DON CRESCENZIO'S TRIALS
Coming out of the Finance Department, from the Secretary's room,
having got to the lobby, Don Crescenzio staggered and had a singing
in his ears.
'Do you feel ill?' asked the usher anxiously, for he knew him.
'No, it is nothing; it is from this first heat of spring,' he
stammered. And he brought his hands across his forehead, which was
covered with cold drops of sweat. Still, to try to look at ease, he
pulled out a cigar and lit it.
'Is business good?' the usher asked the lottery banker, while he was
carefully putting out the match.
'Well, just so-so,' said the other, giving a sketchy sort of smile.
'It would be grand to get the right figures,' the usher muttered;
'one would like to spit in this infamous Government's face,' he added
in a whisper.
'But no one knows the right figures--no one does,' the other cried
out as he went away. But when he was under the portico and got out
to the open air, he felt dizzy again; he had a singing in his ears
and nearly fell. He had to stand a good minute, leaning on the stone
posts of San Giacomo Palazzo door, which opens on to Toledo Street,
seeing the usual crowd in that thoroughfare swim before his eyes.
It was larger than usual, from its being the first fine spring day,
which brought out more people than usual. He only saw a confused
crowd without distinct outlines. He heard a great noise without
distinguishing either words or voices. Only, while he went on smiling
instinctively, he saw sharply marked in his mind the corner of the
writing-room where the Finance Secretary had turned his cold, severe
glance on him. He heard the exact sound of the Secretary's words
ringing out as clear as if they had just struck the drum of his ear.
The Secretary had been very stern with him. He could no longer be
lenient to the lottery banker, for he had been too lenient already;
he did not want to seem an accomplice of his fraud. 'Fraud,' he
said and repeated, in spite of the deadly pallor that came over Don
Crescenzio's face on hearing the cruel word.
One cannot play tricks with the State; it gives no credit. Every
week lately, when Don Crescenzio came to hand over the profits, he
was short of money, and had had to ask the Minister of Finance at
Rome to make allowances for him and give him time. This had happened
every week. But the State is not a bank which can grant delays. It
makes others wait, but it will not. Every time he mentioned the State
the word filled the Secretary's mouth severely and sonorously, and
he frowned a little. Don Crescenzio listened, with his head down,
starting when he heard named that mysterious being who gets all and
gives nothing; who has no heart or bowels, and holds out open hands
to take and carry off everything. Ah! the Secretary had been decisive
in his cruelty. By Wednesday he must pay up all in full--stakes and
the debt in arrears; if not, the downfall was unavoidable: the State
would seize the caution money and prosecute Don Crescenzio for his
indebtedness. He had just given one sob at the Secretary's last words.
'You lose the caution money, and you go to prison if you don't pay
up,' the worthy official wound up his remarks with.
Don Crescenzio had set to imploring then. He had a wife and children;
if he had been so foolish as to give the gamblers credit, was he to
be ruined for that? If they would give him time, he would force the
men to pay; he would give back the State the uttermost farthing. He
was an honest man; in short, he was cheated, slain.
'You gamble too, and on credit,' the Secretary said haughtily.
'I only did it to try and recoup myself.'
'An honest lottery keeper never plays himself. It is immoral in a
citizen to play.'
'Then the State is immoral also.'
'The State cannot be immoral, remember that. Think of how you are to
pay; I can do no more for you.'
Still, he had begged, sobbing, that they would not cast him into
prison; indeed, they could not require a man's death, being men and
Christians. But he had made that scene before twice, and had managed
to get a month's, a fortnight's grace. This time the Secretary
looked so freezingly at him that Don Crescenzio had understood. This
was the end, really. He must either pay or go to prison. He took
leave, always feeling that word _Wednesday_, _Wednesday_, cut into
his brain. It was true he had a young wife and two babies; a small
family, that with Neapolitan good-heartedness and good-nature he had
accustomed to living freely, going from a fine holiday dinner at home
to a grander country excursion, and to celebrate all the feast-days
with good eating. They gave each other presents of heavy gold
jewellery, and, though contenting themselves with hired carriages,
had always a secret wish to keep a carriage of their own; and he
bought earrings, rings, and brooches for his wife, and presented her
with shiny jet mantles such as our towns-folk love. And all this
came while living off the income from the lottery bank; indeed, he
speculated a little with Government money, but did not gamble on the
lottery ever. This was past, the time of purity and innocence. When
had he staked the first time--he, who ought to have kept himself from
that contagion, and only lived off the lottery, without letting it
fasten on him, live off it as one may drink poison without dying of
it, though the same poison laid on an open wound will kill? When had
he first staked? He did not remember now; he saw confusedly a great
_Wednesday_ stand out with such vivid heat that it seemed like a live
coal, as if it must burn him. It was all a confusion, in which the
mental disorder of the Cabalists who crowded into his shop, touching
him with their feverish hands and infecting him, and their money--got
God knows how or where--passing from their hands to his, all gave him
the impression of a tragedy. That mental malady that burned in their
blood, young and old, rich and poor, powerful and insignificant, had
passed on to him; from being with them, breathing their atmosphere,
it had soaked through everything, and come into his very life. First
of all, greed of gain had made him give credit to the Cabalists,
keeping back always so much per cent. off their stakes when they
played on credit, while he asked for delay from the Government;
then, as the deviations became continually larger, as the hole got
deeper till there was a precipice down to it, he began to gamble too,
unlucky wretch, tempting Fate, having the delusion he was in her
favour, and playing on credit, with the huge delusion that he might
win a large, an immense sum.
Ah! the unlucky wretch, he knew quite well that hardly anyone ever
wins. He was well acquainted with the frightful law of averages, that
shows that winning is so rare it is difficult to find cases of it.
It is an infinitesimal chance, like one planet meeting another every
two or three hundred years by inflexible sidereal laws. He knew well
that Government always wins, always; that it takes sixteen million
francs from Naples alone every year--from all Italy, sixty million of
francs. But what did that signify? He went on giving credit to the
Cabalists; he showed at their meetings; he lent a hand to imprison
Don Pasqualino, being blinded himself. The vulgar luxury of his house
increased; his wife got fat, she was red and shiny from eating too
much, and now she was going to have another child. She wore a cream
silk dress covered with lace; her fat hands, laden with rings, lay on
her already rounded figure with that quietly satisfied air of women
easy in their feelings. What a disaster if on Wednesday he did not
bring the money to the Secretary! He, his wife and children, and the
one to be born, would be in wretchedness, and he himself in prison.
Now, every time the word 'Wednesday' came to the mind of the handsome
lottery banker, with his well-kept chestnut beard and white hands, a
little warm blood flowed into his pale cheeks, and he felt them burn
like two flames of fire. He had dragged himself away from the San
Giacomo doorposts, and was going among the crowd, letting himself be
carried along, feeling a slight dizziness that came from his being
wrapt up always in the same maddening idea. He must do something,
gain money, try and get it from those who owed it to him and had it,
so that on Wednesday he and his family would not be ruined. Where
was he to go? He must look for money at any cost; he would drag it
from his debtors' vitals. He was not going to die for them; he would
not go to San Francesco for these four scoundrels, who had drawn him
into dishonest courses. Money, money was what he wanted; he thirsted,
hungered for it; it was his soul--his body asked for that only.
Money, or he would die; that was all.
