of us lie the plains of Lombardy, white with the sun’s heat as it
rests on the rice plantations. But here there is not even a remembrance
either of plains or of sea. We are in the depth of the country, where
the view has no monotony as of the flat, or even as of the sea, when
it is unruffled by wind, and dazzling beneath the sun’s power of this
summer time. The horizon’s margin is broken by the outline—now gently
undulating, now jagged—of hills against a limpid sky; the foreground is
varied—hill and dale, rugged wildness and careful cultivation, subtly
balancing each other as separate effects in the landscape’s picture.
The scenery is characteristic of the Northern Apennines: a river gently
flowing, and many a little quiet spring, thickly-growing chestnut
woods—where the trees are not always tall and spreading, but somehow
always shady—mossy banks that are green for Italy, and the land divided
into plots and terraces, where each man grows his own corn and beans
and potato-crops, gathers his own maize, and trains his own vines.
The strawberries are nearly over—little rough, red fruit, that grows
wild and luscious among the grass and the turf in the spring-time: but
the glory of the fruit season is all to come. Large yellow plums and
little blue plums, peaches and apricots, medlars, figs, grapes, melons,
blackberries that are as large as mulberries, all these will follow one
another in time, and great handsome golden gourds, with every kind of
vegetable: now it is the season of the cherries. There are tall trees
whereon the fruit grows small and jet black, and others whose berries
are large, and sweet according to the usual shape and savour of their
kind; but the type of the Apennines at this season is the _amarena_.
The little trees are small and graceful, growing over the hill-side,
often so low that the fruit can be plucked by the mere outstretching of
a strong arm from the strong and graceful figure of an Apennine damsel.
The _amarene_ are ripe for the Corpus Domini, and the bright red fruit,
with the merriment of its ingathering, makes the brightest of all
the bright colours in memory’s picture of these festivals of summer’s
prime.
The long grass is not all yet mown, and among it the ragged robin,
the buttercup, scabius, and ox-eyed daisy have woven a medley of
merry colour; while, upon the river’s banks, meadow-sweet blooms, and
higher up among the budding heather a golden field of yellow gorse.
This forms the floral feature of the festivities. Yesternight, in the
long June evening, after work was done, girls and boys wandered up
the hill-sides, and, in their aprons, the maidens stored the golden
bloomlike chaff. Then, when the bells awoke this morning at daybreak,
the women rose to spread, along the highway before their dwellings,
yards and yards of newly-bleached linen, spun with their own hands,
and woven on the homely looms—a snow-white carpet on which to strew
the gay blossoms. Upon the hedges, and hanging from the windows of
the little cottages, bright crimson draperies and curious heirlooms
are not wanting to honour the way where the sacred procession is to
pass. Merrily the bells jangle—trills and triplets up and down—with
the deep-toned first bell tumbling in now and then as bass, to add the
necessary touch of solemnity. The ringers have been at work for hours.
The first mass has been sung, and the second will soon be coming on,
but the procession will not be till after vespers. The _parroco_ (or
parish priest) stands on the piazza in black gown and biretta. He has
said his say in church, and has no further work till afternoon: he is
a peasant again, among his peasant flock, as he is on week-days, with
only the faint halo of skirts and head-gear to keep him from his pipe
and the broadest of his jests.
‘His reverence will walk himself in procession this afternoon?’ asks a
lean peasant.
‘Surely, yes,’ replies the priest. ‘I would not if I could help myself,
but the parish is not content unless I go through the farce myself
for them. The Virgin grant a breeze, or we shall die of heat under the
panoply, with the chin buried in devotion!’
‘Truly!’ laughs another peasant, a pipe in his mouth. ‘It’s poor work
being a priest. And a fine sermon it was you preached, though! I wasn’t
in church myself, not longer than for my duty at the right minute,
but my wife told me! A woman’s not to steal excepting her husband’s
drunk, and then it’s her duty to take the gains from his pocket for the
household’s benefit. Sound religion! But the women aren’t always to be
trusted!’
‘No, no; we preach these things, but you do as best you can. There’s
no telling how things’ll turn out. Now, there’s myself even. Preach
toleration in church, but, _Corpo di Bacco_, wouldn’t I have boxed
Luigina’s ears, as soon as I was out, if she’d have let me!’ Luigina
is the priest’s cousin—a lady of portly frame and of years that waver
’twixt forty-five and fifty. She lives in two brick-floored rooms
on the top storey of the parsonage, lives and dresses like a peasant
woman, and would fain have more to do with the priest’s household than
his old servant permits.
