Chapter 2

"What happened next?" the boy began again, in a tired voice. "I hardly know. There was such an uproar, such confusion, such an outburst of frenzy, that the mere recollection of it makes my brain reel. All I saw was a vortex of arms and flags, and the breath was almost knocked out of me by a thundering blow on the chest. After a while, I got out of the thick of it, and plunged into one of the streets leading to the bridge of St. Angelo. People were still pouring into the piazza from Borgo Pio with frantic shouts. I heard afterwards that the crowd tried to break into the Vatican; the soldiers had to keep them back, first breast to breast, then with blows, and then with their bayonets. They say that some people were suffocated in the press. No one knows yet what happened inside the Vatican; there was a rumor that the Pope had given his blessing from the window--but I didn't see him. I was almost dead when I got to the bridge. The news of what had taken place had already spread over the whole city, and from every direction crowds were still pouring towards the Vatican. Detachments of cavalry went by me at a trot; orderlies and aides-de-camps carrying orders dashed along the streets. Hearing their shouts, the people in the windows shouted back at them. Decrepit old men, sick people, women with babies in their arms, swarmed on the terraces, poured out of the houses, questioning, wondering, embracing one another... At last I got to the Corso. At that minute there was a tremendous report from the direction of the Pincio, another from Porta Pia, a third from San Pancrazio: all the batteries of the Italian army were saluting the Pope. Soon afterwards the bells of the Capitol began to ring; then, one after another, a hundred churches chimed in. The crowds of Borgo Pio surged frantically back towards the left bank of the Tiber, invading the streets, the squares, the houses, stripping the coverings from the papal escutcheons, carrying in triumph busts of Pius IX., portraits and banners. Thousands assembled with frantic cheers before the palaces of the Roman nobles who are known for their devotion to the Holy See. In answer to the cheers, the owners of the houses appeared on their balconies and unfurled the Italian flag.

"Wait a minute, I'm out of breath"...

As soon as he had recovered his breath he was assailed with fresh questions.

"Well, and what then? And the Vatican--? The Pope--?"

"I don't know.--But Rome that night... how can I ever tell you how beautiful, how great, how marvellous it was! The night was perfectly clear, and I don't believe such an illumination was ever seen since the world began. The Corso was on fire; the churches were jammed with people, and there was preaching in every one of them. The streets were full of music, dancing, and singing; people harangued the crowds in the cafes and the theatres.

"I wanted to see St. Peter's again. There had been a rumor that His Holiness needed rest, and Borgo Pio was as still as it is on the stillest night. The piazza was full of moonlight. A silent throng was gathered about the two fountains and on the steps of the church. Many were sitting down, many stretched at full length on the ground; the greater number had fallen asleep, worn out by the fatigue and excitement of the day; women, soldiers, children, lay huddled together in a confused heap. Hundreds of others were on their knees, and sentinels of all the different corps moved about here and there, with little flags and crosses fastened to the barrels of their guns. The ground was strewn with flags, foliage, flowers, and hats lost in the crush; the windows of the Vatican were lit up; there was not a sound to be heard, the crowd seemed to be holding its breath.

"I turned away, beside myself with the thought of all that I had seen, of the effect that it would produce in Italy, and all over the world; of what you would all say to it, and you most of all, father! I found myself at the station without knowing how I had got there. It was full of noise and confusion. I jumped on to the train, we started, and here I am. The news reached Florence last night; they say the excitement was indescribable; the King has left for Rome; the news is all over the world by this time!"

He sank into a chair and sat silent, as though his breath had failed him. Then he sprang up and rushed out to intercept the papers, which usually reached the villa at eleven o'clock in the morning.

In this way he succeeded in maintaining the blissful delusion until evening. The dinner was full of gayety, the lad continued to pour out detail after detail, and his listeners to heap benediction upon benediction.

Suddenly a hurried step was heard on the stairs, and the bell rang violently. The door opened, and a tall, pale priest, with a drawn mouth, appeared on the threshold. He was a recent acquaintance of the family, who felt no great sympathy for him, but who received him courteously more out of respect for his cloth than out of regard for his merits.

