stand it!” said Modesta, who was seated close by, counting the
mouthfuls.
“Well then, Modesta, my dear,” said Phœbus, “when his reverence says,
‘Modesta, give the blind man a piece of bread and some meat, poor
fellow!’ why do you give me nothing but little dry crusts and
cheese-parings? Do you take me for a mouse, Modesta?”
“Blind man, blind man, you are never satisfied!”
“Bless your reverence!” said Modesta, “it would take a great deal to
satisfy him!”
“Nay, ’twould take little enough. I would be quite content if I had the
sight of my eyes again.”
“Good luck to you!” exclaimed the syndic at last, after having for some
time looked on in admiring silence at the process of mastication and
deglutition. “The like of us would be dead in three days if they ate in
that fashion!”
“Just try a little abstinence!” said Doctor Phœbus. “Try living all the
year round on wild herbs and roots boiled without salt, or roasted in
the ashes. That’s my prescription for you, sir!”
“Well, well,” said the syndic, “I would willingly exchange my life for
yours. You have no expenses; you pay no taxes—do you think that a small
thing? Now, I have to spend the very soul out of my body; a little for
the cat and a little for the dog, and what remains for me? At the end of
the year—so much received, so much spent, everything paid, and nothing
over!”
“I should just like to take you by the neck and hold you down to our
life for a month or so, so that you could try it!”
“Is that the way to speak to me?” said the syndic, somewhat offended.
“You ought to be more respectful.”
“Oh! you must not think, my dear sir,” said the archdeacon, “that the
blind man is really wanting in respect towards the authorities. Not at
all! He may be a little quick-tempered now and then, but when he
recollects himself he is a perfect lamb!”
“A kind of lamb which——” began the Franciscan.
“What do you expect?” interrupted Phœbus. “I used to be as sweet as
sugar; but now I am a little spoilt with doing nothing. Now that I have
tried it I find, in truth, that the labour of a porter is better than
the idleness of a gentleman. Just set me to work in your factory, sir;
let me turn the wheel, and give me thirty centimes a day, and you’ll see
how the blind man works!”
“Oh! indeed; you and your blarney!” retorted the syndic. “Look here, I
would willingly help you, but I cannot. I shall have to shut up the
works soon, to turn off every one, even my cook. Are they making game of
us with these taxes? I don’t know how we can go on; I haven’t ten
shillings left in the world. It is not my place as syndic to say so, but
the fault certainly lies with the Government....”
“Heigho!” said the blind man, “we shall be disappointed indeed, if we
are putting our trust in you, Mr. Government!”
“You should put your trust in Providence, young man,” said the preaching
friar, “and come and hear my sermons!”
“Indeed and he shall come to the sermons, and be hanged to him!”
exclaimed the archdeacon. “I’ll give him a couple of eggs for every
sermon; at Easter, so many sermons and so many eggs. But if you miss one
sermon, you blind rascal, you shall get nothing at all!”
“Put it in writing, sir!”
“Why, you blind scoundrel, are you afraid of my dying first?”
“You, sir?—why, you’ll live to the age of Noah on the clerical soups
that Modesta makes for you! No; it’s I that may die before Easter, and I
should like to bequeath that little legacy of eggs to my family!”
“Come, come, Modesta! never mind the blind man; it’s time to clear the
table. Don’t sit there keeping the brazier warm.”
“Sakes alive!” exclaimed Modesta, looking into the dish; “there were
sixty, and there are only eleven left!”
“I’m very sorry I didn’t eat them too!” replied Phœbus, “but I’ll come
to breakfast after the sermon to-morrow and finish them!”
“Yes, come by all means; they’ll just do for you!” said the archdeacon,
giving a glance at the dish.
“Are they made of meat or potatoes?” asked the Franciscan, with another
great pinch of snuff.
“Of meat, of meat,” said Modesta testily.
“Yes, there’s just enough meat to swear by!” said Phœbus.
“Even though there were but a piece the size of a pin’s head,” said the
friar as he took another pinch, “that would be enough! To-morrow, you
know, archdeacon, it’s a black vigil.”
“The friar is right! Do you want to go to hell for eating _polpette_
to-morrow! Persicomele! there’ll be no more _polpette_ now till next
year,—so good-bye, my fine fellow! Modesta, light the syndic to the
door. Don’t you see that he has put on his cloak, and wants to go?
