the harbours. Inland, our little tradesmen are beggared like the merchantmen,

and put their shutters up, and go and starve somewhere unseen. Here, in the country places, no man can say

his soul is his own; if his dog stir a foot, or his child spin a top, the brutes are down on him; he must pay or be

sold up. The King, say you? Nay, he knows nought; he is set round with liars and deceivers like a hedge of

aloes and cactus that lets nobody in; the Queen, in mercy, they say many a time pays the fines to redeem the

workmen's tools, for these devils seize the spade, the pickaxe, the hammer that the man works with, if there

be nothing better. If a man make ten centimes a day he pays the tassa di famiglia! you all know that. We are

free, are we? And in the cities the barracks are full of bersagliere to shoot us down if we say a word, and in

the country there are blackguards with little swords to spy on every act of our days! Our lives are no more our

own. We must pay, pay, pay, till the sweat of our bodies is blood. They grind down our hearts and our lungs,

and make them into money to squander. In the accursed factories they have built, the women work for forty

centimes a day, and the children for half of that. They tell us we are prosperous and happy, and they tell the

world so, at their banquets, and all over the land the people are sold up, and turned adrift and left on the

highway, groaning and dyingdying in silence, because they are foolish as sheep, or holy as saints!'

The tears rolled down his face, the dew stood on his forehead; he was but echoing what he had heard in his

sick bed in his prison, but he felt every word he uttered with all his heart, and with all his soul.

The people listened to him, entranced; the guard, Bindo Terri, on the outskirts of the crowd, heard too.

'They are true things that you say, lad,' muttered the diligence driver at last. 'But what can we do, my dear? If

we say a word, if we fire a shot, there are the soldiers, as you say, and the prisons.'

'Then let us say we are slaves, and bow our heads,' said Carmelo, bitterly, as he pointed to the flag that

floated from the caff� of Nuova Italia, 'and let us say that flag is the flag, not of freedom, but of famine, of

oppression, and of fear. We starve, and a million leeches are sucking our mother Italy dry. We starve, and a

million idlers sit in the public offices and fatten, and do nothing all their lives, and then are pensioned. We are

'Go away, my dear, they are looking at you,' said Gigi Canterelli in his ear. 'And if we all rose, what could we

do, my dear? We have no weapons except a few old guns to shoot thrushes, and they would bring cannon

'What use would their cannon be if they could not get our conscripts?' said Carmelo; his breast was heaving,

'Instead of talking sedition before witnesses,' he said, very sharply, 'you had better keep your wife's folk out

'What?' said Carmelo, with a scared glance on those around him. 'That brute is saying this only to hurt me.

Gigi Canterelli, who was nearest to him, put his hand soothingly on his shoulder.

'Dear lad,' he said, with hesitation, 'I did hear something who came from the city, but surely they would have

'No, no,' said Carmelo, stupidly. 'No one has said anything to us. Who took her to the city? We knew nought

'We had the official notice of it this morning from Montesacro. You will get it by post this afternoon. She is

dead, that you may take my word for; and you had better have worked, and kept her in bread and soup, than

The young man sprang forward to seize the ribald throat that mocked him, but Gigi Canterelli and the others

'Dear lad,' cried Canterelli, 'remember your young wife. Get not into trouble again through this fellow. You

'If you loved her so much, why did you not keep her off begging on the highway?' called Bindo Terri after

'For shame, Bindo!' said Canterelli, sternly, and the crowd listening around echoed the reproofs.

The guard stuck his feathered hat on one side of his head, and thrust his short sword under one arm.

'If you jeer at me you are summoned,' he said, with the pertness that he thought was dignity. 'I represent the

'Lord, Lord!' muttered Gigi Canterelli, 'and the times that I have spanked you for stealing my string and my

Meanwhile the tramway cars were rolling through the summerscorched fields towards Pomodoro, and there

were met by the Count Saverio, and the Syndic his brother, and the officials and gentry of that place; all, in

fact, who had got a nice little pat of butter to sweeten their daily bread out of the con cessions and the

Carmelo went across the piazza blindly; he was stunned and broken down by the tidings of the death at

She had been only a poor old woman, indeed, but Viola had loved her, and Carmelo himself had grown fond

The poor lad went on rather by instinct than by sight across the square to the house of Pippo.

'He will come with us now,' he thought; 'surely he will come with us, or he will die as she has done.'

When he reached the house his heart stopped with a spasm of fear; the door was shut: a thing never seen

'He is ill!' thought Carmelo, but then he remembered that, were he ill within, he could not have fastened to

those shutters, and never since he had been a child had he seen those windows thus closed.

He shook the door, and tried to force himself against it; failing in that, he looked round at a few loiterers who

Carmelo went round, vaulted over the wall enclosing the little back garden, and saw the house was shut in the

'Good God, what can have happened?' said Carmelo in his bewilderment and terror. Had the old man been

Remigio Rossi from the millhouse across the river saw him thus standing, rigid and gasping, staring at the

'The house has been seized for debt. They turned your grandfather out of it last night. He went away. I

thought he went to you. Did nobody send you word? But, to be sure, it was nobody's business. Come in, my

'Nay, that I know not,' said the owner of the steammill. 'We though he came to you. Lord, boy, I mean none

But Carmelo had no ears for him. He had left the garden as he had entered it, and was gone across the fields.