‘Signora Luigina’s no fool,’ laughs the first man; ‘and she’s been a
companion to you, your reverence.’
‘Yes—by the Virgin—thirteen years, more is the pity! I’d bury her for
nothing, poor soul, and shed a good tear afterwards; but she spoilt
those mushrooms all the same, that she cooked me to-day as a favour!
Let the oil get outside them, would you believe!’
‘San Pietro—that was enough to drive a saint to swear, much sooner a
priest; and they say she leads you a life as bad as Caterina does. But
what can a man expect when he keeps women in his house that are not
tied by the hand of the law?’
‘What can I do?’ objects the priest, laughing, and nothing depressed!
‘One had to choose a profession. Caterina’s a good servant, and Luigina
is as good as most women when she doesn’t force me to a clean shirt.
There she is. You there! Have you picked me out those two clean girls
to scatter the flowers before the priest’s face in the procession?’
‘I know none so good as myself in the village,’ answers the woman,
laughing. ‘Though it’s odd I should scatter flowers before _your_
face—only you’re not the same man, and that’s of course, when once
you’re under the banner of the Lord!’
‘What, and do you think He’d put up with an ugly old scarecrow like
you! Go to. I’ll find out the girls for myself.’
‘_Santa Madonna!_ And you’re right,’ says the woman, looking round and
laughing. ‘So much the better for me! I must see to my own _minestra_.
_I’m_ not going to eat beans half-cooked, that Nicoletta has put
to boil in cold water, so that the Lord’s own mercy wouldn’t soften
them—nor cabbage either, that’s not had a scrap of the vice cut out of
it! _Andiamo_, let me be quiet! _Vossignoria_ might be ashamed to be
so light-minded at his age!’ A laugh greets the two from around, for
the Vicar, forgetful of dignity, has thought fit to inflict summary
punishment on the portly shoulders of Luigina, to whom the diminutive
scarcely applies! But the joke is hurriedly thrust aside as the little
bell sounds from within the church, which quickly brings the people,
priest and peasants alike, to their knees.
The act of devotion is no long penance—it is over almost as soon as
begun, and, from the building, the congregation now pours out upon the
piazza, mixing with the set of earlier worshippers, and entering busily
with them into the pleasures of the present, and the business of before
and after as well.
The Corpus Domini is over. The Virgin’s statue has been carried
in state—hideously painted effigy with her gorgeous and silver
trappings—the priest has muttered his say beneath the panoply, walking
in the slow pace of the procession, and swearing fitly afterwards
at the cruel infliction; the girls and the young men have vied with
one another for who should carry crosses, and banners, and candles;
the children have shouted, the bells have jangled, and the pop-guns
been fired. Now the gorse blossoms are trampled and withered, and the
linen has been gathered up. Girls are weaving new linen at the loom,
and women bleaching it on the river’s shingle. The Signor Prevosto is
himself again and has ceased to lament the fearful consumption of beans
and pumpkins—no lavish hospitality will be dealt out from the parsonage
yet awhile!
Good-bye vain and yet so dearly-prized rejoicings! Good-bye, till next
week! The priest works in his garden. His spare form needs no longer
be hampered with black gown; his movements have their freedom in the
most threadbare of frock-coats, and his eyes may be comfortably shaded
by the useful brim of an old straw hat. And the priest’s housekeeper
shreds peas on the porch step, and scolds neighbours who are remiss
in the payment of tithes in kind, or who would presume too far on the
generosity of the _Parroco’s_ garden. He is happy tilling his ground,
watering the choicer of his vegetables, pruning his fruit trees,
training his vines, and blowing upon them through bellows the sulphur
which is to save them from the fell disease.
Now a girl comes to ask his advice on the acceptance of a suitor.
‘Marry him, and he has been fitly presented to you by a third party,
my child. A damsel must let no man seek her himself,’ says the old man,
as he hammers at the rotten wood of his pergola, or digs trenches about
his maize.
[Illustration: _The Parish Priest._
“A damsel must let no man seek her himself,” says the old man,
as he hammers at the rotten wood of his pergola.]
A neighbouring contadino turns up next, to bargain for the sale of a
calf. Here the Prevosto is all alert. His thoughts would be distracted
by gardening. The affair must be concluded over a bottle of sour
Monferrato.