Now, having made up his mind, he set out on the search for some of
those indebted to him. They had gradually all deserted his shop,
not being able to stand his constant demands for money. They took to
some other lottery bank the few pence they managed to get hold of by
some dark miracle, God knows how or where. Out of fear for his just
anger, they had even taken away his profits, ungrateful now, as well
as dishonest. However, he knew where they all lived; he wished to
set on them; he would not let them go till they felt his despair as
if it was their own. He would wait at their homes, at their doors,
in the streets they went through; he would speak to them, shout at
them, and weep. He would give them such a fright that the State money
would be got out of them, dragged out by his rush of despair. It was
a question of life and death; his wife and children were not to be
sent to beggary because he had been too easy, too weak, too much of
a boy. He must get the money--he must. The crowd had now carried him
to the upper part of Toledo Street, while he was making up a good
plan in his head how to carry out best this burning desire to save
himself in a way likely to effect his purpose. Let us see: where
would he go first that springtide noon? Where would he say his first
word? He must make no mistake; he must try and strike a sure blow, or
otherwise.... He could not think of non-success; it was a notion he
could not bear. Now he had stopped in Carità Square, fixing his eyes,
which had a thick cloud before them, on Carlo Poerio's statue. The
people passing hustled him on all sides; the shouts of street-sellers
and voices of passers-by struck him as a vague, indistinct noise. He
thought a minute of going to the Marquis di Formosa's, the person
most largely indebted to him; but amongst them all the Marquis was
the one he was sorriest for, from his own misfortunes; also he was
the one least likely to have money. Now, Don Crescenzio did not want
to begin by being unkind to an unhappy man, nor did he want to make
a bad start; he was too much afraid of not succeeding--he was too
discouraged. He would go last to the Marquis di Formosa--afterwards,
as a last resource. The safest of those he had given credit to was
Ninetto Costa, the stock-broker--the safest because, in spite of
his falling behind with his payments, he always could get money to
borrow; some still believed in his star. Ninetto Costa had got into
debt several times with him, but had always paid until the last time,
when it was for rather a large sum; but for three weeks past he had
got so out of pocket he could not give a farthing to Don Crescenzio.
What did it matter? Costa was a moneyed man.
The lottery banker went forward towards the Exchange, knowing this
was an hour that Ninetto Costa would be there for certain. But among
the band of bankers, stockbrokers, merchants, and outside brokers,
who were chattering, talking things over, and vociferating, he
looked vainly for him for a quarter of an hour. Then he asked two
or three men for him, and got a bad reception. Some shrugged their
shoulders, others gave an ironical smile, and all set at once to
speak of their own business, leaving Don Crescenzio alone. He, who
with the extraordinary trustingness of people in desperation had
gone in there quite quieted down, already sure of a good result,
felt a burning from his mouth to the pit of his stomach. But where
was Ninetto Costa, then? He remembered having gone to call on him
once at Carolina Road, where the smart stock-broker had a set of
rooms furnished with striking youthful luxury; but he had changed
his house some time before--it was at the beginning of his downfall.
Now Don Crescenzio remembered having gone with him one evening, on
leaving the meeting in Nardones Road, up Taverna Penta Road to a very
ordinary house there, which Costa was reduced to, just opposite San
Giacomo Road. He must find him, at any rate, whether alive or dead.
Ninetto Costa would give him the eleven hundred francs he owed him,
and at least a part of the debt to Government would be paid; a small
part, it is true, but something, at least. He went up again towards
Taverna Penta Road, and the sulky door-keeper looked at him, and said:
'Fourth-floor.'
'But is he at home?'
'I don't know,' she grumbled.
Patiently, determined not to be discouraged by anything, he went up
the narrow, steep stair, and from the landings and doors came out the
sound of children's whining and women's quarrelling voices and noisy
sewing-machines. On Ninetto Costa's door was a torn visiting-card
fastened up by four pins. He knocked twice. No one came; there was no
sound from inside. He knocked louder, the third time--nothing yet.
The fourth time he gave the bell a hard pull, and a very light step
could be heard; then no sound nor movement, as if the person who had
come to the door was listening intently.
'Don Ninetto, it is I. Open--especially as I know that you are in the
house, and I won't go away,' the lottery banker said in a loud voice.
There was a few minutes' pause again. Then the door opened softly,
and the stock-broker's face appeared, sadly altered. Now all his
youthfulness, prolonged by high living and cosmetics, had fled.
His hair was sparse on the temples and on the top of his head. Two
flabby, yellowish bags underlined his eyes, and thousands of small
wrinkles came down in all directions, marking the face indelibly. The
jacket that hardly covered him had the collar turned up, as if he
were cold or wished to hide his linen.
'Is it you?' he asked, with a sickly smile.
He brought Don Crescenzio into the parlour, a shabby lodging-house
sitting-room with red chair-covers and curtains dulled by smoke, and
sat down opposite to him, looking at him with dull eyes which had
lost all expression.
'It is I. I went to look for you at the Exchange. Have you not been
there to-day?' Don Crescenzio asked, feeling a burning at his stomach
again.
'No, I did not go to-day.'
'Why not?'
'No matter.'
'Have you not been there for some time?'
'Not for--yes ... for three or four days.'
'What have you been doing?' Don Crescenzio asked anxiously.
'Nothing,' said the other, with a gesture that was too clear.
'Have you gone bankrupt?'
Ninetto Costa shut his eyes, shivering, as if he did not want to see
something; then he said:
'Yes, I have.'
'This is ruin, ruin!' shouted Don Crescenzio, throwing up his arms
heavenwards.
The other bit his moustache convulsively.
'At least, you have kept something. That eleven hundred francs you
owe me--you must have kept it, have you not?'
Ninetta Costa looked at him dreamily.
'If I do not get this eleven hundred francs by Tuesday evening, I
must go prison!' the lottery banker shrieked out.
Ninetto Costa hung his head.
'I must go to prison, and my family will have no bread. You must give
me the eleven hundred francs, you know!' shrieked Don Crescenzio in a
great rage.
'I have not got it.'
'Look for it.'
'I shall not find it. No one will give it to me.'
'You must find it; I cannot go to prison for you. Find it.'
'It is impossible, Don Crescenzio,' said the stock-broker, with tears
in his eyes.
'Nothing is impossible when it has to do with a debt like this, when
it is a question of saving an honest man from ruin. For pity's sake,
Don Ninetto; you know how dear honour is.'
'Yes, I do,' said the other, turning his face away.
'For pity's sake don't forsake me. I have done you a favour; don't be
so ungrateful.'
'I have not got a farthing, and I cannot find one.'
'But have you no friends or relations left?'
'None--not one. I have gone bankrupt; that is enough.'
'What will you do?'
'I am going--going to Rome,' the stock-broker brought out, after a
slight hesitation.
'What to do?'
'Who knows? Perhaps I shall make my fortune there.'
'But you ought not to forsake me; you, a man, must give me the eleven
hundred francs before you leave.'
'I have not got it. I can't get it. Don't torment me, Don Crescenzio;
I have not a farthing.'
'Give me your signature to a bill; some banker that you are
acquainted with will cash it.'
'All my bills are presented.'
'Pawn your jewellery.'
'I have sold it all.'
'Then give me your watch.'
'It is sold.'
'Then ask your mother or your uncle.'
'My uncle will perhaps do me the kindness to support my mother. The
mother of a bankrupt, you understand, is never very well received.'
'For how much have you failed?'
'For two hundred thousand francs.'
'All through the lottery, was it?'
'I lost all there,' Ninetto Costa said, with a decided gesture.
'But how can you leave me to such ruin?' Don Crescenzio rejoined,
nearly crying; 'how have you the heart?'
