himself. The people were standing about in groups, telling their beads
and chanting litanies. When they saw him they were near falling upon
him, as the cause of the mischief. Was it not he who had turned the
whole village upside down, with that accursed pendulum of his? The whole
scene had a depressing effect on him, however much he might try to keep
up his courage, and convince his fellow-townsmen of the great benefits
of his warning, which might, for all they knew, have been the saving of
many lives.
But at noon on the following day nothing had yet happened.
Every quarter of an hour some one of the bravest came in from the
country to the telegraph office, to find out how things were going. The
pendulum still vibrated—but there were no news of the predicted
earthquake.
[Illustration]
The evening came. Not the ghost of an earthquake! A few, here and there,
began to turn the thing into ridicule. The syndic—who had a head on his
shoulders—had sent a boy to the Pietranera. When the boy returned with
Pippo Corradi’s answer, “It’s all nonsense—make your minds easy!” there
was an explosion of “Oh!—oh!—oh!” and those who had been most
frightened, and felt that they had been made fools of, began to yell,
“Imbecile! Blockhead! Idiot!”
They rushed in a tumultuous noisy crowd to the telegraph office; and had
they not met with the lieutenant of the Carbineers, who had hastened up
on receipt of a cipher telegram from the chief constable, who knows how
the matter might have ended for Nino d’Arco?
“What on earth have you been doing?” said the lieutenant. “You have been
disturbing the public peace.”
Nino was petrified for a moment; then, seeking to excuse himself by
proof positive, pointed to the pendulum.
“Well?” said the lieutenant.
“Look—it moves!”
“You must be seeing double. There is nothing moving here.”
“Do look carefully.”
“Allow me.... Nothing moving!”
In fact, the pendulum had stopped. Nino would not believe his own eyes.
“I confiscate it, for the present!” cried the lieutenant.
And, raising the glass of the case, he took out the tube in which the
pendulum was fixed.
“When one is as ignorant as you, sir, ...” Every one present applauded
vigorously. “And I shall report the matter to headquarters.”
To Nino it mattered nothing that the crowd should applaud and hiss, or
that the lieutenant of the Carbineers should report him at headquarters.
He was thinking only of Pippo Corradi, and how he would laugh behind his
back when he heard it; and the tears stood in his eyes.
And, as though all this had not been enough, behold, on the following
day, the following message clicked along the wires from Corradi:—
“To-day, 2 P.M., upward shock of first degree, lasting three seconds;
followed, after interval of seven seconds, by undulatory shock,
south-north, also first degree, lasting five seconds. No damage.”
“Infamous fate!” stammered Nino d’Arco. And he shut off the current, to
escape from the clicks which seemed to deride him.
_Luigi Capuana._
_QUACQUARÀ._
[Illustration]
Poor Don Mario! No sooner was he seen coming round the corner with his
rusty, narrow-brimmed, stove-pipe hat, nearly a foot high, and his
overcoat with long tails fluttering in the wind, than every one—first
the boys, then the men, the loafers on Piazza Buglio, and even the
gentlemen at the Casino—began to salute him, on every side, with the cry
of the quail, “_Quacquarà! Quacquarà!_” just because they knew that it
enraged him.
He stopped and stood at bay, staring round, brandishing his great
cudgel, and shaking his head threateningly. Then he would take two or
three steps forward, looking fixedly at them, in order to discover one
or other of the impudent wretches who so far forgot the respect due to
him, the son and grandson of lawyers—to him who stood a hundred times
higher than all those gentlemen of the Casino.... But in vain! On the
right hand and the left, before and behind, rose the shouts and
whistles, “_Quacquarà! Quacquarà!_”
“Don’t excite yourself! Let them shout!”
“If I do not kill some one, they will never be quiet!”
“Do you want to go to the convict prison for nothing?”
“I will send them there!”
He became red as a turkey-cock, raving and gesticulating and foaming at
the mouth.
“They would be quiet enough, if you did not get angry.”
“They are cowards! Why don’t they come out like men, and say it to my
face?”
“_Quacquarà!_”——
“Ah! would you hit a child?” This time, if they had not stopped him, he
would have broken the head of the barber’s boy, who had boldly
approached him near enough to utter the objectionable cry under his very
nose. There was trouble enough before Don Mario would let himself be
dragged away into the chemist’s shop, which was filled with a laughing
crowd. Vito, the chemist’s young man, came forward, very seriously, and
said to him—
“What does it matter if they _do_ say _Quacquarà_ to you? You don’t
happen to be a quail, do you?”