‘Two _marenghi_—why, you take me for a fool! I will give you one, and
pay you for ten francs with a portion of the hay from the field of the
marshes!’
‘_Per Bacco!_ But I also am no sucking child! The hay is all rotten.
No—a _marengo_ and fifteen francs on this table, as the Madonna hears
me swear it.’
The bargain is made, the old Parroco has none the worst of it, and the
maid, or rather the mistress, Caterina, announces, ‘Here is the wife of
squinting Giacomo, who bids you quickly to the cottage of Maddalena of
the cherry orchard!’
‘I come—I come quickly; but why the woman should have owed me such a
grudge as to die when the polenta is cooked and I faint from hunger!
These peasants are uneducated!’ And he hurries to shrive the departing
soul—none the less tender-hearted, none the less moved for his rough
words of five minutes before; none the less ready, either, to advise
the girl whom he meets on his downward path as to the superior
usefulness of wool over cotton for a dress, be it for wedding or _prima
communione_.
The men chatter to him of crops, the women of sick children, of
inconsiderate husbands, of the expense of linen fabric, of the scarcity
in eggs, and all the while he rapidly recites to himself the obligatory
office, answering merrily to questions at every breathing space.
Then home to boiled beans and oil, to the perusing of a newspaper,
or perhaps, even of a book and certainly to a sharp word-tussle with
Luigina, his cousin of upstairs, or with Caterina, the rough and
faithful companion of his long years of contented loneliness and
poverty. Such is the parish priest.
The Priest’s Serving Maid.
The little footpath that, amid pear and cherry trees, and
vine-trelissed ‘_pergola_,’ runs up alongside of the church, leads to
the threshold of the _prevosto’s_ house. The establishment does not
boast many rooms, and these are rough and poorly built, with great bare
rafters, whitewashed walls and deep embrasured windows. The walls are
ill-plastered, so that, when the weather has been hot and the rains
heavy, spiders and scorpions can creep from out the cracks; the doors
are cumbrous and unsightly, with great chinks at the hinges, but the
rooms are large and lofty as far as may be, and in summer the _curato_
is cosy enough.
It is the kitchen that you must enter first, and through it alone can
you pass into the rest of the house. Caterina, the maid-of-all-work,
stands before the dresser, rolling out the paste for _minestra_.
Beans and potatoes, sliced gourd and mushrooms, tomatoes, sweet herbs,
and the unfailing garlic are already cooking, so that the kitchen is
filled with a fragrant odour. Caterina rolls out the paste, throwing it
gracefully over the rolling-pin, wielding and handling it artfully. She
is a gaunt, threadbare-looking woman, of some five-and-thirty years—but
the _prevosto_ is gaunt too, and sallow; the two match well together.
‘The neighbour, Maddalena, has come to eat two _lasagne_ with us,’ says
the priest, now entering timidly—for Caterina is a bit of a tyrant. She
does not answer now, and he makes a sign to the woman to seat herself
upon the stone step at the threshold. There are platters and dishes
ranged upon the shelf, and the peasant woman eyes them with interest.
There is bread baking, too, in the oven, and Maddalena fancies perhaps
that the poor little place wears even an air of opulence.
She sits on the doorstep chattering away fluently in a shrill soprano,
that her voice may be heard above the noise of rushing water from
without—for there is a fountain beneath the vine _pergola_ in the
courtyard—a rough little fountain, into which water pours incessantly
from a spring above, and from which troughs are laid sometimes to
water the flowers and vegetables in the _prevosto’s_ little garden.
This fountain is well known to the people of the village; there is a
back-way to it which does not pass before the priest’s door, and many
a time have I seen the villagers, when other springs have run low,
filling their pitchers at this spout.
The peasant woman holds the talk herself, for Caterina makes no answer.
She is in a bad humour. Both the women are plain and ill-favoured
specimens of their class, only that Caterina is a little less unkempt
and disorderly than her neighbour. Her hair is smooth though scant,
and her faded print dress is neat; but Maddalena has many different
patterns and patches upon her skirt—the bright yellow kerchief around
her shoulders is soiled, and the fine and cunning plaits of her grey
hair are not as well ordered as the women’s are wont to be on mass
days.
Presently Caterina bustles into the darkened parlour, where, sits the
_prevosto_ lazily smoking his pipe and reading the country newspaper.
He has put aside even the least of his clerical garments now, and
lounges at ease in an old coat and slippers, his tonsured head covered
by a battered straw hat.
[Illustration: THE PRIEST’S SERVANT ADMINISTERING A REPROOF.]