He had seen in the damp ground a print of a foot without shoes: he thought it was Pippo's.

'I never can meet my girl's eyes again if both are dead,' he thought. 'Surely he has killed himself like Nanni.'

He heard a step in pursuit of him and the friendly hand of Gigi Canterelli touched him.

'Carmelo, Carmelo!' he cried to him, 'I have just this minute heard that your grandfather was turned out last

night. They did it so quietly, none of us knew. It seems that lawyer in Pomodoro had a right to the place

because the interest on the mortgage was not paid, and there were sums Pippo owed to the municipality, fines

and what not, God knows, about the water, and so the usciere came and took the thing, and locked it all up,

all in the name of the law, and it has been sold at auction: so they say. That is what Angelo, the beast, has just

old me. He saw you coming here. How it was we none of us saw or heard I cannot think, but the lawyers and

the other folks kept still tongues in their heads, and the door of the house is turned to the river, and Pippo can

He paid no heed to what was told him of the seizure of the house; all he thought of was that Pippo was lying

'Nay,' said Gigi Canterelli in a hushed and solemn way, 'I think he will not take his life. He is a Godfearing

man, is Pippo, and he thinks that in the matter of our living or dying it is the good God that fans our breath or

Carmelo did not hear; he was looking to right and left of him wildly, as though he saw the corpse of the old

'If he be not dead,' he said, with a burst of weeping like a woman, 'he has gone to try and hide, so that we

should not know. Look, here is a footmark; it goes along the fields; he would not stay by the river, I think, to

see that iron beast roar along it; he would get away into the fields, away from the accursed smoke.'

'His brain was not right,' said Carmelo with a sob. 'It has never been right since he signed away his house to

'O Lord, have mercy on us,' groaned the other. 'Nobody ever killed themselves when I was young; but

nowadays the rivers are choked full, and the charcoal is used for naught but death.'

Under one of the maples of the vinefields that stretched all around he saw the old man sitting. The tree was

heavy with green grapes, and the leaves were golden with sunbeams. Pippo was bareheaded, and his head

'Grandfather, don't you know me? Speak to me! look at me! Don't you see me, me, Carmelo? don't you hear?'

The old man's clothes and long white hair were wet with dew; he had been out all night. He lifted his head,

but his face was quite vacant. He chuckled a little; and he kept a great old rusty key in his hand. Carmelo saw

'They won't get in,' said Pippo in a whisper, clutching the key. 'They won't get in; I've got the key. It is my

house, and I am master. There were many of them, so I took the key and hid. It is my house; it is my house.'

'It is my house; they'll find I'm master. They've taken a hundred scudi from me, and all the things, and the bed

that the girl was born on, and the bit of glass she saw her pretty face in; and the little dog is dead, and the

reeds in the river are wanted for the king; but they won't get in the house; I've got the key.'

His hands clenched the thing closer and closer; he laughed a little feeble laugh of foolish triumph.

When the law had seized his house it had given the deathblow to his poor old brain, that for so long had

been 'buzzing and muddling,' and seeing nothing anywhere in the air or in the water, in the sky or on the land,

'I've got the key, they can't get in; it's my house, it's my house; and when I'm dead you'll bury me under the

almondtrees where the little dog is, and you'll make the house into a chapel,' he muttered, clasping the key

to his bosom, and looking with blank and foolish eyes into the sunshine that played with the vines.

At that moment, at the banquet in the Pretura of Pomodoro, the Cavaliere Durellazzo was reading out with

In this eloquent speech he spoke of the prosperity of the country, of the excellence of the laws, of the

admirable economy that was observed in every public department, of the necessity for Italia to be heard and

respected in the councils of Europe, and of the large army that must be one of her chief glories as a great

The discourse was received with great enthusiasm, and was duly reported in the local press, and praised in the

'I recognise your hand,' whispered Signor Luca Finti to Messer Nellemane. 'You must become a deputy at the

next election; and I make no doubt that you and I some day shall sit as Ministers round the same council

Messer Nellemane smiled modestly as he slipped away to send a telegram in the name of the two Syndics to

He saw no reason why the prediction should not be fulfilled; nor, I confess, do I see any. He has every

AT this moment Santa Rosalia pays two francs a day for Pippo, who has to be kept at the public cost at the

asylum of St. Bonifaccio in the city. He is an imbecile, and at times violent, but his old frame is tough; he

does not die. At times he weeps for days together, and then they punish him. He is always searching for a lost

Viola was so unnerved and distracted at the calamity befallen her grandfather that she fell into a fever, which,

coupled with her distress of mind, killed her as it killed young Merc�des of Spain: but Viola was not so soon

forgotten and replaced. The little 'bimbo,' bereft of his young mother, soon followed her to her grave.