Don Mario turned furious eyes on him.
“Well; it’s not as if they called you a thief!”
“I am a gentleman, and the son of a gentleman.”
“Well? What does _Quacquarà_ mean? Nothing at all. _Quacquarà_ let it
be!”
The chemist and the others present were writhing in convulsions of
suppressed laughter at the serious countenance of Vito, who, under the
pretext of lecturing Don Mario for his folly, kept on repeating the
quail’s cry to his very face, without his perceiving that it was done on
purpose.
“Now I,” said he, “if a man were to cry _Quacquarà_ after me, I would
give him a halfpenny every time. _Quacquarà! Quacquarà!_ Shout
yourselves hoarse, if you like!”
“And, meanwhile, you scoundrel, you’re repeating it to my face,” yelled
Don Mario, as he raised his cudgel, perceiving at last that he had been
made a fool of. At this point the chemist, who was terrified for the
safety of his plate-glass windows, thought it time to interfere; and,
taking his arm, drew him out of the shop, condoling with his grievances,
and soothing his ruffled feelings as well as he could.
“Come out this way; no one will see you.”
“Am I to hide myself? To please those louts? I am a gentleman, and the
son of a gentleman!”
True—very true! The Majori had always been respectable people, son
succeeding father in the notary’s office from generation to generation,
up to the year 1819; in which year there issued forth from the infernal
regions that judgment of Heaven called the Code Napoléon, specially
created for the despair of the notary Majori, Don Mario’s father, who
never could understand it, and was forced to retire from his profession.
“What? No more Latin formulas?... And documents to be headed ‘In the
King’s Name’! But what has his Majesty the King to do with private
contracts?”
And he relieved his conscience by having no more to do with the whole
business. And so the ink had dried up in the great brass inkstand in his
office, and the quill pens were all worn out; and the quiet in the house
contrasted strangely with the bustle there had been formerly, when every
one came to consult him, for he was honesty in person, and never set
down on the papers a single word more or less than the interested
parties wished. And thus, Don Mario, who had hitherto acted as clerk in
his father’s office, and knew by heart all the Latin formulas, without
understanding a syllable thereof, found his occupation gone. So did his
brother Don Ignazio, who was not much more capable than himself; and
after the old notary had died of a broken heart, on account of that
unholy Code which had no Latin formulas, and insisted on having
documents headed _In the King’s Name_, the two brothers eked out a
sordid livelihood on the little they inherited from him. But they were
proud in their honourable poverty, and rigidly faithful to the past,
even in their dress, continuing for a time to wear their old clothes,
carefully brushed and mended, regardless of the fact that they were out
of fashion and excited ridicule.
Don Ignazio, however, could not stand it long. When his beaver hat
seemed to him quite useless, and his overcoat too threadbare, he bought
a second-hand hat for a few pence from Don Saverio, the old-clothes
dealer, and a coat which had also been worn already, but presented a
better appearance than his old one. Don Mario, on the other hand, stood
firm, and went about in his rusty tall hat and long coat of half a
century ago, shabby and darned, but without a spot. He was not going to
derogate from his past—he, the son and grandson of notaries.
Then came hard times,—bad harvests,—the epidemic of 1837,—the
cholera,—the revolution of ’48;—and the two brothers passed disagreeable
days and still more unpleasant nights, racking their brains for the
means of procuring a glass of wine for the morrow, or a little oil for
the salad or the soup.
“To-morrow I will go to So-and-so,” Don Mario would say. “Meanwhile we
must sweep out the house.”
They did everything themselves; and while Don Ignazio cut up an onion to
put into the evening’s salad, Don Mario, in his father’s indoor coat,
all faded and mended, began carefully to sweep the rooms like a
housemaid. He dusted the rickety tables and the old ragged,
leather-covered arm-chairs; and then, having gathered up all the dirt
into a basket, he would cautiously open the door, to make sure there was
no one within sight, and, late at night, carried it out and deposited it
behind the wall of a ruined house which had become the dust-bin of the
neighbourhood.
And on the way he would pick up stones, cabbage-stumps, bits of orange
or pumpkin-peel, so as to clean up the street also, seeing that no one
troubled about it, every one being too much occupied with his or her own
business to pay any attention to cleanliness. Cleanliness was his fixed
idea—indoors and out. It often happened that Don Ignazio, finding that
he was late in coming home, was forced to go out and call him in to
supper.
“You are not the public scavenger, are you?”