As he entered, all but the son sprang up and surrounded him with excited exclamations.

"Well, have you heard the news? Thank God, it's all ended! The hand of God is in it! What do you think of it all? Tell us, let us hear your opinion!"

"But what news?" asked the priest, looking from one to the other with astonished eyes.

In wild haste, and all speaking at once, they poured out the story of the festival, the forgiveness, the reconciliation.

The priest stared at them, with the look of a man who finds himself unexpectedly surrounded by lunatics; then, with a withering glance at the boy, and a smile of malignant triumph--

"Luckily," he said, "there is not a word of truth in it!"

"Not a word of truth in it?" they clamored, turning upon their informant.

The boy, unmoved by their agitation, returned the priest's look half-scornfully, half-sadly.

"Your reverence, don't say fortunately. Since you are an Italian, say rather, 'Alas, that it is not so!'"

For a moment the others stood aghast; then, angered, as people will be, rather against those who undeceive them than against those who delude them, they turned towards the priest, involuntarily echoing the boy's words: "He's right, your reverence! Say rather, 'Alas, that it is not so!'"

The priest pointed to his own breast with a long knotty finger.

"I?" he exclaimed bitterly, "never!"

At these words, the boy's father, rudely roused from his mood of tender exaltation, and bursting, after his wont, into sudden fury, stretched his arm towards the priest, with a cry that rang through the room like a pistol-shot: "Out of my house this instant!"

The priest stalked out, slamming the door. The lad's arms were about his father's neck; and the old man, laying his hands on his son's head, said gently: "I forgive you."

PEREAT ROCHUS

BY

ANTONIO FOGAZZARO

The Translation by A. L. Frothingham, Jr.

I.

"It is a fine case, Don Rocco," said Professor Marin, gathering up the cards and smiling beatifically, while his neighbor on the right raved furiously against poor Don Rocco. The professor continued to look at him with a little laugh on his closed mouth, and with a glance sparkling with benevolent hilarity; then he turned to the lady of the house, who was napping in a corner of the sofa.

"It is a fine case, Countess Carlotta!"

"I understand that well enough," said she, "and it seems to me time to end it; isn't that so, Don Rocco?"

"No, Don Rocco," said the professor seriously, "on reflection it certainly is a case for the ecclesiastical court."

"I should say it was at least that," said his neighbor on the right.

Don Rocco, red as a poppy, with his two fingers in his snuff-box, kept silence, his head bent forward and his brows knit in a certain contrite way peculiar to him, facing the tempest with his bald spot, and looking slyly between one wink and another at the unfortunate cards. When he heard the words "ecclesiastical court" repeated by his companion, whom he held in considerable fear, it seemed to him that matters were becoming quite amusing, so he forced a little smile and took a pinch of snuff between his fingers.

"Oh, you laugh!" returned the implacable professor. "I hardly know whether, having played at terziglio and having brought such ill luck on your partner, you can say Mass in peace to-morrow morning."

"Oh! I can, I can," muttered Don Rocco, knitting his brows still more and raising a little his good-natured countryman's face. "We all make mistakes, all of us. Even he, over there, not to mention yourself, sometimes."

His voice had the tone of a peaceful animal badgered beyond all patience. The professor was laughing with his eyes. "You are quite right," said he.

The game was over, the players got up.

"Yes," said the professor with quizzical seriousness, "the case of Sigismondo is more complicated."

Don Rocco closed his beady little eyes in a smile, bending his head with a peculiar mixture of modesty, complacency, and confusion, and mumbled:

"Even that case can be unravelled."

"You see," added the professor, "I am well informed. It is a case, Countess, which Don Rocco must unravel at the next meeting of the ecclesiastical court."

"There is no such meeting going on here," said the countess. "Let it alone."

But it was not so easy to wrest a victim from the clutches of the professor.

"Let us then say no more about it," said he quietly. "But listen, Don Rocco; I am not of your opinion on that point. As for me, pereat mundus."

Don Rocco frowned furiously.

