Fiume di Lete!
Come la calamita mi tirate,
E mi fate venir dove velete.
Old Marietta, the Tuscan sewing-woman, entered and lit the gas. She
looked askance at me, wondering why I remained there so long I expect.
"It is growing late," I exclaimed in Italian; "I must go. It is your
dinner-hour," and glancing round the room, carpetless, as all Italian
rooms are in summer, I saw that it was cheaply furnished with that
inartistic taste which told me at once that neither she nor her father
had chosen it. It struck me that they had bought the furniture just as
it had stood from some Italian, perhaps the previous occupier.
Old Marietta was a pleasant, grey-faced old woman in cheap black who
wore large gold rings in her ears and spoke with the pleasant accent of
Siena, and who, I saw, was devoted to her young mistress.
"This is Mr Leaf," she explained in Italian. "He is an English friend
of my father's." Then turning to me she said, laughing, "Marietta
always likes to know who's who. All Italians are so very inquisitive
about the friends of their _padrone_."
The old woman smiled, showing her yellow teeth and wished me _buona
sera_, to which I replied in her own tongue, for the position of
servants in Italy is far different from their position with us. Your
Tuscan house-woman is part of the family, and after a few years of
faithful service is taken into the family council, consulted upon
everything, controls expenditure, makes bargains, and is, to her
_padrone_, quite indispensable. Old Marietta was a typical _donna di
casa_, one of those faithful patient women with a sharp tongue to all
the young men who so continuously ran after the young _padrona_, and
only civil to me because I was a friend of the "signore."
She was shrewd enough to continue to be present at our leave-taking,
though it was doubtful whether she knew English sufficiently to
understand what passed between us. I saw that Marietta intended I
should go, therefore I wished her young _padrona_ adieu.
She held her breath for a moment as our hands clasped, and I saw in her
brown eyes a look of blank despair.
"Be courageous," I said, in a low voice. "The future may not hold for
you such terrors as you believe."
"Future!" she echoed. "I have no future. _Addio_." And I went down
the wide, ill-lit stone staircase full of dismal foreboding, and out
from the secret lair of the thief who was notorious, but whom the police
of Europe had always failed to arrest.