“Cleanliness is a commandment of the Lord!” Don Mario would reply.
And, having washed his hands, he sat down to the meagre supper of onion
salad and bread as if it had been the daintiest of dishes.
“This is Donna Rosa’s oil; and do you know there is no more left?” said
Don Ignazio one evening between two mouthfuls.
“To-morrow I will go to the Cavaliere!”
“But his father was a peasant farmer!”
“His grandfather was a day labourer!”
“And now he is made of money!”
“His grandfather became the Prince’s agent—and made his fortune.”
“Let us go to bed; the light is going out.”
They had to economise even their candles. But afterwards, in the dark,
the interrupted conversation was continued—not very consecutively—from
one bed to another.
“Have you seen the band in their new uniforms?”
“Yes.... Farmer Cola has got in a hundred bushels of grain this year.”
“Who knows if it is true? Much good may it do him!”
“To-morrow I will go to the Cavaliere for some oil.”...
“The wine is all gone, too.”
“I will go for the wine as well.... _Ave Maria!_”
“_Pater Noster!_” And so they went to sleep.
In the morning, after carefully brushing his shabby and much-mended coat
and his rusty hat, Don Mario dressed hastily and began his day by going
to mass at San Francesco.... This ceremony over, he proceeded on his
errand, hugging the oil-flask tightly under his coat.
He presented himself with humble and ceremonious courtesy.
“Is the Cavaliere at home?”
“No, but his lady is.”
“Announce me to the lady.”
Now all the domestics in the place knew perfectly well the meaning of a
visit from Don Mario, and at most houses they would leave him to wait in
the anteroom, or say to him without more ado—
“Give me the bottle, Don Mario.”
It often happened that while they were filling it for him he could not
control himself at the sight of the disorder in the room where they left
him. He would mount a chair in order to remove, with the end of his
stick, the cobwebs clustering on the ceiling; and if he found a broom
within reach of his hand—what was to be done? he could not resist!—he
began to sweep the floor, to dust the pictures, or to pick up the scraps
of paper or stuff scattered about.
“What are you doing, Don Mario?”
“The Lord has commanded us to be clean.... Thank the lady for me!”
Donna Rosa, who was amused with him and his ways, always had him shown
up to the drawing-room, and asked him to sit down.
“How are you, dear Don Mario?”
“Well, thank God. And how is your Excellency?”
“As well as most old women, dear Don Mario!”
“None are old but those that die. Your Excellency is so charitable, that
you ought to be spared for a hundred years to come.”
Donna Rosa kept up the conversation as though she had no idea of the
real object of this visit; and Don Mario, still hugging his bottle,
awaited the favourable moment for presenting his request without
appearing troublesome. From time to time, after wriggling on his chair,
as if in pain, for a few minutes, he would rise, and with “Excuse me, my
lady!” wipe the dust from a table, or stoop to pick up a flake of wool,
or bit of thread from the floor, and throw it out of the window,—as
though the sight of these things actually made him feel ill.
“Oh! never mind, Don Mario!”
“The Lord has commanded us to be clean.... I had come....”
“How does your brother like his new employment?” Donna Rosa interrupted
him, one day.
“Very much indeed.”
“You ought to try and get appointed inspector of weights yourself. There
is one wanted at the Archi mill.”
“But the addition, madam! the addition! Ignazio knows how to do it!”
He turned up his eyes, with a sigh—as if this arithmetical process were
a most complicated calculation.
“Poor Ignazio!” he went on. “He comes back from the mill so tired! Just
imagine, madam—four miles uphill, on foot!... I had come for this....”
And he produced the flask.
“With pleasure!” Who was there that could say “No” to Don Mario?
But when that unfortunate addition was mentioned, not even the gift of a
bottle of wine could restore him to good humour. He had tried so many
times to do an addition sum. The tens were the difficulty.
“Nine and one are ten.... Very good!... But ... put down nought and
carry one.... Why carry one if there are ten?”
He had found it utterly impossible to understand this. And yet he was no
fool. You should have heard him read, quite correctly, all those old
legal documents, with their strange Latin abbreviations, which the
modern notaries and advocates could not succeed in deciphering. It is
true that he recited them parrot-fashion, without understanding them;
but all the same he could earn half a franc at a time when required for
this service; and this meant two _litres_ of wine and half a _kilo_ of
lamb—quite a festive meal, although, nowadays, with Don Ignazio’s
position, the two brothers were not quite so badly off as before.