‘Listen to me, _Prevosto_,’ breaks forth the faithful woman, and she is
not careful to modulate her voice even to a semblance of secrecy; ‘you
don’t bring another mouth for me to feed here when it is baking-day
again! _Per Bacco!_ no, indeed! The mean, grasping creature! She has
as much food in her own house as we have in ours any day, and she
must come here, forsooth, to delay me in my work, and to pry into
my affairs, that she may report them in the village! It’s all her
laziness. Who’s to get the _merenda_ for her husband and her children,
I wonder, if she’s to find her’s ready for her here, whenever she
chooses to ask for it! I’m sick of her slanderous tongue. But it shan’t
happen again, do you hear? And I have the holy wafers to bake to-day,
besides. For shame of you! Come now to your dinner in the kitchen.
I’m not going to bring it in here. You’d best look sharp, for I know
there’s that dying woman up at San Fedele, you ought to go after. I
don’t know what you took off your canonicals for!’ And Caterina, the
better for this free expression, hastens to dish up the _minestra_.
‘Poor old priest! What a shrew has he got in his house!’ says some
pitying reader. Yet he would not part with her for worlds! She is
his solace and his right hand, and loves him, besides, none the less
because of her sharp and uncurbed speech.
Words in Caterina’s mouth are only the natural vent of her quick and
eager nature, when the words are spoken to the old priest. For the
most part, they are forgotten as soon as uttered, both by master and
servant. The lonely man cannot afford to quarrel with mere froth of
words in the woman who devotes her life to his comfort. Who would
care for him as cares this poor hard-working servant? Who else would
lay aside her ease, and forget her people, that she might carry his
interests the steadier at heart, the better fight his battles and guard
his homestead, and order his goods to advantage?
Yet Caterina is no miracle of a servant. In many a lone and cheerless
home of Italian priest can I call to mind such a woman as this—such
a fond and faithful drudge, with harsh ways and soft heart! And where
the priest is old, having plodded out his life in some little secluded
parish, amid a people more uneducated than himself—there the servant
is old also, and the one has almost drifted into a shape and mould of
the other’s nature and mind. For, as far as home-companionship goes,
are these not all-in-all to each other? There is no wife for a comrade,
there are no children to keep the old life burning to the end, in these
homes of the Roman priesthood. And yet, who shall pretend that they
are always sad? If you have been to see them now with me, surely, for
all their quarrels, for all her loud voice and his cunningly judged and
well-feigned meekness, you will scarcely say this is an unhappy house!
So the _lasagne_ are cooked and eaten with a good relish, and Maddalena
has her portion upon the door-step, spite of Caterina’s vehement
remonstrances beforehand. Neither is a little plateful denied to the
pretty _contadinella_ who comes presently to the door with a summons
for the _prevosto_. ‘Did I not tell you that you had best hasten up the
hill without further delay?’ says Caterina, sending forth her parting
shaft. And the priest sallies out on his mission while the girl gets
detained awhile for a gossip. For this one is a favourite; she is young
and merry, and comes not too often nor a begging. Caterina loves her
well enough.
Il Signor Cappellano.
The Signor Prevosto is parish priest, and yet he is little more than
a peasant. The _Signor Cappellano_ is under-priest, and he is just
nothing more than a peasant. ‘_Abbiate pazienza_,’ his own parishioners
would say if they were excusing his deficiencies to you! What would
you have? San Matteo is not a large parish; though its hamlets lie far
from one another, and it takes a long while on a weary way to bear the
Sacrament to the sick, or even to offer homely advice to marriageable
girl or ill-used wife, still the parish does not require three priests.
And since they are kept merely to say a mass each on Sundays and holy
days, why, they must manage with what pay they can get, for the best of
the tithes must go to the rectory.
So the _Cappellano_ has little to do and little to earn for doing it.
The Church gives him a cottage and a slip of barren land that lies
mostly alongside of the stream’s bed; the cottage is weathertight
and sufficient for himself and his old servant, and, with the aid of
heaven’s mighty sun and man’s patient care, the land brings forth
produce enough to keep two souls and two bodies—what more could an
under-priest expect? Michaelmas daisies stand with goodly sunflowers
in a row before his porch, brilliant _pomi d’oro_ ripen their fruit
against the southern wall, while the gourds trail large leaves and
golden flowers along the ground, among wheat and beans and potatoes.