Carmelo, maddened with grief, joined himself to some few fiery and chafing spirits, nourished like himself

on the bitterness of endless wrong; they tried to burn down the communal palace which held all those

accursed documents against the poor, and, failing, were taken prisoners, and after a long trial sent to the

galleys. The Italian and English press described them as a band of ignorant and brutal socialists; and then no

Demetrio Pastorini died brokenhearted; his sons were unable to compete with the steammill, and sold the

old place to the commune for a pittance; they are some of them daylabourers, and some are taken as

Cecco is dead, and his sons are also conscripts. Gigi Canterelli, having the municipality against him, became

bankrupt, and is now a beggar; the old convent on the hill is a factory where the women and children earn a

few centimes a day with loss of all their health. The little house of the Madonna has been bought and

enlarged by Bindo Terri, who has married well and entered into a wine business with the money he saved in

his service of the State. His brother succeeded to his uniform and sword, and is as like him as one ferret is

Messer Gaspardo Nellemane meanwhile flourishes like a green baytree in the service of the State: he is full

of ambition, and in all probability will live to attain all his aims and die in all honour.

When the Dissidenti become the Possidenti he will be with them in power. If, on the other hand, the Right

return to office, Messer Nellemane will know how to take profit from the fact that he has always been

Whatever party reign at Montecitorio it will be said of him, 'Verily he has his reward.'

MARK TWAIN has said that an appendix gives a great dignity to a book. Despite this joke at it, it does not

scare readers away, perhaps, as greatly as a preface does. At any rate, I will risk the addition, because I want

to assure all who take up this story that there is no kind of exaggeration in it.

No doubt the public will be tempted to think that the municipal tyrannies, here depicted, are overcoloured,

but I can assure them that I have in not the slightest degree overdrawn the power of those little communal

councils, and the terrible suffering that they entail upon the poor people of this beloved country.

Travellers, and even foreign residents, do not, as a rule, know anything about this. You must know the

language intimately, and you must have gotten the people's trust in you, before you can understand all that

they endure. The system is, as I have said, professedly autonomous, but practically it works in the manner I

have depicted. The frightful taxation of the noble and gentle is bad; the taxation of the commercial interest, of

the shipping and the trades is still worse; but more cruel by far than all is the municipal extortion by tax, by

fine, and by penalty, that crushes out the very lifeblood of the peasant part of the nation. There are, of

course, communes where some good and wise man is chief proprietor, and then it is fairly well governed.

There are others in which the blacksmith or the carpenter is at the head of affairs, and then, though things

may go ill, the populace cannot complain. But these are few exceptions, and, in the main part, the twopenny

Gessler that I have endeavoured to sketch disposes of the destinies at his will.

It is entirely useless to change the ministries of Italy so long as this municipal system remains what it is. It

has ruined Venice, Florence, and Naples, and is ruining Rome; as it has done on a great scale in the cities, so

it does on a little one in the small towns and villages. An enormous bureaucracy enriches itself at the public

I believe that these municipal tyrannies might often legally be combated, but the populace cannot afford to do

this. I won a cause lately against a municipality, and a shoemaker said to me, 'Oh, there is one law for you

And practically it is so; the poor man cannot afford to employ an advocate, and his pleading against false

charges or extortion is never attended to; the taxgatherers or the communal clerks are believed, and the poor

man is beggared at a blow. Against the decisions of these small courts also, there is no appeal.

It is no question of the Right, or of the Left; it is a question of a method of socalled selfgovernment, which

goes on and impoverishes and distracts the country just the same, whether Cairoli or Sella, Minghetti or

It is this which the public of other countries never understand, and which the correspondents of the foreign

Press never endeavour to point out. Here Garibaldi does in vain rail against it; nobody attends to him. In vain

has he again and again declared the misery of Italy to arise from the locustswarms of the impiegati, and the

crowds of pensioners who live on and bleed the State to death. If I ruled Italy, I would ship ninetenths of the

impiegati and the pensioners to New Guinea: we might then get public business done, and the public coffers

filled, without wrenching his last coin from the daylabourer. When the pensioner dies, his pension dies with

him; but when the accursed impiegato leaves his stool of office, another of his breed is ready to spring on to

it. He is an alligator that the hot sands of sinecure and corruption generate, and he multiplies without end. All

political parties nourish him alike, as all alike continue to allow the local despotisms to cramp and starve the

One man arose and said this nobly in Montecitorio in the last session: no one listened to him; he was even

shouted down; all they care to hear about there is Tunis or Albania, or a new loan.

It is a common remark that Italy wants a Bismarck: she wants nothing of the kind: she wants a minister,

temperate, just, indifferent to bombast or display, resolute to destroy corrup tion, and convinced of the great

truth that the first duty of a State is the prosperity of her children. But, alas! when a good man comes, he has

no chance; his party split into schisms; the Disssidenti, disappointed of place, sting him like wasps; to be

popular with Parliament and the Press, he must talk big of armies, of ships, and the councils of Europe, and,

even if he be premier, it is fifty to one that the great bulk of the populace never even know his name.

Harassed, weary and impotent, he will leave his good intentions to pave a lower deep than Dante ever visited,

and, out of heart with all things, will let them drift on in their old fashion, knowing that you must be a

I know the Italian people well; I mean the poor, the labouring people; I am attached to them for their

loveableness, their infinite natural intelligence, their wondrous patience; they are a material of which much

They are but little understood by foreigners, even by foreign residents; they are subtle and yet simple; of an

infinite good nature, and yet sadly selfish; they are very docile, yet they have great sensitiveness, and I see no

more greed in them than in the poor of all countries; if we had not bread for our hungry children, I daresay we

should be greedy too. There are sundry people, very, very poor, to each of whom I give a little sum weekly;

not one of these people has ever asked for more than the allotted sum, not one has ever made it an excuse to

plead for further gifts. Dear readers of mine, can you say as much of your countrymen?