They would even have been happy if it had not been for the irritating
behaviour of the street boys. One day matters reached a crisis. Don
Mario, administering a cuff to an ill-conditioned fellow who assaulted
him with the cry of _Quacquarà_, received the same back with interest,
and got his coat torn into the bargain. The magistrate, before whom the
case was brought, kept the vagabond under arrest for a couple of hours,
and got up a subscription at the Casino, to present Don Mario with a new
coat and hat. But the latter would never consent to be measured for it,
and when the coat—cut out by guess-work—was sent him, together with the
most spick and span of hats, he thanked the donors politely, and sent
the whole back.
“You have been a fool!” said his brother, who, on his return from the
mill that evening, found him intent on repairing his ancient garment.
“You can’t go out again in that.”
“I shall stay at home,” replied Don Mario loftily.
And he was no longer seen about the town.
He passed his days sitting on the front doorstep, talking to the
neighbours, or wandering through the many empty rooms of the dilapidated
house. No repairs had been undertaken for years past; the shutters were
loose on their hinges. Two floors had given way, and had to be passed by
means of planks, laid like bridges from one room to another; and the
tiles were off the roof in many places, so that some of the upper rooms
were flooded when it rained.
“Sell half the house,” said one of the neighbours; “it is much too large
for you two alone!”
But that evening, discussing the matter at supper, Don Mario and Don
Ignazio found themselves greatly embarrassed.
“Sell! Easily said.... But what? The room that had been their father’s
office?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Don Mario indignantly.
It is true that the big volumes, bound in dark leather, were no longer
in the shelves all round the walls. The government had taken possession
of them, as though they had been its property, and not that of the
notaries, who had drawn up all those documents. But what matter? The
shelves, moth-eaten and rickety, reduced to receptacles for dishes,
frying-pans, and utensils of all sorts, remained, to their eyes, living
witnesses, as it were, to past glories. The two brothers looked at one
another.
“Was it possible?... Well.... What _should_ they sell? Their
grandmother’s room?”
A mysterious chamber, which had been kept locked for seventy years, and
of which now even the key was lost. Their grandfather’s wife—a saint on
earth—had died there, and the widower had ordered it to be shut up, in
sign of perpetual mourning. Every night the mice kept up a terrible
racket there. But what matter? A master notary—one of the Majori—had
willed that no one should open it and no one had done so. Were _they_ to
profane it? They were both agreed ... it was impossible!
“What then? The portrait-room?”
There were arranged on its walls half-a-dozen canvases, blackened with
years and smoke, on which you could make out—here, the severe profile of
Don Gasparo Majori, 1592; there, the grey eyes, white moustache, and
pointed beard of Don Carlo, 1690; beside it, the wig and round shaven
face of Don Paolo, 1687; and further on, the lean and narrow head of Don
Antonio, 1805, framed in an enormous collar, with white neckcloth, and
showy waistcoat with watch-chain and seals dangling from its pockets.
Don Mario knew by heart the life, death, and miracles of each one, and
so did Don Ignazio.
Could they turn them out of their own house? No; it was impossible.
Better let the whole fall into ruins.
They went to bed and put out the light.
“Well, it will last our time. We are old, Mario!”
“You are two years older than I!”
“... To-morrow, Notary Patrizio is coming to get an old deed read out to
him.”
“So we shall be able to buy half a _kilo_ of meat.”
“Saverio the butcher cheats in his weights. I shall keep my eyes open.”
“I have lent the rolling-pin to Comare Nina.”
“I will get the wine from Scatá.... Vittoria wine this time.... _Pater
Noster!_”
“_Ave Maria!_”
So they went to sleep.
They were growing old. Ignazio was right.
Don Mario sometimes wondered which of the two would die first, and the
thought left him sad and depressed.
“I am the younger.... But, after me, the house will go to distant
relatives, ... they will divide it up and sell it.... But, after all,
what does it matter to us? We shall both be gone then.... We are the
real Majori; when we are dead, the world is dead!”
Yet he went on sweeping out the tumble-down old house with the same
tenderness and care as ever, removing the cobwebs from the walls, and
dusting the moth-eaten and ragged remnants of furniture; driving a nail
into the back of a chair or the leg of a table; pasting a sheet of oiled
paper in the place of a missing window-pane, and carrying out the dust
and rubbish as usual, late at night.