Neither he nor old Ninetta taste meat more than once a week, but what
of that? The _minestra_ is as wholesome without, and of _polenta_
one never wearies, only the _Signor Cappellano_ himself must till the
ground and sow and reap and manure again, or even the pumpkins would
not grow large nor the maize fill its cones, so how can you expect him
to be other than a peasant? ‘_Abbiate pazienza di lui!_’
‘_Frà Giuseppe_’ has the care of the parish school. Perhaps he gets
paid a trifle more for it—a trifle that goes towards the meat on
_festa_ days; be that as it may, if you come down the hill from the
‘Square Village’ towards the church, early upon any morning but a
Sunday or a Thursday, you may hear certain monotonous sounds that leave
no doubt as to the employment pursued beneath the thatched roof of the
_Cappellano’s_ outhouse. The sound is the sound of lessons repeated, of
moral tales read aloud, often of the switching of boys’ calves, oftener
of the poor pedagogue’s swearing. He knows little enough himself, but
the boys know less, and will never know more, because both teacher and
pupil are sure that knowledge is quite useless, having got along, and
seen others get along, very well without it thus far.
The school hours last till ten o’clock only—if he does not receive
much, at least _Frà Giuseppe_ gives but little—the best of the day
is all in front, and the _Cappellano_ makes good use of it. Besides
digging trenches amidst maize and rice, training the vine, pruning
the fig and the cherry tree, besides kicking the shins of refractory
urchins, and having altogether a good deal to do with the boys, he
has something to do with the girls too—he is the writer of village
love-letters. The post is one of some importance: _Frà Giuseppe_ turns
another honest penny by it.
But this is scarcely a matter we speak of. The love-letters—and
even other letters, would-be business letters, which _Frà Giuseppe_
writes for the parish—cannot always be free from little white lies
and intrigues of an innocent nature if they are to satisfy their
purchasers, and in this, as in other trades, one must go heart and soul
into one’s affair, and always work for the most lucrative market. So
it is not as _Cappellano_ that _Frà Giuseppe_ writes his customers’
letters, but only as village _Scrivano_, and that is quite a different
thing, and not a thing to be mentioned in the same breath with his
priestly title. One is not forced to be consistent, and though,
for the half-hour when he is in canonicals, the under-priest thinks
fit—as under-priests do everywhere—to differ from his superior in
matters of religious theory, though as in this case, he belongs to the
Ultramontane party when he wears robe and biretta, and would fain make
a stir in the parish about the _Prevosto’s_ laxity and so forth—in
fact, though the _Signor Cappellano_ be a bit of a bigot in intention,
both time and policy forbid him any indulgence of his opinion in
practice.
‘Life is short and argument is long,’ says he. Were he possessed of
ever so much more influence than he has in the parish he would still
be a poor man, whose gourds and vines must always be a great deal more
important to him than the souls of human creatures.
So, in other things beside the writing of letters, does the
_Cappellano_ wear two faces, and having salved conscience by the
preaching of fiery doctrines within the church’s walls of a Sunday and
feast-day at Second Mass—he has the worldly wisdom to be nothing more
outside the pulpit than that which he really is: a peasant amongst
peasant neighbours. Who can afford to be a priest all day long for
so poor a salary? One must needs have a little fun to one’s victuals
when poverty forbids better sauce, or even a priest’s digestion would
suffer, and the _Signor Cappellano_ knows well enough fun is not to be
got by a strict face outside the church doors.
[Illustration: _Il Signor Cappellano._
A plump, hardy-looking girl of some twenty-five years accosts
him with rough raillery.]
It is Sunday morning, and _Frà Giuseppe_ has just sung mass and
delivered a scathing discourse in broad Genoese dialect to the
somewhat empty benches of a nine o’clock congregation. He comes out
of the sacristy now, having doffed his _soutane_, to keep only the
knee-breeches and stockings with steel-buckled shoes for a finish, the
long black coat and three-cornered hat of etiquette. He crosses the
_piazza_, which is crowded with peasants, male and female, not all of
whom have been in church, except for a moment at the Elevation. A group
of lads and maidens turn towards him; none of them are very respectful
in manner, but _Frà Giuseppe_ takes no offence. Though his person
were held in ever such veneration—even as the _Prevosto’s_ own—though
his voice be listened to with some amount of awe, as it is at the
confessional, though, on holy ground, his counsels and upbraidings be
sometimes regarded, none knows better than the _Cappellano_ himself
what a mere name is any priest’s power outside of his office.