Good-night, sir!”
“Good-night, archdeacon!” said the syndic, and then turned to whisper in
his ear, “By-the-bye, the chaplain always stands up for all bad
characters ... and his niece....”
“Why, whatever has the chaplain done to you? Modesta, light these other
people out!”
“Never mind me, I can see in the dark!” replied Phœbus, going towards
the door. “Modestina, dear, don’t you bother yourself with the light;
you’re using up too much oil; you should be saving with it, Modestina!”
“What are you thinking of, poor blind man?—such a trifle as that!” cried
Modesta. “Good gracious! we’re all of us baptised Christians, and a
little light costs nothing.”
The blind man, in going out, closed the door with such a tremendous bang
that he put out Modesta’s lamp; and returning to his disconsolate hut,
wished two or three apoplexies to that meddling vagabond of a friar who
had deprived him of those poor clothes and the remains of the supper,
with which it was the archdeacon’s annual custom to reward the four poor
wretches for their labours in the belfry. Having reached his house, he
told his wife the good tidings of the eggs at Easter, and fell asleep in
the time it takes to tell it. But that night he saw in his dreams
neither flowers, nor cities, nor seas bright in the sunshine. He dreamed
instead that he was the stout director of the manganese mines, and that
he was sitting in a nicely-warmed room at a well-spread table, and just
tasting the full flavour of a fat roast fowl. He was just at work on one
of the legs when his wife began to turn him over and call him to get up.
He struggled with his hands, feeling the director of the mines gradually
disappear, and a moment later he became aware that he was only blind
Phœbus. Then he hit himself a great thump on the head, and started up
because he heard the bells ringing for sermon. When he had got into
church he sat down close to the sacristy door, so that the archdeacon
might be sure to see him. The preacher seemed to be flinging squalls of
rain and wind, and all the devils of hell down from the pulpit on all
the crowded, uncovered heads. Phœbus paid no attention to him. When he
came out, certain good-for-nothing youngsters, loafing outside, shouted
after him—
“Phœbus! Phœbus! what has the preacher been saying?”
“I don’t know!” he replied. “I was thinking of the eggs!”
“By Bacchus! the archdeacon is quite right in thinking him a little
cracked! But I do believe that he would be a true believer if he saw the
Divine Master’s teachings practised a little better, and also a little
to his advantage!”
This was what the chaplain said to himself as he came out from the
service, with displeasure still written on his face, and also a certain
timid disgust, whether provoked by living men or by the dead, whom he
was constantly obliged to see, I do not know.
_Mario Pratesi._
_OUR SCHOOL AND SCHOOLMISTRESS._
We used to go to school, Sofia and I, with a certain Signora Romola.
They were very lavish with Greek and Roman names in our village in those
days. Teofilo, Pompeo, Lucrezia, Collatino, Quintilia, were appellations
frequently bestowed in baptism. Signora Romola was a strongly-built
woman, plump and ruddy of face, and with a soft voice, too soft indeed
for the air of severity which she wished to assume. It was her aim to
strike awe into us with a glance. In fact we scarcely dared to breathe
in her presence, by reason of that terrible glance which slowly swept
the class, and she always used to say that it was quite sufficient. “I
make them tremble with a glance,” she often told people; and as soon as
she made her majestic entrance into school there was immediate silence,
a fact of which she was very proud. They used to say she had been a
beauty in her youth; I would not be persuaded of the truth of this
statement. Her husband was Signor Capponio the chemist, who formed a
complete contrast to her. He was a long, thin, thread-paper of a man,
with a pair of great spectacles on his big nose, and sharp chin and
cheek-bones which seemed to make a triangle in his honest face. He
always wore a buffalo-skin cap, with a peak curved like a bird’s beak. I
always imagined that he must have come into the world in that cap; I
never saw him without it. He could play the flute, and often performed a
tune for us boys during our play-hour, stamping vivaciously with one
foot, and accompanying with his head, no less vivaciously, the motion of
his fingers on the keys. We stood around him with our noses in the air,
as though we had been gazing up at the top of a church tower, and held
out our arms trying to seize the instrument, whose construction we were
eager to examine; but, refusing to let go, he played on as vigorously as
before—or even more so—and at last made his escape, saying, “You’ll
spoil it! you’ll spoil it!” He had the name of a learned man; and he
must, by what I have heard, have understood something of botany; but I
think his reputation was really founded on certain sentences from
Hippocrates and Galen, in Latin, written up in gilt letters over the
shelves in his ancient shop. The gilding of the letters had turned black
by reason of the flies which swarmed there, on which, in the summer,
Capponio used to wage war—standing in the middle of his shop—by means of
a stick with long strips of paper attached to it. I do not remember one
of his many proverbs. He must have had a large stock of them, for it was
often said, “As Capponio says, with his proverb! Eh!—honest man—_he_
knows a lot about the world!” I used to think that the proverb was a
person very much like Capponio himself—buffalo-skin cap and all—but
still taller and more serious—appearing now here, now there—always
unexpected, and at other times invisible.
