Dear Farina, this is not a story, but the outline of a story.
It will at least have the merit of being short, and of having fact for
its foundation; it is a human document, as the phrase goes
nowadays:--interesting perhaps for you and for all those who study the
mighty book of the heart. I will tell it just as I found it among the
country paths, and in almost the same simple and picturesque words
that characterize the tales of the people; and really you will prefer
to find yourself facing the bare and unadulterated fact rather than
being obliged to read between the lines of the book through the
author's spectacles.
The simple truth of human life will always make us thoughtful; will
always have the effectiveness of reality, of genuine tears, of the
fevers and sensations that have inflicted the flesh. The mysterious
processes whereby conflicting passions mingle, develop and mature,
will long constitute the chief fascination in the study of that
psychological phenomenon called the plot of a story, and which modern
analysis tries to follow with scientific care, through the hidden
paths of oftentimes apparently contradictory complications.
Of the one that I am going to tell you to-day I shall only narrate the
starting point and the ending, and that will suffice for you, as,
perchance, some day it will suffice for all.
We replace the artistic method to which we owe so many glorious
masterpieces by a different method, more painstaking and more
recondite; we willingly sacrifice the effect of the catastrophe, of
the psychological result as it was seen through an almost divine
intuition by the great artists of the past, and employ instead a
logical development, inexorably necessary, less unexpected, less
dramatic, but not less fatalistic; we are more modest, if not more
humble; but the conquests that we make with our psychological verities
will not be any less useful to the art of the future. Supposing such
perfection in the study of the passions should be ever attained that
it would be useless to go further in the study of the interior man,
will the science of the human heart, the fruit of the new art, so far
and so universally develop all the resources of the imagination that
in the future the only romances written will be "Various Facts?"
I have a firm belief that the triumph of the Novel, the completest and
most human of all the works of art, will increase until the affinity
and cohesion of all its parts will be so perfect, that the process of
its creation will remain a mystery like the development of human
passions; I have a firm belief that the harmony of its forms will be
so absolute, the sincerity of its reality so evident, its method and
justification so deeply rooted, that the artist's hand will remain
absolutely invisible.
Then the romance will seem to portray a real event, and the work of
art will apparently have come about by itself, spontaneously springing
into being and maturing like a natural fact, without any point of
contact with its author. It will not have preserved in its living form
any stamp of the mind in which it originated, any shade of the eye
that beheld it, any trace of the lips that murmured the first words
thereof as the creative fiat; it will exist by its own reason, by the
mere fact that it is as it should be and must be, palpitating with
life and as immutable as a statue of bronze, the author of which has
had the divine courage of eclipsing himself and disappearing in his
immortal work.
* * * * *
A few years ago, down by the Simeto, they were giving chase to a
brigand, a certain Gramigna,[1] if I am not mistaken, a name as cursed
as the weed that bears it. The man had left behind him, from one end
of the province to the other, the terror of his evil reputation.
Carabineers, _compagni d'armi_, and cavalry-men had been on his track
for two months, without ever succeeding in putting their claws on him;
he was alone, but was equal to ten, and the evil plant threatened to
take firm root.
[1] Gramigna means dog's-tail-grass.
Moreover the harvest-time was approaching, the crops already covered
the fields, the ears bent over and were calling to the reapers, who
indeed had their reaping-hooks in their hands, and yet not a single
proprietor dared show his nose over the hedge of his estate, for fear
of meeting Gramigna, who might be stretched out among the furrows
with his carbine between his legs, ready to blow off the head of the
first person who should venture to meddle with his affairs.
Thus the complaints were general. Then the prefect summoned all those
gentlemen of the district--carabineers and companies of armed men and
told them two words of the kind that makes men prick up their ears.
The next day an earthquake in every nook and corner:--patrols,
squadrons, scouts for every ditch and behind every wall; they hunted
him by day, by night, on foot, on horseback, by telegraph, as if he
had been a wild beast! Gramigna eluded them every time, and replied
with shots if they came too close on his track.
In the fields, in the villages, among the factories, under the signs
of country taverns, wherever people met, Gramigna was the only topic
of conversation,--that wild chase, that desperate flight. The
carabineers' horses returned dead-tired; the soldiers threw
themselves down in utter weariness on the ground when they got back to
the stables; the patrols slept wherever chance offered; Gramigna alone
was never tired, never slept, kept always on the wing, climbed down
precipices, slipped through the harvest-fields, crept on all fours
among the prickly pear-trees,[2] made his way out of danger like a
wolf by means of the hidden channels of the torrents.
[2] Fichidindia, also called Indian figs.
The chief argument of every discourse at the cross roads, before the
village entrances, was the devouring thirst from which the fugitive
must suffer in the immense, barren plain, under the June sun. The lazy
loungers opened wide their eyes.
Peppa, one of the prettiest girls of Licodia, was expecting at that
time soon to marry _compare_ Finu, called "_Candela di sego_" (the
tallow-candle), who had landed property and a bay mule, and was a
tall young man, handsome as the sun, who carried the standard of Santa
Margherita without bending his back, as though he were a pillar.
Peppa's mother shed tears of delight over the good fortune that had
befallen her daughter, and spent her time in looking over and over the
bride's effects in the trunk, all white linen and of the nicest
quality, like a queen's, and earrings that would hang down to the
shoulders and gold rings for all the ten fingers of both hands; more
money than Santa Margherita could have ever had--and so they were to
have been married on Santa Margherita's day, which would fall in June,
after the hay had been harvested.
"Candela di Sego," on his way back from the field, used every evening
to leave his mule at Peppa's front door and go in to tell how the
crops promised to be a veritable enchantment, unless Gramigna set them
on fire, and the lattice over against the bed would not be large
enough to hold all the grain, and that it seemed to him a thousand
years off before he should carry home his bride on the crupper of his
bay mule.