"I haven't spoken with any one," said he.

"Don Rocco, you have gossiped, and I know it," answered the professor. "Have patience, Countess, and give us your opinion."

Countess Carlotta did not care to enter upon the question, but the professor continued imperturbably to set forth the case of Sigismondo as it had been promulgated by the Episcopal tribunal.

A certain Sigismondo, fallen suddenly ill, asked for a confessor. Hardly was he alone with the priest when he hastened to tell him that some other person was on the point of committing a homicide, which he had himself instigated.

Hardly had he said these words when he lost voice and consciousness. The priest doubted whether Sigismondo had spoken in confession or not; and he could not prevent the crime, could not save this human life in peril, unless he made use of what he had heard in confidence. Should he do this or should he let a man be killed?"

"It is Don Rocco's opinion," concluded the professor, "that the priest should act as a policeman."

Poor Don Rocco, tortured in his conscience between the feeling that he ought not to discuss the question in a secular conversation and a feeling of reverence for his bantering friend who was an ecclesiastic of mature age and a professor in the Episcopal seminary of P---, was twisting himself about and mumbling excuses.

"No...the fact is...I say...it seems to me..."

"I am surprised, Don Rocco, that you should think it worth while to make excuses," said the lady. "It amazes me that you should take seriously the jests of the professor."

But the professor protested, and with subtle questions pushed Don Rocco to the wall and began to squeeze out of him, little by little, the peculiar combination of right instincts and crooked arguments which he had in his head, showing him with the greatest charm of manner the fallacy of all his bad reasons and of all his good sense, and leaving him in a stupor of contrite humility. But the game lasted only a short while, because the countess dismissed the company with the excuse that it was after eleven o'clock. However, she asked Don Rocco to remain.

It was the Countess Carlotta who had chosen him, a few years before, as rector of the Church of St. Luke, which was her property. She took with him a sort of Episcopal air which was peacefully accepted by the thankful priest, as simple in spirit as he was humble-hearted.

"You would do better, my dear Don Rocco," said she when they were alone, "to bother yourself less with such affairs as that of Sigismondo, and a little more with your own."

"But why?" asked Don Rocco, surprised. "I do not know what you mean."

"Of course; the whole village knows it, but you are in complete ignorance."

Her eyes added quite clearly, "Poor simpleton." Don Rocco remained silent.

"When does Lucia return?" asked she. This Lucia was the servant of Don Rocco, to whom he had given permission to go home for five days.

"On Sunday," he answered. "To-morrow evening. Oh!" he suddenly exclaimed, smiling with satisfaction at his own keenness. "Now I understand, now I see what you mean. But it is not so, it is not so at all."

He had at last understood that it was a question of certain rumors current in the village on a love affair of his servant with a certain Moro, a bad specimen, well known at the police court, who combined craft with malevolence and strength in a most diabolical manner. Some believed that he was not entirely bad, but that necessity and the ill-treatment of an unjust master had led him to wrongdoing; but every one feared him.

"It is not true at all, is it?" answered she. "Then I don't know what the village will say when certain novelties will happen to the servant of the priest."

Don Rocco became red as fire and frowned most portentously.

"But it is not true at all," said he, brusquely and shortly. "I questioned her myself as soon as I heard the gossip. It is nothing but the maliciousness of people. Why, the man does not even see her!"

"Oh! Don Rocco," said the lady. "You are good, good, good. But as the world is not made that way, and as there is a scandal, if you don't make up your mind to send the creature away, I must decide on something myself."

"You will do what you like," answered the priest dryly. "Have I not got to consider what is right?"

The countess looked at him, and said, with a sudden solemnity, "Very well. You will reflect on this to-night, and to-morrow you will give me your final answer."

She rang the bell to have a lantern brought for Don Rocco, as the night was very dark. But, to her great surprise, Don Rocco carefully extracted one from the back pocket of his cloak.

"What made you do that?" exclaimed she. "You have probably got a spot on my chair!"

She got up, notwithstanding the assurances of Don Rocco, and taking one of the candles which still burned on the card table, she stooped down to look at the chair.