'How have I the heart?' the other said, in a shaky voice. 'I am
leaving my mother with nothing to support her, you know. I am going
to Rome. If I make any money I will send you some.'
'When do you go?'
'To-morrow.... Yes, to-morrow.'
'Can you send me money by Tuesday?'
'I don't think so, Don Crescenzio--I don't think so,' Ninetto Costa
said, with desperate calmness.
'It must be by Wednesday, you know; if not, I am ruined.'
'I was ruined three days ago.'
'Holy Virgin! who has blinded me?' the lottery-keeper said, crying.
'You want to kill me before the time,' Ninetto Costa muttered.
'What are you saying?'
'Nothing. But keep calm. Everything may come right gradually.'
'Wednesday is the last day I have got--Wednesday.'
'Perhaps Government will give you time. Find out some way; write to
the Minister, write to the King. I must start off.'
He pointed to a small bag, not half full, with a feeble smile.
'But, really, can you not give me anything?'
'I would do it, Don Crescenzio, but I swear to you that I have not
got a farthing. I am off to Rome; then I will see....'
Disappointed and excited, Don Crescenzio got up to go away, half
angry and half sorry for Costa. He wanted to rush off in search of
his other clients; he wanted to find money, to leave that sad house,
the sad company of a man more desperate than himself. He wanted to
go away. Ninetto Costa looked at him in a dull way, keeping up that
pallid smile on his white lips, the absent-minded smile of a man
quite indifferent to earthly affairs. Still, the other once more
insisted in a vague way, as if in justice to himself, thinking he had
not done enough to get his money. But the stock-broker gave him such
a suffering look he said no more.
'Good-bye, Don Crescenzio; for--give me.'
'Good-bye, Don Ninetto; don't forget me at Rome.'
'Have no doubt of it,' said the other, in a weak, queer voice.
They took each other's hands without pressing them--cold, feeble
hands, both. As in a dream, Ninetto Costa went to the door with the
lottery banker; silently they looked at each other, but did not
speak. Then the door shut again with such a queer _decisive_ sound
that the lottery banker, going slowly downstairs, gave a start. He
felt almost inclined to turn back; it came to his mind that Costa had
told him he had not a farthing, and, then, that flabby travelling bag
with nothing in it. But the thought of his own sorrows distracted
him from his pity and from any suspicion of greater misfortune. Now,
still on foot, to spare the money for a cab even, he began to run up
Toledo Street, as if prodded by a goad, to go to San Sebastiano Road,
where Marzano, the old lawyer, lived, another indebted to him. He,
too, because of his professional position, even if he had no money
to pay up at once, would be able to get a loan; at any rate, he owed
eight hundred francs to Don Crescenzio, and he would give them to
him; indeed, Don Crescenzio would sit there till he got them, even if
he had to wait till night. He knew his house very well, a poor house
indeed: for Marzano staked everything--all he earned--and he even
supported a cobbler at sixty francs a month, a Cabalist, who wrote
lottery numbers with charcoal on dirty pieces of paper.
Don Crescenzio went up the steps four at a time, running, because
a voice in his heart told him he would find the money at Signor
Marzano's; he felt a good presentiment. Still, when he put his hand
to the iron ring that hung from a greasy cord, a sudden alarm took
him, the fear of not succeeding, a horrible fear that paralyzed his
strength, the nervousness of the unfortunate when life and death are
at stake. A dragging step was heard, and a shrill voice asked:
'Who is it?'
'Friends--a friend,' the lottery banker stammered hastily.
The door opened suspiciously, and the cobbler's mean face showed,
all marked with pimples. His blear, red, stupid eyes stared at Don
Crescenzio.
'Do you want to see the lawyer?' he asked, drying his hands on a
dirty apron.
'Yes, sir.'
'He cannot attend to you.'
'Is he busy?'
'He is ill.'
'Ill, is he? Not much the matter, I hope?'
'He has had a stroke. Wishing you better health----'
'Good God!' shouted Don Crescenzio, throwing his hat down on the
ground in despair.
'It was the lottery did it.... Indeed, he always starved himself; he
did not live well. He ate very little and drank water, you see.'
'Oh, God! God!' Don Crescenzio whispered in lamentation.
'It is God's will,' the cobbler said softly, pulling out a little bit
of dirty paper and taking a pinch of yellowish snuff. 'When it is
God's will, what can one do?... Don't despair. Till the last there is
hope.'
'I know that; it is why I am so despairing!' shrieked Don Crescenzio.
'I have a right to complain,' the silly fellow rejoined. 'I would
have got him a fortune. I expected peace in my old days from him, and
in the meanwhile, by his own folly, he is at death's door, and leaves
me to wretchedness. Do you see?'
'But how was it? how did it happen?'
'Wait a minute. I am just coming.' And he went out of the room.
Don Crescenzio looked round him, stupefied with sorrow. The wretched
room had no other furniture but some old lawyer's bookcases,
choke-full of dusty papers, a small table, and two soiled straw
chairs. There was a glass on the table, with two fingers of bluish
wine in it--the thick, heavy Sicilian wine. The floor had not been
swept for a long time, the wall was full of spiders' webs, the
window-panes were covered with dust, and a smell of dirty staleness
and mustiness caught the throat. And this was the lawyer's house--of
him that had been one of the best advocates of his day, and had
earned thousands of pounds in his profession! Don Crescenzio felt his
heart bleed; his hands were like ice. Had he come here, to this abode
of poverty, shame, and death, to look for his eight hundred francs to
save himself? What madness, what madness his had been! Would it not
be better to run away, as he was finding everywhere the same traces
of dishonour and wretchedness--everywhere? But the cobbler came back.
'What is he doing?' Don Crescenzio asked in a whisper.
'He is in a stupor.'
'Is he asleep?'
'No; it is from the disease.'
'What has been done for him?'
'He has been bled; then, he has an ice blister on his head, and
another on his chest.'
'Does he speak at all?'
'He does not understand what is said.'
'Has he become powerless?'
'Only on his right side.'
'What does the doctor say?'
'What can he say? It is a case of death.'
'Is the doctor coming back?'
'Who can say? There is nothing to pay him with. I found seven francs
and a nickel watch that won't pawn. I have spent three francs already
on ice. When the seven francs are done, we are at an end of our
resources.'
'But how did it happen? how did it happen?' Don Crescenzio asked
again desperately.
'Humph! there has been such a lot of things. He has had some
unpleasantnesses, you see. A man is always a man.... He needed
money ... he tried to get it in all sorts of ways.'
'What did he do?' asked the other, alarmed.
'Evil-minded people say he forged stamped paper--washing, you know,
what was written on it already, and putting it to use again. But it
can't be true. He leaves me to beggary; he has been ungrateful to
me; but it can't be true. I will never believe it. It seems that
the ill-natured people got at the President of the Consiglio dell'
Ordine, who called him rather ugly things. It seems, in short, there
were unpleasantnesses.'
'Poor man! poor man!' Don Crescenzio called out in a low voice.
'This summons to the President was a fatal thing for him. You may
think for an honest man to feel himself insulted is unbearable.
Signor Marzano wished to go away to some village where there is
better breeding.'
'To go away at his age with seven francs in his pocket!'
'I would have gone with him,' the silly cobbler muttered modestly.
'I was getting ready to go with him, out of love to him; and as to
the money--that is the real reason of the stroke.'
'How could it be?'
'You know, sir, that my mathematical labours, with God's help, have
always brought in some money to the advocate.'
'Yes, some small sum every three or four months,' Don Crescenzio
remarked sceptically.