They are ignorant, no doubt, and they are likely to remain so, for the public free education is a farce; the

communal schools, when they have taught a boy his letters, set him to teach some smaller boy, and so on ad

infinitum. They are ignorant, no doubt, and it is the interest of the municipalities, as much as ever it was that

of the priesthood, to keep them so. As it is, they endure all these extortions and tyrannies that I have

endeavoured in some measure to depict; endure them patiently, knowing no remedy, and incapable of the

general action that can alone make a people's strength felt. Now and then there are clamourers for bread, but

very few and gentle ones; there are troops and carabiniers everywhere ready to shoot them down, and if they

murmur they are clapped in the Murate, where poor diet and low fever do the rest for most of them.

Consequently, the municipalities conduct all affairs high over the heads of the persons concerned, and all

sorts of important public works, sales, demolitions, or constructions are effected against the will of the

The Left is inclined to make each commune still more selfgoverning and independent of the State: should

this be done, the effects will be distressing on the populace; on the contrary, it would be far better to confine

the syndics of all districts within the limits of imperial law. Their changes and caprices are a source of

continual distraction to the country; for instance, at Genoa, a syndic (a wellknown general) forbade dogs

being given by the city to the vivisectors; a few weeks after came another syndic, who decreed that all dogs

found loose should be seized and sent to the vivisectors' laboratories. This is only one instance out of many.

The illimitable and captious powers of these momentary rulers are a source of worry, grief, and extortion to

the people, greater than I can hope to make anyone believe. The whole system is execrable, and leads to

The greater number of the nobles are so absorbed in their own grievance of paying 45 per cent. impost, that

they have no ear and no inclination to pity any woes of the poor. The inexhaustible generosity of France has

no counterpart in Italy. Even subscriptions for a charitable purpose are very niggardly given, and when given

are usually filtered through so many hands in their passage to the poor that little reaches them. Save here and

there an asylum, to which it takes strong interest and recommendation to get admitted, there is nothing for the

poor; the man or woman who is starving has nothing to do except to die. The great difficulty in Italy is the

apathy of the higher classes, and their absolute indifference to the state of the poor. When they do take

interest in public affairs, it is too often only for the sake of the personal advantages, the nepotism, the

contracts, or the kudos that may grow out of it. An Italian, in office of any kind, will always hear you amiably

and courteously but when you plead for the people he will only think you a fool, and say, 'Cara mia, why

'How can you write books about these birbonaccie?' said an Italian nobleman to me, meaning about the

contadini in Signa. 'They spend their whole lives in fleecing us. You should never believe a word that they

Now, I would be far from declaring that this is the only view that the proprietor takes in Italy, but it is, alas! a

The number of vagrants and idlers is largely increased by the absurd law of the code which forces every

parent to maintain a son, every brother a brother, every husband a wife, however vicious, vile, or incurably

lazy they may be; a law which indeed puts a premium on idleness, and attaches a penalty to industry; a law

which in its effects on the youth of the country, is beginning to be dangerous. On those who are industrious

and saving, the insatiable taxes bring oftentimes wholesale ruin; every trade and every employment is taxed

as if it were a crime; every labouring man must pay his quota, and if he do not pay, his tools and all that he

A recent Italian writer on the terrible state of the Romagna and the Marches observes very rightly that the

great bulk of the people derive no sort of benefit from all the mass of money thrown away in the alterations of

the old streets, and introductions of new methods in the cities. He justly observes that where the pilgrimages,

once so continual, took money into all the villages and small towns, the railways take it all away, and render

ninetenths of the provinces through which they pass povertystricken. The tunnels of the Alps have the

effect of drawing away the food that the nation itself requires. A few contractors are enriched; but the markets

of the populace are denuded, and only the worst of the products of the soil, and of meat and poultry, finds its

way to the nation's mouth. Any night that you go down to any railway station when the goodstrains pass,

you will see tons on tons of vegetables, fruits and butcher's meat going to France or Germany. What can be

more disastrous, also, for a country whose populace chiefly depend for all their bodily strength on wine, to

sell their grapes to French and German merchants? Yet this is what the landowners have been doing this year

right and left. Dazzle the eyes of an Italian with a little immediate profit, and alas! you may plunge him

It is irritating to see the foreign press, which knows nothing actually of the conditions of things, laying down

the law on Italian affairs. The English press attributes all the official evils of new Italy to the transmitted

vices of the old r�gimes. Now I did not live during the old r�gimes, and cannot judge of them; but this I do

know, that the bulk of people regret passionately the personal peace and simple plenty that were had under

them. The vices of the present time are those of a grasping and swarming bureaucracy everywhere, and of the

'Why do you care for that horse being hurt? It is not your horse,' everyone will say to you; an impersonal

'Una vanit� enorme, un' aspro cinicismo ed i suoi interessi,' says an Italian journalist of a living Italian

minister, alone govern his conduct. Substitute for the bitter cynicism an indolent amiability that never exerts

itself, and you have the characters of most Italian public men. The wellmeaning have no power to cope with

the vast inert mass of nepotism and corruption that block the way to all real economy, to all true justice.

