When Maria had come a little to herself, I asked her if she remembered
a pale thin person of a man who had sat down betwixt her and her goat
about two years before? She said she was unsettled much at that time,
but remembered it upon two accounts; that, ill as she was, she saw the
person pitied her: and next, that her goat had stolen his
handkerchief, and that she had beat him for the theft. "She had washed
it," she said, "in the brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket to
restore it to him in case she should ever see him again, which," she
added, "he had half promised her."
As she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to
let me see it: she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine-leaves,
tied around with a tendril: on opening it, I saw an S. marked in one
of the corners.
She had since that, she told me, strayed as far as Rome, and walked
around St. Peter's once, and returned back: that she found her way
alone across the Apennines, had traveled over all Lombardy without
money, and through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes: how she
had borne it, and how she had got supported she could not tell: "But,
'God tempers the wind,'" said Maria, "'to the shorn lamb.'"
"Shorn, indeed, and to the quick," said I: "and wast thou in my own
land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, and shelter
thee; thou shouldst eat of my own bread, and drink of my own cup: I
would be kind to thy Sylvio; in all thy weaknesses and wanderings I
would seek after thee, and bring thee back; when the sun went down, I
would say my prayers; and when I had done, thou shouldst play thy
evening song upon thy pipe, nor would the incense of my sacrifice be
worse accepted for entering heaven along with that of a broken heart!"
Nature melted within me as I uttered this: and Maria observing, as I
took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped too much already to be
of use, would needs go wash it in the stream. "And where will you dry
it, Maria?" said I.
"I'll dry it in my bosom," said she: "'twill do me good."
"And is your heart still so warm, Maria?" said I.
I touched upon a string on which hung all her sorrows: she looked with
wistful disorder for some time in my face; and then, without saying
anything, took her pipe, and played her service to the Virgin. The
string I had touched ceased to vibrate; in a moment or two, Maria
returned to herself, let her pipe fall, and rose up.
"And where are you going, Maria?" said I.