'You are mistaken; one may say that I benefited him, and these
wretched sixty francs he gave me every month, for me not to clap on
soles any longer, but work at necromancy, were not even the hundredth
part of what he won each month. Now he is leaving me, ungrateful
fellow! like this ... enough: I may tell you I had given certain
numbers to him symbolically, numbers that must necessarily come out;
and they did come, you know.'
'Then, he won?'
'No, nothing; he did not understand--he staked on others'
figures--his mind is not trustworthy now. When he knew it he got the
stroke.... To your health, sir.'
'But had you really told him what were good numbers?'
'I swear it before God; but he did not understand.'
'Why did you not play them?'
'You know quite well that _we_ cannot play.'
'Ah, yes, that is true.'
They stopped speaking; the cobbler put the glass to his lips and took
a sip of wine.
'I would like to see him,' Don Crescenzio said suddenly.
They went into the small bedroom; it was poor and dirty like the
study. Marzano, the advocate, lay on a wretched iron bed, raised on
pillows, whose covers were of doubtful whiteness; a lump of ice was
on his bald head, another on the bare, skeleton-like breast, and his
thin, small body was covered by a brown horse-blanket. On the night
table was a tumbler of water with a bit of ice in it; the dying man's
right hand was wrapped in the blood-letting bandages. All his right
side, from the face to the foot, was struck rigid, numb already,
while his left hand went on trembling, trembling, and all the left
side of his face often twitched convulsively. A confused stammering
came from his lips; all his gentle, good-natured expression was gone,
leaving on that old face, half belonging to death already, the marks
of a passion that had got to be shameful.
'Signor Marzano! Signor Marzano!' Don Crescenzio called out, leaning
over his bed.
The sick man set his eyes, veiled by a curious cloud, on the
lottery-keeper's face, but the expression did not change nor the
stammering stop.
'He doesn't recognise you,' said the cobbler, taking snuff.
Don Crescenzio left the room at once, feeling the nightmare of it
weighing on his mind.
'You are his friend: will you leave him something?' the cobbler
asked. 'I have only four francs; he will die like a dog.'
Then all Don Crescenzio's suppressed sorrow burst out.
'He owes me eight hundred francs, and I am ruined if I do not get it
by Wednesday. He is dying; but I am left, and I am tortured. He will
die; but my children will sleep on church steps in a month. He at
least is dying, but we shall all come to desperate straits, you see.'
'Excuse me, I did not know,' the cobbler said, alarmed.
'I have been assassinated,' sobbed out the other.
'Be quiet, he may hear you; what can you expect from him?' And he
took the last sip of the bluish wine left in the bottom of the
tumbler.
Don Crescenzio fled. Now at intervals he felt his head going, and
he needed to say the word '_Wednesday_' to gather himself together.
Still, instinctively, with that automatic style of moving of unhappy
people who go to meet their destiny, he went up by Porto Alba again
towards Bagnara Lane, where Professor Colaneri lived. He, too, owed
him money, and promised to give it week by week, but had always
sent him away with empty hands or put him off with small sums. The
ex-priest lived on the fourth-floor of a house in Bagnara Lane, with
an unlucky clear-starcher who had given heed to his blandishments and
passed for his wife. They had four unhealthy children with big heads
and crooked legs, and all lived in two rooms--quarrelling, crying,
beating each other, and weeping all day. He had hidden from the
clear-starcher that he had been a priest; the unlucky woman, thinking
to become a lady, gave in to him, and for six years had lived in a
state of servitude, between holding children and doing servant's work
of the roughest kind amid indecent wretchedness, among that brood
of ugly, howling, for ever hungry children, whom she avenged herself
on by slaps for the blows her husband was liberal with towards her.
It was a hellish house, where the father was always sulkily thinking
over mean, sometimes guilty, methods of getting money for gambling.
Twice Don Crescenzio had gone there, but he had been present at such
disgusting scenes that he had rushed away, hunted out almost by the
laundress's bad words and the four demons' howls. But now what did
that matter? Colaneri owed him seven hundred francs and more; of a
debt of nine hundred francs he had only paid two hundred in three or
four months, or rather less. Colaneri, by Gad! was not ruined like
Ninetto Costa, or apoplectic like Marzano--Colaneri must pay.
'Is Professor Colaneri at home?'
'Yes, sir,' an old woman who acted as door-keeper said.
Then he went up quickly; the laundress came to the door to open,
unkempt, a greasy kitchen apron over a shabby dress. Her cheeks were
fallen in, her breasts emaciated, and a tooth was wanting in front,
through which she whistled a little.
'I would like to see Professor Colaneri.'
'He is not here,' she said quickly, leaving the other still outside.
'He is in--I know he is,' said Don Crescenzio in a rage. 'At any
rate, it is no use denying it. I will wait for him on the stairs: he
must come out some time.'
'Then come in,' she said unwillingly. As the lottery-keeper was
coming in, a dirty boy with water on the head got a slap. Whilst he
waited in the room that served as a parlour, study and dining-room,
from beyond--that is to say, the kitchen, in the bedroom, and even
the landing-place--cries burst out from the quarrelsome family. But
in a silent interval the Professor came in, putting on an old jacket
all spotted with grease, and setting his spectacles on his nose with
an ecclesiastical gesture.
'I have come for my money,' Don Crescenzio said brutally.
'I have got none,' the debtor answered sulkily.
'That does not matter to me. You must give it to me.'
'I have no money.'
'Find some. I must have my seven hundred francs, you know.'
'I have not got it.'
'Give a lien on your salary: get a loan that way.'
'I have not got a salary now.'
'What! are you not a professor now?'
'No; I have been dismissed from my post.'
'What! are you dismissed?'
'Yes--turned out by force. I was accused of selling the examination
papers to the students.'
'It was not true, of course?'
'Of course not. But the plot to ruin me was well arranged. The Senate
advised me to resign.'
'So you are on the pavement?'
'Yes; I am destitute.'
Then only Don Crescenzio noticed that Professor Colaneri's face was
pallid and distorted. But this third disappointment enraged him.
'I don't know what to do to you; you must give me the seven hundred
francs, at any rate.'
'Have you got five francs to lend me?'
'Don't talk nonsense! I want my money--for to-morrow at latest, mind.'
'Crescenzio, you are putting a man already on the rack to torture.'
'That is fine chatter. I can't go to San Francesco on your account.
You are so many murderers. I go to Costa for money, and find that he
has failed--that he is going off to Rome, to do he knows not what.
If it is true, he is going to Rome ... and I get no money. I go to
Marzano, and find him half dead. Here you tell me you are on the
pavement and have no money.'
'We are all ruined--all of us,' muttered the ex-priest.
'Well, you all want to kill me, do you? But when you needed credit
I gave it to you ... and now you want to kill me and my family! But
you have got sons also; you must think about feeding them--to-morrow
and every other day; you ought to do something. You will think of
me--think of my babies--think that we are Christians, too!'
'Do you know what I must do to-morrow to give my little ones bread?'
'What do I care? I know you will give it to them. I know that my
children are not to go fasting while yours get their food.'
'Well, listen: I am not a priest now; I have been excommunicated,
I am outside the pale of the Church; therefore I will get no help
there. I had a professor's post, a good safe thing, but I have lost
it; I needed money too much. Don't ask me for sad confessions. I will
not get my post again, nor any other; I am a marked man.'
'But what is the use of telling me about these sorrows? I know about
them. I know they will do my affairs no good.'