Whatever names and parties change in the government, these always remain the same. Plus �a change plus

As an ounce of example is said to be worth a pound of precept, I will cite the following cases which have

1. A man living in one commune, but on the borders of another, having paid his taxes in the first, naturally

refused to pay them over again in the second. As he would not submit to be twice taxed, the commune got a

summons out against him with its usual result of distraint. He had nothing of any value but a gun; they seized

that. A gentleman took the case up, and obliged them to confess the man had been in the right; they promised

2. A contadino was going up a steep hill with some very heavy barrels of wine. Being a merciful man, to

lighten his beast, he placed two barrels by the roadside, meaning to fetch them later. He was seen by a rural

guard, though it was in a wild and lonely part of the hills. He was subsequently summoned and fined ten

francs! There is a rule in rural police laws that a man must never let his horse pause in the road to rest; it

3. The wife of a navvy who remains in a city of central Italy while her husband is gone to work in Sardinia is

in very great necessity and almost penniless; she has only a few sticks of furniture in a wretched room. One

of her children fell ill with fever, and a gentleman sent her in a little bed for the sick child. The officers of the

law saw the bed going in, and immediately assessed her for eight francs tassa di famiglia. She had not eight

What can one say of a municipal government in which such a state of things is possible?

Meanwhile, in the public offices, tens of thousands of dawdling youngsters lounge in for a few hours, and are

subsidised at from a thousand to two thousand francs a year, to be entirely useless and grossly impudent.

A respectable man went the other day to pay something at a public office. Three young men were gossiping

on the ground floor. They said, 'it is not our business, go to the first floor;' the first floor sent him to the

second, the second to the third; the third to the fourth; the fourth told it was business for the ground floor.

At the customsoffices, again, no one can be seen till nine; at three a great bell rings, and away they all go

and the place is shut; a gardener of mine went to get a little parcel weighing half a chilo, and prepaid from

Germany. They kept him four hours, then sent him away without it because the bell rang. He was kept from

eleven to two the next day, and finally, with a sheaf of signed papers long enough to sign away a kingdom, he

got the little parcel, which was only a book. Garibaldi used to curse the 'black shoals' of the priesthood; the

'black shoals' of the impiegati are a more ravenous, more idle, and far more cruel class; they are an

unredeemed curse to the country, and if I could I would send ninetenths of them to hard labour tomorrow.

When a poor man goes to pay a tax for a dog there are all sorts of excuses from the impiegati; it is not the

time to pay it, the books are being revised, he may come in a month, the streets are being renumbered, he had

better call again when they are finished; anyhow, he cannot get his receipt. A little later down comes the

Esattore of the commune for arrears of the dog tax. In vain the poor man protests; no one believes him. When

he has paid, the demand is made over and over again. They assessed a poor baker the other day for two years'

dog tax with penalties; happily, I had paid the tax for him and so worsted them, as I produced the receipts.

But if he had been alone, his receipts would have been insufficient to protect him.

This whole, enormous, and insatiable bureaucracy is like a sytaris; a sytaris, as you know, hides on a bee's

back, gets taken into the hive, then slips into the cell where the bee larva lies steeped in honey, and tucking

itself snugly up in the cell, kills the larva and sucks all the honey; one fine day, having grown fat and mature,

To the bureaucracy the whole public is what the bee larva is to the sytaris grub; a means of growing plump

and living in sweetness. This is no question of ministries; it is a much deeper question; that of a gangrene

There is a little Almanac sold for a soldo and bought by tens of thousands of the poor of Italy, which, in a

very wellwritten little article addressed 'Ai Signori Ministri,' speaks of the unutterable misery brought on the

industrious and honest classes by the frightful taxation which makes the peasant of Italy scarcely better than

Referring to the projected law of Seismet Doda for relieving the poor of these burdens (a law which is for

ever being 'considered' by the Chambers, but never passed), it proceeds to point out how all the small

proprietors and the respectable poor are being utterly destroyed off the land. All the working people who are

ordered to pay fines, six, seven, eight, or ten lire to the tax gatherer, or the municipal police, are sold up if

The Esattore (examiner of taxes) published in one day for the little borghetto of Rocca Magna no less than

fourteen forced sales1 of the houses or land of very poor men, which had been seized in the name of the

State; little houses of three hundred or two hundred lire in worth, and in one instance the taxgatherer seized

and sold a piece of arable ground at the price of a hundred and ten francs. Everything is confiscated, because,

to the simple tax due, there are added all the expenses of fine, or execution, of lawdues, and the costs of

Let no one think that my poor old Pippo is an exaggeration. Pippo has a thousand, and ten thousand suffering

'If all these working people, once content and labourious, thus dispossessed and driven out, cumber the

prison, whose fault will it be? Who has caused them to change from peaceful, happy, country folks to

despairing beggars? In the last few years, nearly two million small proprietors have been ruined and sent into

beggary; at the same time all beggary is treated as a crime deserving imprisonment.'

It concludes with the threat, Guai a voi, Deputati e Ministri se meriterete la maledizione dei poveri!