Capponio was a great institution among us. Whenever we saw him we rushed
up to him, dragging him by the skirts of his long, double-breasted,
snuff-coloured coat. And then he would lift us up to let us see
Lucca,[27] or show us how to turn somersaults. If, passing through the
school-room, he saw one of us on his knees, with the fool’s cap on his
head, or his eyes blindfolded, he would try to make fun of his wife’s
austerities. She would sometimes inflict punishments even more
humiliating than these—for instance, that most terrible one of all, of
having to make crosses on the ground with one’s tongue.
“Come, come no sorrow—
If you’re not cured to-day, it will cure you to-morrow!”
Capponio used to say, in a nasal tone, to make the children cease crying
and begin to laugh instead, which, in fact, they did; and Sora Romola,
who claimed an infallible knowledge of “how to bring up young people,”
grew uneasy and said that Capponio was getting us into very bad ways.
But we were fonder of Capponio than ever, especially as he was always
giving us something—a bunch of grapes, an orange, a pomegranate, or
sticks of barley-sugar made by himself. I was particularly fond of these
last. In fact, I once succeeded in perpetrating a crime which weighed
heavily on my mind. One day I was not allowed to go home at twelve, but
kept in to learn my lessons alone, in school. Tired of catching flies, I
went down very softly into the shop while Capponio was at dinner. There
was no one there but a big cat comfortably asleep on the counter, near
the scales. I felt certain that the cat would not report my theft to any
one, and very quickly, with my heart beating in a way that is not to be
described, I filled my pockets with the delicious transparent morsels,
and ate at least half a jar full, being determined, for once in my life,
to have really as many as I wanted. But Capponio found it out; and,
laying the blame on Camillo, the shop boy, ran after him and seized him
by the ear, crying, “Ah! you greedy rascal! I’ve caught you!” When I saw
the innocent accused I could hold out no longer, and, coming forward, I
blurted out, “It was I!” ... I remembered standing there, very red, with
my eyes on the ground, and expecting a sound box on the ear. But
Capponio only said, “Will you promise me not to do it again?” “Yes,
sir.” “Mind you don’t, then. This time I will forgive you, because you
have told the truth; but if you ever do it again I shall tell Sora
Romola, and then woe be to you!”
_Mario Pratesi._
_LOCAL JEALOUSIES._
Men, as well as women, speak ill of their neighbours; there is no
denying that fact. But they can never do it as efficiently, and, in any
case, they do not do it for the same reason. Men nearly always speak ill
of others because they believe themselves greatly superior to those
others; and if there is a race in the world, every individual of which
believes that the phrase which calls man the lord of creation was made
for his own personal use, that race is the Tuscan. Yesterday evening I
was listening attentively to a dialogue between a Livornese and a
Florentine seated at a table in the Giardino Meyeri. The conversation
turned on the English nation.
“The English,” said the Livornese, “are a selfish, heartless nation,
who, if the world were on fire, would think that Providence had done it
on purpose that they might heat the boilers of their steam-engines
without expense!” “That is true,” replied the other; “the French——”
“Worse than ever!” interrupted the first; “a nation of barbers, of
Robert Macaires, who took Nice and Savoy out of our pockets—yes, sir,
out of our pockets, as a pickpocket does a handkerchief. The
Spaniards—boastful, proud, vain, ignorant, bigoted, talkers. Come!
speaking quite honestly, the Italians are the first people in the world,
after all! It’s true that the Piedmontese are a little hard, the Genoese
too keen after money, the Neapolitans superstitious, the Sicilians
ferocious, and that the proverb says: ‘Beware of a red-haired Venetian,
a black-haired Lombard, and any kind of a Romagnole!’ Every one must
agree that Tuscany is the garden of Italy, as Italy is the garden of the
world, and that the Tuscans, speaking without conceit, are the pearls of
mankind!”