Moreover, since he now frequently went to sleep in the daytime—with the
loneliness, and having nothing to do—he sometimes passed the night out
of doors, sweeping the whole length and breadth of the street, and
pleased to hear the wonder of the neighbourhood next morning, and have
people say to him—
“The angel passed by last night. Is it so, Don Mario?”
He would smile, without replying. He was now quite resigned to his
voluntary imprisonment, as he could no longer wear his old coat and hat,
which were still there, quite spotless and free from dust, though
perfectly useless.
One day, however, Don Mario lost all his peace of mind.
Standing at a window in the portrait-room, he had been looking along the
street at Reina’s house, with its fantastically-sculptured gateway and
the twisted stone monsters.
“A fine palace—quite a royal one,” said Don Mario, who had never seen
anything richer or more beautiful in his life.
“Yet, how was it the proprietor had never noticed those tufts of
pellitory growing between the carvings over the arch of the great
gateway, quite spoiling the building? It was a sin and a shame!”
Scarcely had Don Ignazio come home from the mill that evening, tired and
out of breath, when his brother said to him—
“Look here; you ought to go to Signor Reina. He is letting nasty weeds
grow between the carvings of the gateway, under the middle balcony. It
quite worries one to see them.”
“Well?”
“You ought to tell him of it—at least when you meet him again.”
“I will tell him.”
Don Ignazio, quite worn out with his long walk, had other matters to
think of; he wanted to have his supper and go to bed.
But from that day he too got no peace. Every evening, when he came home,
Don Mario never failed to ask him, even before he had laid aside his
stick: “Have you spoken to Reina?”
“No.”
“Go and tell him at once. It is a pity; those weeds are spoiling the
building.”
They were quite an eyesore to him; he could not make out how Reina could
put up with such a sacrilege. And several times a day he would go to the
attic window, mounting a pair of steps at the risk of his neck, in order
to look out. Those weeds were always there! They grew from day to day;
they made great bushes that waved in the wind. If they had been fungous
growths in the interior of his own system, he could not have suffered
more from them.
“Have you told Reina about them?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He swore at me.”
That night Don Mario never closed his eyes. As soon as he found that his
brother was snoring, then he lit the lamp, dressed himself, took the
steps on his shoulder, which they nearly dislocated, and made his way to
Reina’s house, keeping in the shadow of the wall, and avoiding the
moonlight, as if he had been a burglar.
As indeed the gendarmes thought him when they came upon him, perched on
the top of the gateway, pulling away for dear life at the parasitic
herbs, in spite of the proprietor, who did not care whether they grew
there or not.
“What are you doing up there?”
[Illustration]
“I am pulling out these weeds.”
“Come down.”
“Let me finish.”
“Come down, I tell you!”
At this unceremonious summons poor Don Mario had to descend, leaving
several bushes of pellitory to spoil the beautiful building
unchecked....
They were nearly taking him off to the police station!... And all for a
good action! He died within three months, with the nightmare of those
weeds weighing on his heart.... Poor old Don Mario!
_Luigi Capuana._
_THE EXCAVATIONS OF MASTRO ROCCO._
Ever since he had taken it into his head to “take off the charm,” in the
_Grotto of the Seven Gates_, Mastro Rocco had given up his
pork-butcher’s shop, and was always on the top of the hill, baking his
hump-back in the sun, digging here and there from morning to night, to
find some trace of the treasure which the Saracens had enchanted in that
neighbourhood.
Mastro Rocco used to talk as though he had seen it with his little
red-rimmed eyes, and touched it with the horny hands which now wielded
the spade both day and night, excavating ancient tombs,—by day on his
own little plot of ground which looked like the destruction of
Jerusalem—all yawning holes and heaps of earth;—by night, on his
neighbours’ farms, by moonlight, or by that of a lantern, when there was
no moon; for the neighbours did not like their ground cut up, and
laughed at his finds of useless earthen vessels, and old coins with
which you could not even buy a pennyworth of bread.
Mastro Rocco laughed to himself at these ignorant rustics who understood
nothing. _He_ knew, and had proved it, that those earthen vases,
especially if they had figures on them, and that oxidised money, could
be speedily converted into good coin of the realm, when he carried them
to Baron Padullo, who put on his spectacles to examine them, and then
opened certain huge books, as big as missals, and full of pictures, to
make comparisons. Thus he had become convinced that the trade of selling
ham and sausages was far inferior to that of digging up antiquities....
* * * * *
One day he found some beautiful terra-cotta figures, for which the baron
paid him ten _scudi_. Who could tell what they might be worth, when the
old gentleman could bring himself to give as much as that.