It was the beginning of winter when Don Silverio Frascara, having
been put upon his trial and no evidence of any sort having been
adduced against him, was declared innocent and set free, no
compensation or apology being offered to him.
"Were it only military law it had been easy enough to find him
guilty," said Senator Giovacchino Gallo to the Syndic of San Beda,
and the Count Corradini warmly agreed with his Excellency that for
the sake of law, order, and public peace it would be well could the
military tribunals be always substituted for the civil; but alas! the
monarchy was not yet absolute!
He had been detained many weeks and months at the city by the sea,
where the trial of the young men of the Valdedera had been held with
all the prolonged, tedious, and cruel delays common to the national
laws. Great efforts had been made to implicate him in the criminal
charges; but it had been found impossible to verify such suspicions;
every witness by others, and every action of his own, proved the
wisdom, the purity, and the excellence in counsel and example of his
whole life at Ruscino. The unhappy youths who had been taken with
arms in their hands were condemned for overt rebellion and conspiracy
against authority, and were sentenced, some to four, some to seven,
some to ten, and, a few who were considered the ringleaders, to
twenty-five years of cellular confinement. But against Don Silverio
it was found impossible even to make out the semblance of an
accusation, the testimony event of those hostile to him being
irresistibly in his favour in all ways. He had done his utmost to
defend the poor peasantry who had been misled by Adone to their own
undoing, and he had defended also the motives and the character of
the dead with an eloquence which moved to tears the public who heard
him, and touched even the hearts of stone of president and advocates;
and he had done this at his own imminent risk; for men of law can
never be brought to understand that comprehension is not collusion,
or that pity is not fellowship.
But all his efforts failed to save the young men from the utmost
rigour of the law. The judge, agreeing with the State prosecutor,
declared that the most severe example was necessary to check once for
all by its terrors the tendency of the common people to resist the
State and its public works and decrees. Useful and patriotic
enterprises must not be impeded or wrecked because ignorance was
opposed to progress: thus said the King's advocate in an impassioned
oration which gained for him eventually emolument and preferment. The
rustics were sent in a body to the penitentiaries; and Don Silverio
was permitted to go home.
Cold northern blasts blew from the upper Apennines, and piled the
snows upon the grey and yellow rocks of the Abruzzo heights, as he
crossed the valley of the Edera towards Ruscino. It seemed to him as
though a century had passed since he had left it. In the icy wind
which blew form the hills he shivered, for he had only one poor, thin
coat to cover him. His strength, naturally great, had given way under
the mental and physical sufferings of the last six months, although
no word of lament had ever escaped him. Like all generous natures he
rebuked himself for the sins of others. Incessantly he asked himself
-- might he not have saved Adone?
As he came to the turn in the road which brought him within sight of
the river, he sat down on a stone and covered his eyes with his
hands.
The sacristan had come to meet him, bringing the little dog, grown
thin, and sad, and old with sorrow.
"I did all I could for him, but he would not be consoled," murmured
the old man.
From the point which they had reached the course of the Edera, and
the lands of the Terra Vergine, were visible. With an effort, like
one who forces his will to look on a dead face, he uncovered his eyes
and looked downward. The olive-trees were still standing; where the
house had stood there was a black, charred, roofless shell; the
untilled fields lay bare beneath the frost.
"Reverend sir," said the old man below his breath, "when Clelia Alba
knew that Adone was drowned she set fire to the house, and so
perished. They say she had promised her son."
The wind from the north swept across the valley and drove the river
in yellow foam and black eddies through the dead sedges. Above
Ruscino the acacia thickets had been cut down, the herbage was
crushed under timber and iron and stone, the heather was trampled and
hacked, the sand and gravel were piled in heaps, the naked soil
yawned in places like fresh-dug graves; along the southern bank were
laid the metals of a light railway; on the lines of it were some
trucks filled with bricks; the wooden huts of the workmen covered a
dreary, dusty space; the water was still flowing, but on all the
scene were the soil, the disorder, the destruction, the vulgar
meanness and disfigurement which accompany modern labour, and affront
like a coarse bruise the gracious face of Nature.
"There have been three hundred men from the Puglie at work," said the
sacristan. "They have stopped awhile now on account of the frost, but
as soon as the weather opens --"
"Enough, enough!" murmured Don Silverio; and he rose, and holding the
little dog in his arms, went on down the familiar road.
"His body has never been found?" he asked under his breath.
The old man shook his head.
"Nay, sir; what Edera takes it keeps. He dropped where he knew it was
deepest."
As the vicar returned up the village street there was not a soul to
give him greeting except old Gianna, who kneeled weeping at his feet.
The people poured out of their doorways, but they said not a word of
welcome. The memory of Adone was an idolatry with them, and Adone had
said that their priest had betrayed them. One woman threw a stone at
Signorino. Don Silverio covered the little dog, and received the blow
on his own arm.
"For twenty years I have had no thought but to serve these, my
people!" he thought; but he neither rebuked nor reproached them.