“The home of civilisation is in Tuscany,” he went on. “I have heard that
said since my childhood, and always by Tuscans, who surely ought to
know! Not that I would not admit that the Pistojans are all voice and
pen, that the Aretines are excessively devout, not to say hypocrites,
that the Siennese are vain, and the Pisans—why, Dante called them ‘the
scorn of nations,’ and the Florentines—well! excuse me, a little given
to loud talking and short of action ... but the Livornese—ah! the
Livornese are really the flower of the Tuscans!... And you may say what
you please, but the finest street in Livorno is Via Vittorio Emmanuele,
where I live.... I don’t know how any one can stay at Livorno and not
have a house in that street.... It is good living there—at least, that
is to say, on the left-hand side, because the sun never shines on the
right, the houses are damp, and any one who takes one on that side is
certainly an idiot. But on the left one can live like a prince; and
among all the houses on that side there is not one like mine. I do not
say that the other tenants are very first-rate people—oh dear no!... On
the fourth floor there is an idiot, whose wife—well, never mind! on the
third, a nobleman, with plenty of pride, but no money; on the second, a
family all show and pretension, who spend their money right and left in
order to look more than they really are, and who will assuredly come to
ruin. On the ground floor there is a wretch—a turncoat, a crawling
insect who has made money—no more of him! On the first floor I live with
my family. My home, I may say, is a real paradise.... My father is
dead—he was a gentleman!—a little hot-tempered if you like, a little
obstinate; but no human being is without faults!... There is my mother,
who is old—well, one knows, inclined to be querulous and tiresome; and
my sister, who would be the best girl in Livorno if it were not for a
touch of ambition, and a slight tendency to flirting; and then ... there
is myself. There! it is not for me to say—but you know me. I am quiet,
peaceable, well educated; I am sincere; I know how to keep within my
means; I am—well, in short, I am what I am!”
He might as well have said at once—“_I am the lord of creation!_”
_P. C. Ferrigni (“Yorick”)._
_SUNSHINE._
I don’t say that the sun and I are great friends. I have too much
respect for my courteous readers (including those who get their reading
for nothing, by borrowing this book instead of buying it) to permit
myself the slightest and most harmless of falsehoods where they are
concerned. I am not a friend of the sun’s, because I do not esteem him.
That way he has of shining indiscriminately on all,—of working in
partnership with everybody, from the photographer who forges bank-notes,
to the laundress and the plasterer, seems to me to show a lamentable
want of dignity in the Prime Minister of Nature. Besides, I remember
that, many years ago, he was kept under arrest for twelve hours by a
gendarme of antiquity, Captain Joshua, who must have had his reasons for
taking so momentous a step.
Perhaps he was set at liberty again, because no grounds could be
discovered for taking proceedings; but, at the same time, entirely
respectable people do not, as a rule, get arrested for nothing!
However, the sun and I live so very far apart from one another, that I
cannot say I see the necessity of breaking with him altogether. Every
year, about the middle of spring, I take a run down to the Ardenza, stop
on the sea-shore, pass respectfully in front of the villas and palaces
of the neighbourhood, and return home with an easy conscience, and the
feeling of having left my card at summer’s door. So that, later in the
season, when I meet the July sun, a sun which is quite Livornese, a
municipal sun (the Corporation are extremely proud of it), we greet each
other like old acquaintances!...
The July sun is a great benefactor to the Livornese. If gratitude were
still the fashion, he ought to be made syndic of the city, and his
painted image ought to figure on the municipal shield, instead of the
present device of the two-towered fortress in the midst of the sea.
_P. C. Ferrigni._
_WHEN IT RAINS._
Suppose for a moment—and note, that when a man says _suppose_, he is
perfectly sure of his ground, and woe be to any who contradicts
him—suppose, then, for one moment, that man is really a rational animal.