This is no vice of an old r�gime. In the old r�gime there was scarcely any taxation; it is the vice of a hard,

grasping, and greedy bureaucracy, and of the fatal appetite for devouring public money, and manner of

regarding every public place as a mere opportunity and occasion for private enrichment, which are the

In addition to this overwhelming taxation, there is the black mail incessantly levied from the poor by the

penalties that the municipalities assess at their pleasure and discretion. Half of these go to the municipal

guard, and in the advertisements in newspapers inserted by communes who want a candidate for this noble

office, this share of the fines is advertised as one of the attractions and perquisites of the post. It is easy to

imagine what the public suffer three or four of these legalised and interested spies are allowed to stalk about

The timid purchase immunity from their torment at heavy cost of bribes; the courageous suffer incessantly

from their espionage and hatred. By the police regulations of these gentlemen every harmless act in a day of

country life may furnish food for fine and penalty. The testimony of the guard is taken as witness enough;

and the poor man, harassed and fleeced by those set over him, and who should protect him, has no resource

but to submit and pay. It is not too much to say that this daily and hourly tyranny and extortion of the

myrmidons of the municipalities are, all over Italy, sowing the seeds of a bitter hatred of the Law.

The honest peasant sees himself ceaselessly spied on, worried, summoned, fined for all sorts of of harmless

little things; his dog barks on his wall, his child spins a top on the road, or bathes in a river, he lays an armful

of brushwood on a lonely forest path, he rests his old horse a moment by the wayside; forthwith the spy is

down on him, and he has to deliver over all his wages for the day, perhaps all his wages for the week, to the

petty officers and judges who are banded together in a body to pillage him. If he will bribe, he will be let

alone: if he will not, he will be persecuted for all time till they make him a beggar.

Until the system is entirely abolished and replaced by something of real freedom for all honest men, I see no

peace possible for the people; and were their rulers not blind as moles they would hasten to pluck out this

But alas! no one in office cares about any of these things. A week ago a famous Italian doctor rose in the

Chambers and drew attention to the destruction of the woods of Latium and the rural guards' connivance at

these repeated infringements (for base reasons) of forestlaw. He was listened to with apathy; and the

But all those present could see that this inquiry would be the last thing that he would deem it worth his while

It is strange that with the present state of Ireland before their eyes the whole of the public men of Italy should

be as indifferent as they are to the perpetual irritation of all the industrious classes at the hands of the

municipalities and their organisation of spies and penalties. But indifferent they are: whether Bismarck

approve of their Greek policy, or Gambetta do not oppose their doings at Tunis is all they think about; the

suffering of a few million of their own people is too small a thing to catch their attention; they think like

Moli�re's doctor'Un home mort n'est qu'un homme mort, et ne fait point de cons�quence, mais un formalit�

No one can accuse me of any political prejudices. My writings have alternately been accused of a reactionary

conservatism and a dangerous socialism, so that I may, without presumption, claim to be impartial; I love

conservatism when it means the preservation of beautiful things; I love revolution when it means the

What I despise in the pseudo liberalism of the age is that it has become only the tyranny of narrow minds

vested under highsounding phrases, and the deification of a policeman. I would give alike to a Capucin as to

a Communist, to a Mormon as to a Monk, the free choice of his opinions and mode of life. But this true

liberty is nowhere to be found in Europe, and still less to be found in America; and this pseudo liberty

meddles with every phase of private life, and would dictate the rule of every simple act.

Every noblehearted theorist of a future of freedom has died in heartbroken disillusion; from the Girondists

of the past century to those, who, with high hopes, shouted in chorus to Silvio Pellico the Bianca croce di

Savoia! Thousands of gallant and goodly lives are thrown away like water in the effort to create a fair Utopia

of free action and untroubled peace; and all that, in the end, is born of their sacrifice is a horde of weazels and

of leeches, who suck the body of the nations dry; vermin who bear upon their backs a swarm of smaller

Gianbattista Niccolini, walking with Centofanti one day in Florence, shouted to two monks:

This is what, nowadays, the poor manlaborious and honestseeing the idle eaters of the public funds

swarming in and out of every public office, every municipality, every custom house, mutters in his soul

It is a change of masters, it is true, but it is no deliverance. It is the old tale of Jeannot's knife; blade and

handle have both been changed, but it is the same knife still, and here it cuts the hand that forged it.

Yet again one of the deepest sins of the State against the public is the Government lottery.

It is difficult to imagine a more absurd anomaly, a more entirely indefensible contradiction, than the severity

exercised by the State towards all private games and street games, and the selfishness with which it continues

to be itself the centre of the most demoralising system of gaming that can be devised for the ruin of the

people. The interference of the State with private gambling is carried to an inquisitive and impertinent excess;

yet at the same time, for sake of profit, the Government carries on a gigantic machinery more fatal in its

effects on the populace than any Casino like Monte Carlo. In the Casino it may be said that none are victims

save those who voluntarily seek the pernicious attraction, and they are most of them people, who, if they

could not play there, would play at home. Paris baccarat is ten times worse than Monte Carlo's roulette; but

the public lottery is ten times worse than Paris baccarat, because the State comes out and seeks the poor man

as he takes his hardearned wages, descends amidst the populace, wooes, entices, enervates, intoxicates, and