'Look here, then: I have no outlook; now, as I have put unlucky
beings into the world, I feel that it is my duty to give them
bread--at least that. I have gambled away on the lottery what they
had as a certainty, an unfailing resource; but it is folly to think
of that. Therefore I have taken the great decision, once for all.'
'What are you referring to?' asked Don Crescenzio, much astonished.
'To-morrow I am going to accept the offer the Evangelical Society has
made me. I will become a Protestant pastor.'
'Oh, God!' said the lottery-keeper, astonished above measure.
'As you say,' said the other, gulping as if he could hardly swallow.
'And you will give up our religion?'
'I am leaving it through hunger.'
'And that other ... do you believe in it?'
'No, I do not.'
'And how will you set about preaching?'
'I will do it; I will get accustomed to it.'
'You will have to abjure, will you?'
'Yes, I have to do that.'
'Will it be a grand ceremony?'
'A very grand one.'
They spoke in a whisper, and Colaneri's cynical face was distorted,
as if he could not stand the idea of abjuring. Don Crescenzio, too,
in his astonishment, had forgotten his sorrow.
'You have got to apostatize?'
'Yes, I must apostatize.'
'Well, your priest's orders have been taken from you.'
'Still, to deny the faith is a different thing,' said Colaneri darkly.
'Then, it distresses you very much to do it?'
'I hate to do it.'
'How much will you gain by it?'
'Two hundred francs a month in some village they will send me to.'
'It is hardly enough for bread.'
'To each of my boys that turn Protestant they will give a small sum.
I will be able to marry their mother.'
'But to have to leave Christ's religion!' exclaimed Don Crescenzio,
with that horror of Protestantism that is in all humble Neapolitan
consciences.
'What would you have? It is hunger drives me to it,' Colaneri
muttered desperately.
He seemed now altogether changed, even in his character; it was
clear to him now how fatal his rage for gambling had been; he saw
what he had done against himself and his own gifts, and he felt
an unconquerable distaste for that apostasy. He had done wicked
things; he had descended to crime, even, of a coarse kind, having
got corrupted in that unhealthy atmosphere; but now he found the
punishment in front of him, he trembled and lost all his bravery; he
trembled at having to deny his faith, his God, for a loaf of bread.
Don Crescenzio looked at him and said nothing, amazed. He had always
thought Colaneri a scoundrel, and, if he had given him credit, it
was only because he thought he could seize his salary. But now, on
this decisive day, he saw him cast down, moved to his inmost soul by
an awful fear of the Divinity he had already betrayed and insulted,
whom he was again outraging by his apostasy. Don Crescenzio, although
small-minded, felt the agony of that conscience that was now fighting
in its last outpost, having got to the stage where human endurance
ends, the hardest, most wearing hours in life. So he dared not say
anything more to him about the money. He stammered:
'Your wife--what does she say?'
'She would like to prevent me doing it, except for the children's
sake.'
'The poor children, must they lose their souls also?'
'They are innocent. The Lord sees; He will be just. Besides, why has
He set me with my back to the wall? For each child that enters the
Protestant Church they give me a small sum.'
'When will this come off?' Don Crescenzio asked, after hesitating.
'In a month. A month of instruction is needed for the poor
innocents.'
'It will be too late for me,' the other said in a low tone, still
thinking of his money.
'I will give you a receipt if you like, then.'
'It is too late. I am ruined.'
'What a punishment--what a punishment!' the apostate said, hiding his
face in his hands.
'I am going away,' Don Crescenzio said, prostrate now, in a state of
utter depression.
'Be patient.'
'What is the use of patience? it is a punishment! You spoke the truth
just now: it is a chastisement! I am going away; good-bye.'
They did not look at each other nor say another word; both of them
felt seized and cowed by the frightfulness of the punishment, not
feeling any more rage or rancour in that breaking-down of all pride
and vanity that the Divine chastisement brings. When he was on the
stairs, Don Crescenzio was seized with such faintness that he had
to sit down on a step, and stay there confused, neither seeing nor
hearing in that moral numbness that comes on after great excitement.
How long did he stay there? In the end, it was the step of someone
going up and brushing past him that roused him, and with that start
all his frightful pain came back unbearably. He rushed downstairs
helter-skelter, and ran through the streets like one in a dream,
urged on as if someone with a straight, unbending weapon were pushing
him with the point. He got to Guantai Street, to the little inn,
Villa Borghese, a resort of country people, where for four months
past Trifari had lived with his father and mother, who had left
their village at his bidding. The two humble peasants had managed,
from youth to old age, to put some pence together and buy some bits
of land by working eighteen hours a day and eating stale black
bread, being content with beet soup cooked in water, with no salt,
and sleeping all in one large room, with only a bed and a chest in
it, upon a straw pallet; and this they bore for the sake of making
their son a doctor, handing on to him all their peasant's vanity,
making him have an unbounded longing to be a gentleman, a great man,
superior to everyone in the country-side, so giving him, unknowingly,
that rage for gambling that, according to him, was to make him grow
rich suddenly, very rich, so as to crush everyone with his power and
luxury.
But in a few years his whole professional career was ended, for he
scorned it and gave it up; he had begun to lead a life of shameless
indebtedness, expedients, and dodges. He had begun by deceiving his
parents, and had ended by weaving for himself nets of intrigues and
embarrassments. His father and mother gloomily, in the silence of
their peasant souls that know of no outlet, had sold off everything
gradually, going on sacrificing themselves for this son that was
their idol, whom they adored because he was made of better clay than
themselves. They were at last so reduced, so chastened in their
pride, they waited in their old house for their son to send them
ten of twenty francs now and then for food. And he did it; bound
to his old folk by a fierce love made up of filial instinct and
gratitude, he shivered with shame and grief every time they told
him, resignedly, that in spite of being well on in years they would
have to go back to work in the fields to earn their daily bread, so
as not to be a burden upon him. But these helps had got to be less
frequent; the rage for gambling blinded him so he could not even
take ten francs off his stakes to send to the unlucky peasants. The
finishing stroke was when he wrote imperiously, ordering them to sell
the last house they had left, the old home with its sparse furniture
and kitchen utensils, to bring the money and come and live in Naples
with him; they would spend less there, and be more comfortable.
It was a dreadful blow, for these unhappy folk held so to the habit,
now become a passion, of living in their own house and village, and
the very word Naples frightened them. Still, saying not a word of
their sufferings, they kept up their pride, told the villagers they
were going to live as gentlefolk with their gentleman son at Naples,
and had obeyed. They had haggled for a long time over the price of
the old house and those few bits of old furniture they got at the
time of their marriage; but at last, hoarding up the few hundred
francs they had got for them carefully in a linen bag, and travelling
third class, they got to Naples, frightened, not sad, but buried in
that dumbness that is the only sign of a peasant's ill-humour.
They had lived four months at that inn, in two dark rooms; for they
were on the first-floor with their son, who always came in at a
very late hour, sometimes when they were getting up. They had no
occupation, and never spoke to each other; staying up in their
own room, they looked with melancholy, surprised eyes on all the
extraordinary Naples people that moved about in that narrow, populous
road, Guantai Nuova. They stayed hours and hours, wrapt up in gazing
on a sight that stupefied them; but they were incapable, however,
of making any complaint, though they were suspicious of everything,
of the spring bed, of the bad, greenish glass of the mirror, of the
miserable dinners served in their own rooms. As it was a thing they
were not accustomed to, they thought they were living in unheard-of
luxury. They disliked the servants, who scoffed at the two peasants,
and the washerwoman, who brought back their coarse shifts all in
holes, and loaded them with abuse in the true Naples style if they
made any remarks.