The bizarre originality of being rational, which constitutes the _last
term_ of the definition, does not prejudice the wisely general character
of the _first term_, which is this: Man is an animal.
Now, I ask, what use is reason to a man, if it does not make him take an
umbrella when it rains? It is all very well for you to think yourself
superior to all other created beasts,—to be proud of your learning, your
science, your experience, your laws, your noble blood, or your ample
income;—if you find yourself out in the rain without an umbrella, you
will always be the most contemptible figure in creation.
Let us be just;—humanity is not lovely when seen through the falling
drops of rain, by the cold, dull light of a sunless day, under a dull,
leaden, low, foggy sky, resting like a cover on the circle of the
horizon. All men wear faces of portentous length; one can see that they
bear an undying grudge against meteorologic science, on account of that
phenomenon of aqueous infiltration which is so deadly to new hats and
old boots. They go their ways dripping along the rows of houses, under
the deluges from the water-pipes, picking their way between the puddles,
with countenances cloudier than the skies, muttering the devil’s
litanies between their teeth with a muffled murmur like the gurgling of
a boiling saucepan. At every corner, such accidents as making too close
an acquaintance with the ribs of an umbrella coming the other way,
getting splashed with liquid mud by a passing horse, or spoiling the
freshness of a new pair of trousers by means of an overflowing gutter,
provoke a glance which, if looks could kill, would be downright
murder,—a contraction of the facial muscles which recalls the grin of
the ancestral ape in a bad temper, and an explosion of _sotto voce_
ejaculations, expressing a pious desire to see one’s neighbours in
general attached to the muzzle of a breech-loading mitrailleuse in full
activity.
... Now, to orthodox minds there cannot be the slightest doubt on the
subject; rain is by no means a fitting and necessary part of the order
of things; it is rather of the nature of a judgment. The Scriptures make
no mention of bad weather before the time of the Flood. Rain-water was
in nowise needed for the development of germs or the ripening of the
harvest. Adam had been condemned to water the earth with the sweat of
his brow, and this irrigation would have been quite sufficient to raise
maize and beans over the whole surface of the globe....
From the preceding considerations it seems to me that one can draw two
principal conclusions:—
1. That rain is not a necessity of Nature, but rather what is commonly
called a judgment of Providence.
2. That human beings, when it rains, are exceedingly ugly.
Take these two conclusions and put them aside; for we may draw from them
later on the most curious and unexpected consequences....
_P. C. Ferrigni._
_THE PATENT ADAPTABLE SONNET._
FROM “IL SIGNOR LORENZO.”
... _Gianni._ I have three systems of making money; one is that of the
poet. Suppose, for example, there is a wedding, a young man who has just
taken his degree, a dancer who has been a great success, a celebrated
preacher, a new member of the Chamber of Deputies,—I have a sonnet which
will do for any of them; it only wants the last three lines varied to
suit the occasion. I have six alternative versions of those three lines.
It is a revolver-sonnet; you can fire six shots with it. Do you see? The
two quartets consist of philosophical observations on the joys and
sorrows of life; they will do for every one. In the first tercet I
descend from the general to the particular. “O thou!” I say without
further appellation. That _thou_ has neither sex nor age; it is equally
suitable for man or woman, old or young, noble or bourgeois. (Begins to
recite, gesticulating.)
And thou, into whose heart high Heaven all pure
Virtues did gather, and a noble need
Did grant of soothing woes that men endure.
You see that is adapted to all, and the point of the whole is the idea
of _soothing the woes that men endure_. Now the last tercet is, so to
speak, the loaded cartridge in the revolver. Suppose I am addressing a
bride—
Enjoy, O fair and gentle Bride, the crown
Due to all generous souls elect indeed;
May Heaven to-day send thee this guerdon down.
Or else, for a graduate—
Enjoy, O gentle scholar, thou the crown
Due to all generous souls elect indeed;
May Science send to-day this guerdon down!
Or, “Enjoy, O gentle artist;” or, again, “Enjoy, O offspring of a royal
race;” or, “O, industrious plebeian;” “O sacred order”—according to
circumstances.
_Gertrude._ And supposing there were a death in the family?
_Gianni._ Ah! certainly! There I should say, “Enjoy, O gentle heir!”
_Gertrude._ It is an ingenious idea.
_Paolo Ferrari._
_LOVE BY PROXY._