'Ah! the State is a clever one,' said a working man to me the other day. 'It sells everything else to the

And this is true; everything else, down to the rights of Octroi at the gates of cities, are sold to the Jew

syndicates, but the Government retains the lottery; and it may be safely affirmed that so long as it does retain

this vile thing, so long will the sin and the sorrow of the multitudes lie at its doors. Not merely does it foster

the fatal superstition which makes the study of 'lucky numbers' and 'dream omens' the sole thought of the

people, but in the rare cases where the poor man wins, the sudden delirium of riches has an effect like poison

on him, and he spends all in a brief summer phrenzy to perish afterwards in beggary or a madhouse. The

lottery takes all the earnings of the labouring classes in all the cities, usurps all their mind and hopes, keeps

them for ever in that fever of longing which is in itself a moral disease, and encourages in them alike the

No one seems to dare to lift up a voice against it, but until a minister shall arise who will destroy it, the nation

I would sooner see a Casino like Monte Carlo in every city of Italy, if thus the lottery could be abolished,

than I would see as I do, daily and hourly, the legalised publicity of this accursed destroyer of the people

allowed all over the land, whilst boys playing morra for coppers are seized by the police!

The system, too, to which I alluded above, of selling the Octroi and other public taxes to individuals or

companies, is productive of evils which it would be impossible without volumes of statistics, fully to

describe. A grasping speculator, or group of spectators, buys up the rights of taxation over a city or a

province, and makes the most out of the speculation that can be made. I ask the reader to think over for a

Yet who speaks of all these terrible and frightful evilsevils by which the country is impostladen till it

No one. The journals write beautiful threnodics over the grave of Ricasoli, and Rochefort shakes hands with

Garibaldi, and who amidst the mouthing and the posturing of it cares one straw for the nation, for the people?

The ranting demagogues of Milan care as little as the amnisti� of the Cit� Malesherbes or the satrap of the

The one shriek for Universal Suffrage and the others shriek for the Commune or for the March Decrees and

the Scrutin de Liste; but when does the one speak of abolishing the lottery or the other of abolishing the

When Madame Roland spoke her farewell words to liberty, she prophesied the whole hypocrisy of the

I want people to get these facts that I have narrated well into their minds; to turn their eyes a moment from

the Italian menofwar joining the Naval Demonstration of the Powers, and the Italian troops deploying in

the Val d'Aosta and the Mugello, 1 and look into these million humble homes, darkened and naked, and see

these children without food, these men without hope, who suffer that the pomp and parade of an empty boast

I cannot think to make you care for these people as I care for them; I, who know that they see their radiant

sun for ever through a mist of tears, who know that their hardwon bread is eaten with the gall of fear and of

oppression tainting the sour crust, who know that their little children tremble in their town alleys and country

lanes, and fly with their hunted dog from the armed myrmidon of a relentless and ignominious law; I cannot

think to make you suffer for them as I do, but still I think you will not refuse to feel some pity for them and

Italy is essentially a pastoral country. Those who would turn it into a manufacturing one would be as those

who should turn a tabernacle of Giotto's into a breeding hutch of swine. The people thrive on their pure

ambient air, they pass their lives under their unsullied skies, they love laughter, song, dance; and stillwith

the pipe of Corydon and the smile of Adoniswelcome the harvest night and the vintage morn. Up in the

hills and in the green places remote from cities, the old, simple, contented, pastoral life still prevails, and

there the husbandman follows Christ and recites Tasso; maybe he cannot read the words of either, what of

that? Raoul Rigault and Passantante, the murderer Prevost, and the murderess Virginie Dumaine, could all of

In its simplicity, in its freedom, in its purity of family affection, and in its Greeklike habits of husbandry, I

believe the unspoiled country life of Italy to be the best that remains to humanity on the face of the earth.

When the childish pettifoggers of the new school scream with puerile ecstasy at the sight of a tramway, of a

steam thresher, they know not all the beauty, content and pious peace that they destroy only to enrich some

Scotch contractor or some Hebrew usurer. There are 40,000 Jews in Italy, and to them are going all the old

estates, all the old palaces, and all the old heirlooms; the Italian noble, no more content to dwell as dwelt his

forefathers, aspires to be beggared by the belles petites of Paris or the baccarat of some fashionable hell; the

Italian people beholding all their old plenty and ancient rights slipping away from them, stand sullen and full

of futile wrath to see all that for twice a thousand years has been their own, passing into the coffer of the

foreign speculator or moneylender. This ruin is called Progressand the whole land groans, and the whole

Beyond all else, I repeat, is Italy a pastoral country. All its peace and its joy lie amidst its smiling fields. The

conscription that takes all its country lads from plough and spade, from vineyard and chestnut wood because

its leaders are bitten with the mania of meddling and marring in the councils of Europe, does the same evil to

the land that do the foreign speculators who cover the country with unfinished rails and demolished buildings

in that cruellest of all greeds, the greed of the hungry gambler of the stockexchange. The temptations to the

peasant to leave his hillside for the cities, which those gamblers for their own ends put before him as

improvement, is as merciless and fatal as any tempting of Satan to innocent souls of old. Most unhappily the

rural life all the world over is spoken of now with scorn; yet it is certain that the rural life is the safest, the

healthiest, the sweetest, and above all it is so here where the climate makes the mere living outofdoors a