Sometimes, getting over their instinctive shyness about speaking,
they told their son to take them away from the inn and hire a small
house, where his mother would cook and do the house-work; but he
pointed out to them that would require too much money, and they would
do it later, when he had got the fine fortune he was expecting from
day to day.
In the meanwhile, their fortune grew smaller, and every time they
loosened the linen purse at the end of the week, their hearts gave a
twinge. Often, when they pulled out the money, they saw their son's
eyes brighten up, as if an irresistible love-longing filled them; but
he never asked them for it--one could see he put a check on himself
not to ask. But each day he became gloomier, wilder; he no longer ate
with his parents, and spent his nights outside, not coming back to
the inn, so that even into these peasants' dull minds had come the
idea of some danger threatening.
The mother told her beads for hours, that the Lord would have
pity on their old age; whilst the father, being sharper, and more
experienced, thought that perhaps some bad woman was making his son
unhappy. But they said nothing to him; even the luxury they lived in,
as they thought, although they paid for it themselves, seemed to them
a condescension on their son's part, a favour he did his parents.
Like him, without understanding or knowing why, they began to hope
for this fortune that was to turn up, some day or another, to make
them gentlefolk. The old peasant-woman's purple lips were constantly
moving, saying prayers, in the small, mean, dark room of the Guantai
Street hotel, whilst the old man went out every day, going always
the same road, that is to say, into Municipio Square, and from there
to the Molo, to gaze at the blackish sea, the ships in the mercantile
port, and the men-of-war in the military one; he was fascinated and
struck only with that in all the great town, going nowhere else,
knowing nothing of the rest of Naples, being afraid of the noise
of carriages, and dreading thieves perhaps. He retraced his steps
slowly, looking round him suspiciously.
They never went out with their son--never, as they were just peasants
and so dressed. They always refused when he feebly invited them to
go out with him, guessing, in spite of their dulness, that it would
not please him to show himself with them. He was so handsome, such a
gentleman, in his great-coat and tall hat. But one evening he came
in more excited than usual. Quickly, in rather a hard voice, such
as he had never used to them, Dr. Trifari told his parents that
his business, his big affair, his plan for getting rich, in short,
required money to be laid out, so they should hand him over these
last few hundred francs they were keeping in reserve; do him this
last great sacrifice, and he would give it all back a hundredfold. He
spoke quickly, with his eyes down, as if he did not wish to intercept
the dreadful, chilled, despairing look the two peasants exchanged,
feeling struck to the heart, frozen. The father and mother held
their tongues, looking on the ground; then he, speaking quicker,
in an anxious tone, trying to soften his harsh voice, implored and
implored, begging them, if they loved him, to give him the money if
they did not want to see his death. They, without making any remark,
glanced assent at each other, and with senile, quivering hands the
father undid the linen bag and took out the money, counting it slowly
and carefully, starting again at each hundred francs, following the
money with a troubled eye and a convulsive movement of the lower lip.
There were four hundred and twenty francs, the whole fortune of the
three. Pale at first, the doctor got very red, his eyes filled with
tears, and before either of them could stop him, he bent down and
kissed his father's and mother's old brown, rugged, horny hands that
had worked so hard. Not another word had been said between them, and
he was gone. He did not come back to the hotel in the evening; but
now they did not take any notice of his being absent. Still, the
next day he did not come back to dinner; it was the first time it had
happened. They waited till evening, but he did not come. The peasant
woman told her beads, always beginning again; they ended by dining
off a bit of bread and two oranges they had in their room.
Dr. Trifari did not come back the second night either, and it was
about noon of the second day that a letter, with a half-penny stamp,
by the local post, came, addressed to Signor Giovanni Trifari, Villa
Borghese. Ah! they were peasants, with dull intellects and simple
hearts; they never imagined things, or even thought much; they were
curt, silent people. But when that letter was brought to them, and
they recognised their son's well-known and loved writing, they both
began to tremble, as if a sudden, overpowering palsy had come on.
Twice or thrice, his rough spectacles shaking on his nose, with the
slowness of a man not knowing how to read well, and having to keep
back his tears, the old peasant read over his son's letter, in which,
just before starting for America, he said good-bye to them filially
and tenderly; and, feeling the gentle, terrible letter getting well
printed on her mind, the old woman kissed her beads and gave a low
groan. Twice an inn servant came in, with the sceptical look of one
accustomed to all the chances and changes of life. He asked them if
they wanted anything to eat; but they, blind, deaf, and forgetful,
did not even answer. When, towards six o'clock, Don Crescenzio came
in, after knocking fruitlessly, he found them, almost in the dark,
seated near the balcony in perfect silence.
'Is the doctor here?'
Neither of the two answered, as if death's stupor had overcome them.
'I wished to know if Dr. Trifari was here.'
'No, sir, he is not,' the old father said.
'Has he gone out?'
'Yes, he is out.'
'How long has he been absent?'
'He has been away a long time,' the old peasant muttered, and a groan
from his wife echoed him.
'When is he coming back?' shouted Don Crescenzio, very agitated,
taking an angry fit.
'I can't tell you; we don't know,' the old man said, shaking his head.
'You are his father; you must know.'
'He did not tell me.'
'But where is he gone? Where is that scoundrel gone?'
'To America--to Buenos Ayres.'
'Good Lord!' Don Crescenzio just managed to bring out, falling full
weight on a chair.
They said no more. The mother devoutly clutched her rosary. But both
Trifari's parents seemed so tired that Don Crescenzio felt desperate,
finding everywhere different forms of misfortunes, and greater ones
than his own. Still, he clutched at a straw; above everything, he
wished to know all about it, with that bitter enjoyment a man feels
in tasting the full agony of his misfortune. He, too, had fled, then;
he, too, had escaped him; that money, too, was lost--lost for ever.
'But who gave him the money to get away?' he cried out in an
exasperated tone.
'Are you really friendly to him?'
'Yes, yes, I am.'
'Truly are you?'
'Yes, I tell you.'
'Here is his letter. Take it; you will find out from it.'
Then by the faint light of fading day he read the unhappy man's long
letter. Eaten up by debts and his ruling passion, not knowing where
to lay his head, he wrote to his parents, taking leave of them on
going to make his fortune in America. Of the four hundred francs it
had taken about three hundred and fifty to pay for a third-class
ticket on a steamer, counting in a few francs for his keep the first
two or three days in Buenos Ayres. He owned up to everything. He was
the cause of his own ruin and of his family's. He cursed gambling,
fate, and himself, swearing at bad luck and his own bad conscience.
He sent back a few francs to the two poor old folks, begging them
to go back to their village, to get on as well as they could, until
he was able to send them something from Buenos Ayres. He told them
to go home, and he would not forget them, and the money would just
serve for two third-class fares to their village; nothing would be
left over to buy food even. He begged them on his knees to forgive
him, not to curse him. He had not had the courage to kill himself,
for their sakes; still, he begged them to forgive him. Though he was
leaving them like this, he implored them not to give him a curse as a
parting provision on this wretched journey of his. He was starting
with no luggage or money, and would be cast into the ship's common
sleeping-place. The letter was full of tenderness and rage: abuse of
the rich, of gentlemen and Government, came alternately with prayers
for forgiveness and humble excuses.
Don Crescenzio read twice over that agonized letter written by a man
enraged at himself and mankind, feeling himself wounded in the only
tender feeling of his life. He folded it absent-mindedly, and looked
at the two old people. It seemed to him that they were centenarians,
falling to pieces from decrepitude and hard work, bent by age and
sorrow.