"There!" she said, "put your nose over that! It is spotted and ruined!"

Don Rocco came also, and, knitting his brows, bent down over a large spot of oil, a black island on the gray cloth, muttering most seriously, "Oh, yes!" and remaining absorbed in his gaze.

"Now, go!" said the lady. "What is done is done."

It seemed in fact, as if he were awaiting her permission to raise his nose from the repentant stool.

"Yes, I'll go now," he answered, lighting his lantern, "because I am alone at home at present, and I am even afraid that I left the door open."

Very suddenly he said "Good-night," and disappeared without even looking at the countess.

She was astonished. "Dear me, what a boor!" she said.

II.

It was a damp, cloudy night in November. Little Don Rocco was limping along towards his hermitage of St. Luke with awkward steps, his arms in parentheses, and his back arched, knitting his brows at the road-bed as he went along. He was ruminating over the dark words of Signora Carlotta, and their importance was gradually piercing his obtuse brain. He was also ruminating over the next assembly of the ecclesiastical court, over the pereat mundus and the subtle reasonings of the professor, of which he had understood so little; not to speak of the exposition of the Gospels for the next day, which he had not yet fully prepared. All this would often get inextricably confused in his mind. Certainly poor innocent Lucia must not be condemned, pereat mundus. Signora Carlotta was almost a padrona to him; but what about that other great padrone? Nemo potest duobus dominis servire; thus, beloved brethren, says the Gospel for the day.

Poor Don Rocco, as usual, had also lost at terziglio; and this gave a somewhat gray cast to his ideas, notwithstanding his proverbial carelessness of every mundane interest. That hole in his pocket, that continuous dropping, made him reflect. Would it not have been better for him to give the same amount in alms?

"There is this good thing about it," he thought, "that it is a terrible bore, and that they all badger me. I certainly do not play for pleasure."

He passed on the left of the road a dark clump of trees, ascending slowly in the darkness towards three large cypresses of unequal height, standing out black against the sky. There, between the old cypresses, stood the little country church of St. Luke, attached to a small convent which had had no inmates for a hundred years. The little hillock garlanded with vines had no other structures. From the convent, and from the grassy knoll, on which stood the little cypress-overhung church, the main road could not be seen, but only other knolls gay with vineyards, villas, and country houses, islands on an immense plain, extending from the hills further away as far as the Alps and blending eastward in the mists of the invisible sea. The simple chaplain of Countess Carlotta lived alone in the convent, like a priest of silence, content with his meagre prebend, content to preach with might and main in the little church, to be called during the day to bless the beans, and at night to assist the dying, to cultivate the vine with his own hands; content with everything, in fine; even with his servant, an ugly old maid of about forty, at whose discretion he ate, drank, and dressed himself most resignedly, without exchanging more than a dozen words with her throughout the year.

"If I send her away," he said to himself, as he passed between the high hedges of the lane that led up from the main road to St. Luke, "it will damage and dishonor her. I cannot conscientiously do it, because I am sure that it isn't true. And with that Moro, of all men!"

The clock in the bell-tower struck eleven. Don Rocco began to think of his sermon, of which only three-quarters was written, and he rushed down from the church square to the door which led into his courtyard under the bell-tower at the end of a steep and stony lane. As he opened the gate and passed across the yard he was brought suddenly to a standstill. A faint light was shining from the windows of his sitting-room, the former refectory of the monks, on the lower floor.

Don Rocco had left at four o'clock to pay his visit to the Countess Carlotta, and had not returned in the meanwhile. He could not have left the lamps lighted. Therefore Lucia must have returned before the time she had set; that must certainly be the reason. He did not fatigue his brain by making any other suppositions, but entered.

"Is it you, Lucia?" he called. No answer. He passed through the vestibule, approached the kitchen, and stood motionless on the doorsill.

A man was sitting under the chimney-cap with his hands stretched out over the coals. He turned toward the priest and said, most unconcernedly:

"Don Rocco, your humble servant."

