All the same, Maria is very sceptical. Yesterday, on the evening of my
birthday, we had the following conversation:
_Myself_: "Here you celebrate your saints' day; not your birthday; but,
you know, up in the North we have not any saints"--and, thinking it
necessary to add a deep-drawn religious sigh, I continued: "We think it
enough to believe in God." "Oh! yes," she said slowly, and then, a
little while after: "That, too, is His own business." "How?" "Well,"
she said, "You know that I am dreadfully ignorant; I know nothing at
all, but I think a great deal. There are these people now who are
always talking about the Lord. I think it is all stuff. When I married,
they said to me: 'May it please the Lord that your husband be good to
you.' I thought: If I had not been sensible enough to choose a good
husband, it would not help me much what should please the Lord. Later
on they said: 'May it please the Lord to give you sons.' I had some,
but they died when they were little ones. Then I thought to myself: 'If
my husband and I do not do something in the matter, it won't be much
use for the Lord to be pleased to give them to us. Nature, too, has
something to say to it. (_Anche la natura è una piccola cosa_.) You
have no idea, sir, how we have suffered from priests here in the Papal
State. Everyone had to go to Confession, and as of course they did not
wish to confess their own sins, they confessed other people's,--and
told lies, too,--and in that way the priests knew everything. If the
priest had heard anything about a person, he or she would get a little
ticket from him: 'Come to me at such and such a time! 'Then, when the
person went, he would say: 'Are you mad to live with such and such a
person without being married!'--and all the while he himself had a
woman and a nest full of children. Then he would say: 'I won't have you
in my parish,' and he would publish the poor thing's secret to the
whole world. Or, if he were more exasperated, he would say: 'Out of the
Pope's country!' and send for a few carabineers; they would take one to
a cart and drive one to the frontier; there, there were fresh
carabineers, who took one farther--and all without trial, or any
enquiry. Often the accusation was false. But we were ruled by spies,
and all their power was based on the confessional, which is nothing but
spying. Shortly before Easter, a priest came and counted how many there
were in the house. If afterwards there were one who did not go to mass,
then his name was stuck up on the church door as an infidel, in
disgrace. It is many years now since I have been to any confessor. When
I die, I shall say: 'God, forgive me my sins and my mistakes,' and
shall die in peace without any priest."
Whatever we talk about, Maria always comes back to her hatred of the
priests. The other day, we were speaking of the annoyance I had been
subjected to by a compatriot of mine, K.B., who came to see me, but
looked more particularly at a large _fiasco_ I had standing there,
containing four bottles of Chianti. He tasted the wine, which was very
inferior, declared it 'nice,' and began to drink, ten glasses straight
off. At first he was very polite to me, and explained that it was
impossible to spend a morning in a more delightful manner than by
visiting the Sistine Chapel first, and me in my sick-room afterwards,
but by degrees he became ruder and ruder, and as his drunkenness
increased I sank in his estimation. At last he told me that I was
intolerably conceited, and started abusing me thoroughly. Lying
defenceless in bed, and unable to move, I was obliged to ring for
Maria, and whisper to her to fetch a few gentlemen from the
Scandinavian Club, who could take the drunken man home, after he had
wasted fully six hours of my day. I managed in this way to get him out
of the door. He was hardly gone than Maria burst out: "_Che
porcheria!_" and then added, laughing, to show me her knowledge of
languages: "_Cochonnerie, Schweinerei!_" She has a remarkable memory
for the words she has heard foreigners use. She knows a number of
French words, which she pronounces half like Italian, and she also
knows a little Russian and a little German, having, when a young girl,
kept house for a Russian prince and his family.
"I feel," she said to me, "that I could have learnt both French and
German easily, if I could have _compared_ them in a book. But I can
neither read nor write. These wretched priests have kept us in
ignorance. And now I am old and good for nothing. I was forty a little
while ago, and that is too old to learn the alphabet. Do you know,
signore, how it originally came about that I did not believe, and
despised the priests? I was twelve years old, and a tall girl, and a
very good-looking girl, too, though you cannot see that, now that I am
old and ugly." (You can see it very plainly, for her features are
haughty and perfectly pure of line; it is only that her expression,
when she sits alone, is sinister.) "I lost my father when I was five
years old. About that time my mother married again, and did not trouble
herself any more about me, as she had children with her new husband. So
I was left to myself, and ran about the streets, and became absolutely
ungovernable, from vivacity, life, and mischief, for I was naturally a
very lively child. Then one day I met a mule, alone; the man had left
it; I climbed up, and seated myself upon it, and rode about, up and
down the street, until a dog came that frightened the mule and it
kicked and threw me over its head. There I lay, with a broken
collar-bone, and some of the bone stuck out through the skin. Then a
doctor came and wanted to bind it up for me, but I was ashamed for him
to see my breast, and would not let him. He said: 'Rubbish! I have seen
plenty of girls.' So I was bound up and for six weeks had to lie quite
still. In the meantime a priest, whom they all called Don Carlo--I do
not know why they said Don--came to see me, and when I was a little
better and only could not move my left arm, he said to me one day,
would I go and weed in his garden, and he would give me money for it.
So I went every day into the garden, where I could very well do the
work with one arm. He came down to me, brought me sweets and other
things, and asked me to be his friend. I pretended not to understand.
He said, too, how pretty I was, and such things. Then at last one day,
he called me into his bedroom, and first gave me sweets, and then set
me on his knee. I did not know how to get away. Then I said to him: 'It
is wrong, the Madonna would not like it.' Do you know, sir, what he
replied? He said: 'Child! there is no Madonna (_non c'è Madonna_) she
is only a bridle for the common people' (_è un freno per il populo
basso_). Then I was anxious to run away, and just then my mother passed
by the garden, and as she did not see me there, called, 'Anna Maria!
Anna Maria!' I said: 'Mother is calling me,' and ran out of the room.
Then mother said to me: 'What did the priest say to you, and what did
he do to you? You were in his bedroom.' I said: 'Nothing'; but when my
mother went to confession, instead of confessing her sins, she said
over and over again to him: 'What have you done to my daughter? I will
have my daughter examined, to see what sort of a man you are.' He
declared: 'I will have you shot if you do' (_una buona schioppettata_).
So mother did not dare to go farther in the matter. But she would not
believe me."
Here we were interrupted by the Russian woman from next door coming in;
she is married, more or less, to a waiter, and she complained of his
volatility, and cried with jealousy. "Once I was just as weak," said
Maria. "When I was newly married I was so jealous of my husband, that I
could neither eat nor drink if any one came to me and said: 'This
evening he is with such and such a one.' If I tried to eat, I was sick
at once. I am just as fond of him as I was then, but I am cured now. If
I saw his infidelity with my own eyes, I should not feel the least bit
hurt about it. Then, I could have strangled him."