'What are you going to do now?' he asked in a whisper, after a short
time.
'We are going to our village,' the old man muttered. 'To-morrow we
will go by the first train.'
'Yes, yes, we are going back,' the poor old woman groaned, without
looking up.
'What are you to do there?' he rejoined, wishing to find out the full
extent of all that misfortune.
'We are to work by the day in the fields,' said the old man simply.
He examined the two, so old, tired, and bent, now making ready to
begin life again so as to get bread, to dig the ground with shaking
arms, bending their brown faces and sparse white hair, under the
summer sun. Struck to the heart by this last blow, feeling the chorus
of misfortune growing around him, he did not open his mouth about the
money he was to have got from Trifari; indeed, feverishly, he felt
such pity for the two old folk that he said to them:
'Can I do anything for you?'
'No, no, thank you,' the two said, with the despairing gestures of
those who expect no more help.
'Keep up your courage, then.'
'Yes, yes, thank you,' they muttered again.
He left them without saying more. It was night now when he went down
into the street. For a moment, feeling confused and dismayed, he
thought, Where was he to go? Anew, set along by quite a mechanical
goad, he took courage, and, crossing Toledo Street, went up to the
high part by San Michele Church, where the Rossi Palace stood out
dark and lofty. In that mansion lived the last of those largely
indebted to him, the most desperate of all. So as not to have a bad
omen at the beginning of the day, he had kept them to the last. But
he had found money nowhere; and now, with the natural rebound of the
unhappy who fight against their misfortunes by that strength of hope
which never dies, now he began again to believe that Cesare Fragalà
and the Marquis di Formosa would give him the money in some way--that
it might rain down from heaven.
When he went into Cesare Fragalà's flat, led across an empty dark
room by little Agnesina, who came to open the door, carrying a
half-burnt candle, he had at once regretted he had come. Husband,
wife and daughter were seated at a small table, with a cloth too
small for it, taking their supper silently, looking at every little
bit of fried liver they put in their mouths for fear of leaving
too little for the others. The child especially, having a healthy
youthful appetite, measured her mouthfuls of bread so as not to eat
too much of it. Cesare Fragalà sat very solemnly, all traces of a
smile having gone from his face, and looked at the tablecloth with
his brows knit. His wife, the good Luisella, with her big black eyes,
on whose brow the happy mother's diamond star had shone, had now a
humble, subdued look in a plain stuff gown. Quietly with her calm
eyes the child looked serenely, with a martyr's patience, at the
visitor, as if she understood and expected the request he was about
to make. Before that gentle, thoughtful child's eye Don Crescenzio
felt his tongue tied, so it was with an effort he stammered out:
'Cesare, I am come about that business.'
A flame of fire burned in Cesare's cheeks. The wife gave up eating,
and the child cast down her eyelids as if the blow were coming on her
own head.
'It is difficult for me to do anything for you, Crescenzio; you don't
know all our embarrassments,' Cesare said faintly.
'I do know--I know,' said the other, hardly able to keep down his
feelings; 'but I am in a worse state than you are.'
'I don't believe you can be,' muttered the merchant, who had gone
through the bankruptcy court a few days before, in a dreary tone; 'I
don't think you can be.'
'Your honour is safe, Cesare, but I am not to save mine. What can I
say? I add nothing more.'
And, not able to bear it any longer, feeling Agnesina's sympathetic
eyes on him, he began to weep. A little evening breeze coming from
a half-shut balcony made the lamp quiver. It was a fantastically
wretched group, the husband, wife, and daughter clinging to each
other, all most unhappy, looking at that wretched man sobbing.
'Could we not give him something, Luisella?' Cesare timidly whispered
in his wife's ear, while the other mourned vaguely.
'How much do you owe him?' said Luisa thoughtfully.
'Five hundred francs ... it was more. I paid part of it.'
'Was it a gambling debt?' she asked coldly.
'Yes, it was.'
'What was he saying about honour?'
'He gave us credit. If he is not paid, Government will have him put
in prison.'
'Has he children?'
'Yes, he has.'
She went out of the room. The two men looked sadly at each other, and
the girl gazed at them both with her kindly, encouraging eyes. After
a little Luisa came back looking rather pale.
'This is our last hundred-franc note,' she said, in her pleasant
voice. 'There is only a little small change left for ourselves; but
the Lord will provide.'
'God will provide,' the child repeated, taking the hundred-franc note
from her mother's hands and giving it to Don Crescenzio.
Ah! at that moment, before these poor people, who counted their
mouthfuls of bread, who stinted themselves of the last remnant of
their money to help him; at that moment, in the midst of sad, gentle
expressions on the faces of ruined folk, who still kept faith and
compassion, he felt his heart break; he shook as if he was going to
faint. For a minute he thought of not taking the money; but it seemed
to him charmed, made sacred by passing through that good woman's
hands and the brave little girl's. He only said quiveringly:
'Forgive me, forgive me for taking it.'
'It is nothing,' Cesare Fragalà said at once, with his easy
good-nature.
'You are so kind, so kind,' Crescenzio muttered, as he took leave,
looking humbly at the two--the woman and the child--who bore
misfortune so bravely.
Cesare went out of the room with him.
'I am sorry it is so little,' he said; 'it won't do you any good.'
'It is worth a hundred thousand, as far as the heart is concerned!'
the lottery-keeper exclaimed sadly. 'But I have to give four thousand
six hundred francs to Government, and this is all I have got.'
'Have the others given you nothing?'
'Nothing. I found nothing but misfortunes and bad luck everywhere. I
am going up to the Marquis di Formosa's now.'
'Don't go there,' said Fragalà, shaking his head; 'it is no use.'
'I will try.'
'Don't try for it. They are worse off than we are. They dread every
day they will lose Lady Bianca Maria. Her father has lost his senses.'
'Who knows? I might get it.'
'Listen to me: don't go. You might come in for some ugly scene.'
'Some ugly scene! What do you mean?'
'Yes, the Marchesina gets convulsions; she cries out frightfully
in them. Every time we hear her we leave the house. She cries out
always, "Mother! Mother!" It is agonizing.'
'Is she mad?'
'No, she is not. She calls for help in her fits. They say that she
sees.... Don't go there; it is no use. Do what is right.'
'Very well. Thank you,' said the other.
They embraced, as sad and excited as if they were never to see each
other again.
Now, when Don Crescenzio got to the Rossi Palazzo entrance, after
hurriedly going downstairs almost as if he feared to hear the Lady
Bianca Maria Cavalcanti's dying cries behind him--when he got out
on the street alone, amid the people going and coming from Toledo
Street that soft spring evening, he suddenly thought it was all
over. The hundred francs his weeping had dragged from the Fragalàs'
wretchedness was shut up in his otherwise empty purse in his
great-coat pocket. Just there he felt something like an increasing
heat, for that money was really destiny's last word. He would get
no more; all was said. His desperate resolutions, his growing
emotion, his day's struggle, running, panting, speaking, telling
his wrongs, weeping, and the great dread of ruin tarrying with him,
had done nothing but drag the last mouthful of bread from his most
innocent debtor. A hundred francs--a mockery to the sum he had to
pay on Wednesday, without fail. A hundred francs, no more; a drop
of water in the desert. He felt it, for he had used up a lot of
strength and excitement, and had only managed to drag these few
francs from the Fragalà family's honesty; so he felt flabby, weak,
and exhausted. That was the last word. Then there was no more money
for him; he must look on himself as ruined--ruined, with no hope of
salvation. A cloud--perhaps it was tears--swam before his eyes. The
flow of the crowd took him to the bottom of Toledo Street; he let
himself be carried along. He felt that he was the prey of destiny,
with no strength to resist; he was like a dry leaf turned over by
the whirlwind. He could do nothing more--nothing; all was ended.