Compare the mechanic of Wakefield or Blackburn with the pall of black soot hung for ever between him and

the sun, and his superficial repetitions of Darwin or Bradlaugh urged as evidence of an enlightened mind;

compare his automatic hideous toil, his hard hatred of all classes save his own, his dwelling one amidst rows

of a thousand similar, his wilderness of dark, foulscented streets, his stench of smoke, his talk of

agnosticism and equality narrow as the routine of his life, his shallow sophisms, his club, his strikes, his

tommyshop; compare him and these with the Italian labourer of the Luchese hills, or the Santa Fiora forests,

or the Val d'Arno farms, rising to see the glorious sky glow like a summer rose, dwelling in his wide, stout,

stonebuilt house old as the trees around him, following in their course as the seasons change his manly and

healthful labours, reaping and binding, sowing and mowing, guiding his oxen through the vines, having for

ever around him the gladdest and most gracious nature; at noontide sitting down as the patriarch sat amidst

his family and labourers to a homely plenty; at eventide resting to see the youths and maidens dance, and

listen to the old pastoral love songs sung to the thrum of the guitar or the story of the Gerusalemme Liberata

passed down by word of mouth from sire to son. Compare these two lives; they are no fancy pictures. You

may see either of them any day you will; and tell me whether I am wrong when I dread, as the plague was

dreaded of old, the false teachers, who, to fill their own purse try to persuade the southern peasant to covet

the northern workmen; who try to say gas is fairer than the sun, and the oiled piston sweeter than the honey

breath of the cattle, and the anathema of Fourier and Bakounine lovelier and wiser than the strophe of Ariosto

Italy for the Italians! yes; with the municipal extortions made a thing of the past like the Inquisition, and the

Jew usurer, and the English and American speculator, denied the soil they covet and pollute. This would well

be the fitting warcry of the Italy of today, who has darker foes made welcome in her midst than even the

Let me give but one example of the delightful natural intelligence which the new schools are striving to

replace with the scientific smattering of the factory and foundry mechanic, and I will weary you no more.

In a letter published in 1859 to the celebrated Tommaseo, Professore Giulianni narrates the story of a woman

called Beatrice in the Pistoiese Apenninesa woman he knew wella poor, hardworking, countrybred

creature, who knew not a single letter of the alphabet, but who improvised on the death of a beloved son, in a

passion of grief and weeping, the most perfect poem in the always difficult ottave. This woman was but one

amidst others, who all had, in a greater or a lesser degree, this grand poetical faculty, and harmony of ear, and

who, when asked to teach their power to a stranger, would answer with a smile. Volete intender lo mio

What can the communal schools substitute for that one half so ennobling, so inspiriting, so sublime, as those

'If you would learn to sing like me,' she says, 'come with me to gather the hillside wood, or stay beside me to

hoe the earth; this rich and kindly earth which flowers for ever for you, making the almond bloom in the

winter cold, and the cyclamen in the autumn mists, and all spring and summer shower on you blossoms with

What can the schools give us that will equal what Nature offers? Let us dwell, as she does, face to face with

the blue sky, the mountain solitude, the forest freedom, and we shall see as she sees. This is what I would

keep for this lovely land which has become mine, for these beloved people who are now my own, this fresh,

natural intelligence, this healthful Greeklike life. And this is what day by day is perishing, crushed out under

the weight of the impost of the municipalities and the engine wheels of the greedy contractor. As an Italian

writer1 has said aright: 'As little by little our beautiful forests and green woodland growth fall before love of

lucre and greedy desire, and give place to the smoke and the stench of the machine and the shaft, as our

hillsides crumble and fall away, and our flowering meadows and our fair cultured fields vanish with them, so

does equal craze for gain possess our people in the cities, and, bringing amidst them a strange and foreign

She, who on the mountain side mourned for her son as Tasso might have mourned, is ordered to give place to

the parrotphrase and automatonlearning of the schoolcrammed puppet; the old happy innocent nights in

the valley and on the hills, when the youths came with violin and mandoline to bid the maidens dance

trescone or galletta in the moonlight, or gathered about the wood fire in the winter time singing romanzetti

and strombetti,and telling the oldworld tales of the Queen of Cyprus, and the Ginevra, and Piramo and

Tisbe, are bidden to change and render up their place to wordy dispute of windy politics, and feverish suppers

in crowded winehouses, where the pure juice of the grape is lost in alcohol and chemicals.

The peasantimprovisatrice is to become the hollowcheeked toiler of mill or machine; the happy

husbandman is to become the sullen and savage mechanic with rotten lungs and watery blood; the songs,

sweet and strong as wild birds' notes, are to be drowned in the hoarse shouts of the proletariate; and the

luxuriant, vigorous, natural intelligence is to be poisoned with the false logic of communism or stifled in the

Forbid it, O Apollo Cytheroedus! here, where the echo of thy divine lute still may be heard at evenfall, when

the shepherd pipes, and the maiden sings, in the green myrtle hollows and on the pine crowned heights!

Let the false guides not take from thy children alike the bread that is life, and the pure air that is health, and