By the light of the smoky petroleum lamp which stood on the table, Don Rocco recognized the Moro. He was conscious of a feeling of weakness in his heart and in his legs. He did not move nor answer.

"Make yourself at home, Don Rocco," continued the Moro imperturbably, as if he were doing the honors of his own house. "You had better take a seat here also, for it is cold to-night and damp."

"Yes, it is cold," answered Don Rocco, infusing a forced benevolence into his tones; "it is damp."

And he put his lantern down on the table.

"Come here," said his companion. "Wait till I make you comfortable." He got a chair and placed it on the hearthstone near his own.

"There now," said he.

Meanwhile Don Rocco was getting his breath again, and carrying on, with a terrible knitting of his brows, most weighty reflections.

"Thanks," he answered, "I will go to put away my cloak and come back at once."

"Lay your cloak down here," replied the Moro, not without some haste and a new tone of imperiousness not at all pleasing to Don Rocco.

He silently placed his cloak and hat on the table and sat down under the chimney-cap beside his host.

"You will excuse me if I have made a little fire," he continued. "I have been here at least a half-hour. I thought you were at home studying. Isn't to-day Saturday? And are you not obliged to say to-morrow morning the few customary absurdities to the peasants?"

"You mean the exposition of the Gospel," answered Don Rocco with warmth, for on that ground he knew no fear.

"A hint is all you need!" said the Moro. "Excuse me, I am a peasant myself, and talk crudely, maybe, but respectfully. Will you give me a pinch of snuff?"

Don Rocco held out the snuff-box to him.

"Is this da trozi?" said he with a wink. This word, as well as the expression "by-paths tobacco," was used in speaking of the tobacco which was smuggled into the State.

"No," answered Don Rocco, rising. "Perhaps I have a little of that upstairs."

"Never mind, never mind," the Moro hastened to say. "Give here." And sticking three fingers into the snuff-box he took up about a pound of snuff and breathed it in little by little, as he gazed at the fire. The dying flame illumined his black beard, his earthy complexion, and his brilliant, intelligent eyes.

"Now that you are warmed," Don Rocco made bold to say after a moment's silence, "you may go home."

"Hum!" said the man, shrugging his shoulders. "I have a little business to transact before I leave."

Don Rocco squirmed in his chair, winking hard, and frowning heavily.

"I suggested it because it is so late," he mumbled, half churlishly, half timidly. "I also have something to do."

"The sermon, eh?--the sermon, the sermon!" the Moro repeated mechanically, looking at the fire, and ruminating. "See here," he concluded, "suppose we do this. There are pens, paper, and inkstand in the sitting-room. Sit down there and write your stuff. Meanwhile, if you will allow me, I will take a mouthful, as it is sixteen hours since I have eaten. When we have finished we will talk."

At first Don Rocco was not disposed to agree, but he was as halting in his secular utterances as he was fiery in his sacred eloquence. He could only squirm and give out a few low, doubtful grunts; after which, as the other man kept silence, he got up from his chair with about as much difficulty as if he had been glued to it.

"I will go to find out," said he, "but I am afraid I shall find very little, the servant--"

"Don't trouble yourself," interrupted the Moro. "Let me attend to it. You go and write." He left the hearth, lighted another lamp and carried it into the neighboring sitting-room, which had windows facing the south on the courtyard, while the kitchen windows were at the back of the old convent on the north side, where the cellar and the well were placed. Then he came back quickly, and under the eyes of the astonished priest took down a key that was hanging in the darkest corner of the kitchen, opened a closet against the wall, put up his hand without hesitating and took down a cheese of goats' milk, the existence of which Don Rocco had not even suspected; he took bread from a cupboard, and a knife from a drawer in the table.

Now it happened for only the third or fourth time in the whole life of Don Rocco that the famous frown entirely disappeared for a few moments. Even the eyelids stopped winking.

"You look surprised, Don Rocco," said the Moro complacently, "because I am at home in your house. But just keep on writing. You will understand later. We must also keep the fire going," he added, when the priest, having slowly recovered from his amazement, passed into the sitting-room.