Some other people still owed him money. Baron Lamarra, Calandra the
magistrate, and two or three others owed him small sums. But he did
not want to go to them even; it was all useless, all, since, wherever
he had gone, wherever he had taken his despair, he had found the
marks of a scourge like his own--the gambling scourge--that had sent
them all to wretchedness, shame, and death like himself.
He dared not go back to his home now, though it was getting late. He
had gone down by Santa Brigida and Molo Road to Marina Street, where
he lived in one of those tall, narrow houses one reaches by gloomy
alleys from Porto, which look on to rather a dull sea between the
Custom-house and the Granili, and from Marina Road, where fishermen's
luggers and boats are anchored and tied up. Among the thousands of
windows he gazed at the lighted-up one where his wife was putting
the babies to bed. But he dared not go in--no. Was it not all ended?
His wife would read the sentence, the condemnation, in his face, and
he could not bear that. An increasing feebleness took hold of him;
he felt as if his arms and legs were broken, and in the darkness and
silence--where only the cabs taking travellers to the evening trains,
only the trams going to the Vesuvian districts, gave a touch of life
to the dark, broad Marina Road--not able to stand, he sat down on one
of the seats in the long, narrow Villa del Popolo, the poor folk's
garden that goes along the seashore. From there he still saw, though
further off in the distance, like a star, the lighted window in his
little home. How could he go in to bring tears and despair into that
peaceful, happy little atmosphere! That innocent infant and the other
about to come into the world, the mother so proud of her husband,
of her little boy: must he--_he_--make them quiver with grief and
shame that evening? This would be unbearable for him. How tremendous
a punishment it was, falling on everyone's head, as if all were
accursed, and destroying health, honour, fortune, everything!
In a dream, going on from one thing to another, he knit together
all the threads of that chastisement that started from himself and
returned to him, going on from his despair to that of others, while
he still gazed at the slight beacon where his family were waiting
for him. He saw again Ninetto Costa's pale, worn face, setting out
for a much longer journey certainly than to Rome, leaving his mother
a bankrupt suicide's name; he saw Marzano the advocate struck with
apoplexy, his lips bloated, amid the frightful wretchedness that left
no money to buy more ice, whilst a dishonouring accusation had been
made against him, shaming his gray hairs; then Professor Colaneri,
chased away from the school, accused of having sold his conscience
as a teacher, and, after having cast off the clerical robe, now
obliged to give up the religion he was born in, of which he had been
a priest; he saw Dr. Trifari sailing in an emigrant ship, without a
farthing, short of everything, while his old parents had to go back
to dig the hard earth so as to earn their living; and Cesare Fragalàs
resigned surrender, which ended the name of the old firm, and left
him to confront a future of wretchedness. Finally, above everything,
the illness Lady Bianca Maria Cavalcanti was dying of, while her
father had not a bit of bread to put in his mouth. All, all were
being punished, great and small, nobles and common folk, innocent
and guilty, and he with them--he and his family, struck in all he
held dearest--his means, home, happiness, and honour--a band of
unfortunates, where the innocent were the ones that had to weep most,
where little infants, girls, and women paid for grown men's mistakes,
and old people, too--a band of wretched ones--to whom, in his mind,
he added others that he knew and remembered. Baron Lamarra, with the
accusation of forgery held over him by his wife, had gone back to
work as a contractor, in the sun on the streets, among buildings in
course of construction; and Don Domenico Mayer, the hypochondriacal
official, who one day in despair, not being able to move for debt,
had thrown himself from a fourth-floor window, dying at once; and
Calandra the magistrate, who had twelve children, was so badly
reported on that every six months he ran the chance of being put on
the shelf; and Gaetano the glover, who had killed his wife Annarella
with a kick on the stomach when she was two months gone with child:
but no one knew anything about it except his children, who hated
their father, as every Friday he promised to kill them also, if they
did not give him money. All--all of them were at death's door, yet
living on, amidst the pinching of need and the canker of shame. And
he, finally, who had his family there in the little house waiting,
while he had not the courage to go back, feeling that the first
announcement of their misfortune would burn his lips. It was all one
chastisement, one frightful punishment--that is to say, the hand of
the Lord bearing heavily on the wicked, the guilty, and striking
them to the seventh generation; or, rather, the same sin, the same
guilt, that infamous, cursed gambling, had got to be an instrument
of chastisement against those who had made an idol of it; for the
gambling passion, like all others that are outside of life and real
things, had the germ, the seed of bitter repentance, in the vice
itself. They were struck where they had sinned, or, rather, by the
sin itself. It was just one long burst of weeping from all eyes, even
the purest ones, a burst of sobs from the cleanest lips; a crowd
of poor, honest, innocent creatures struggling amidst hunger and
death, paying for others' mistakes, giving the guilty the remorseful
thought that they had cast the people they loved best into this great
abyss. Not one safe, not one, of those who had given up their life
to gambling, to infamous, wicked gambling, that eater-up of blood
and money. Not even he or his family were safe; he, too, was broken;
his children were to be reduced to holding out their hands. The
punishment was too great; it was unbearable. What had he done to have
to go to prison like an evil-doer, that his wife should be ashamed
of belonging to him, and his children would never mention his name?
What had he done to have to stay there in the street like a beggar,
who dare not go back to his den, having got no alms from hard-hearted
men? Ah! it was too much, too much! What fault had he committed?
A couple of policemen went through Marina Street, and cast searching
glances into the darkness of the footpaths in Villa del Popolo; but
the shadows were deep, and the men did not notice Don Crescenzio
lying at full length on a seat. But he, by a quick change of scene,
saw before him his lottery shop in Nunzio Lane, on glowing Friday
evenings and anxious Saturday mornings, when the gamblers crowded to
the three wickets in his shop, their eyes lighted up by hope, their
hands quivering with emotion. He saw again the placards in blue and
red letters that incited gamblers to bring more money to the lottery.
He saw again the number of advertisements of Cabalists' newspapers
and the mottoes: 'So you will see me'; 'It will be your fortune';
'The people's treasure'; 'The infallible'; 'The secret unveiled';
'The wheel of fortune.' He remembered the medium's frequent visits
and his fatal intimacy with all the other Cabalists, spiritual
brothers, and mathematicians, who excited the gamblers with their
strange jargon and impostures. He saw it again at Christmas and
Easter weeks, when the gambling became wild, fierce; for people have
such a longing to get into the long-dreamt-of Land of Cockayne. And
he always saw himself pleased with their illusions that ended in a
sad disappointment; pleased that that mirage should blind the weak,
the foolish, the sick, the poor, the sanguine--all those who live for
the Land of Cockayne; pleased that everyone should get the infection,
that no one was safe; quite delighted when, at great festivals,
the rage increased and the stakes augmented his percentage. He saw
it all clearly: his own figure bending to write the cursed ciphers
and the lying promises in the ledger, the gamblers' crimson or pale
faces distorted by passion. He bowed his head, crushed, feeling
he had deserved the punishment, he himself, his family, on to the
seventh generation. The lottery was a disgrace that led to illness,
wretchedness, prison--every sort of dishonour and death. And he had
kept a shop for the infamous thing!