Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian Part 2

For a moment the others stood aghast; then, angered, as people will be, rather against those who undeceive them than against those who delude them, they turned towards the priest, involuntarily echoing the boy's words: "He's right, your reverence! Say rather, 'Alas, that it is not so!'"

The priest pointed to his own breast with a long knotty finger.

"I?" he exclaimed bitterly, "never!"

At these words, the boy's father, rudely roused from his mood of tender exaltation, and bursting, after his wont, into sudden fury, stretched his arm towards the priest, with a cry that rang through the room like a pistol-shot: "Out of my house this instant!"

The priest stalked out, slamming the door. The lad's arms were about his father's neck; and the old man, laying his hands on his son's head, said gently: "I forgive you."

PEREAT ROCHUS

BY

ANTONIO FOGAZZARO

The Translation by A. L. Frothingham, Jr.

I.

"It is a fine case, Don Rocco," said Professor Marin, gathering up the cards and smiling beatifically, while his neighbor on the right raved furiously against poor Don Rocco. The professor continued to look at him with a little laugh on his closed mouth, and with a glance sparkling with benevolent hilarity; then he turned to the lady of the house, who was napping in a corner of the sofa.

"It is a fine case, Countess Carlotta!"

"I understand that well enough," said she, "and it seems to me time to end it; isn't that so, Don Rocco?"

"No, Don Rocco," said the professor seriously, "on reflection it certainly is a case for the ecclesiastical court."

"I should say it was at least that," said his neighbor on the right.

Don Rocco, red as a poppy, with his two fingers in his snuff-box, kept silence, his head bent forward and his brows knit in a certain contrite way peculiar to him, facing the tempest with his bald spot, and looking slyly between one wink and another at the unfortunate cards. When he heard the words "ecclesiastical court" repeated by his companion, whom he held in considerable fear, it seemed to him that matters were becoming quite amusing, so he forced a little smile and took a pinch of snuff between his fingers.

"Oh, you laugh!" returned the implacable professor. "I hardly know whether, having played at terziglio and having brought such ill luck on your partner, you can say Ma.s.s in peace to-morrow morning."

"Oh! I can, I can," muttered Don Rocco, knitting his brows still more and raising a little his good-natured countryman's face. "We all make mistakes, all of us. Even he, over there, not to mention yourself, sometimes."

His voice had the tone of a peaceful animal badgered beyond all patience. The professor was laughing with his eyes. "You are quite right," said he.

The game was over, the players got up.

"Yes," said the professor with quizzical seriousness, "the case of Sigismondo is more complicated."

Don Rocco closed his beady little eyes in a smile, bending his head with a peculiar mixture of modesty, complacency, and confusion, and mumbled:

"Even that case can be unravelled."

"You see," added the professor, "I am well informed. It is a case, Countess, which Don Rocco must unravel at the next meeting of the ecclesiastical court."

"There is no such meeting going on here," said the countess. "Let it alone."

But it was not so easy to wrest a victim from the clutches of the professor.

"Let us then say no more about it," said he quietly. "But listen, Don Rocco; I am not of your opinion on that point. As for me, pereat mundus."

Don Rocco frowned furiously.

"I haven't spoken with any one," said he.

"Don Rocco, you have gossiped, and I know it," answered the professor.

"Have patience, Countess, and give us your opinion."

Countess Carlotta did not care to enter upon the question, but the professor continued imperturbably to set forth the case of Sigismondo as it had been promulgated by the Episcopal tribunal.

A certain Sigismondo, fallen suddenly ill, asked for a confessor.

Hardly was he alone with the priest when he hastened to tell him that some other person was on the point of committing a homicide, which he had himself instigated.

Hardly had he said these words when he lost voice and consciousness.

The priest doubted whether Sigismondo had spoken in confession or not; and he could not prevent the crime, could not save this human life in peril, unless he made use of what he had heard in confidence. Should he do this or should he let a man be killed?"

"It is Don Rocco's opinion," concluded the professor, "that the priest should act as a policeman."

Poor Don Rocco, tortured in his conscience between the feeling that he ought not to discuss the question in a secular conversation and a feeling of reverence for his bantering friend who was an ecclesiastic of mature age and a professor in the Episcopal seminary of P---, was twisting himself about and mumbling excuses.

"No...the fact is...I say...it seems to me..."

"I am surprised, Don Rocco, that you should think it worth while to make excuses," said the lady. "It amazes me that you should take seriously the jests of the professor."

But the professor protested, and with subtle questions pushed Don Rocco to the wall and began to squeeze out of him, little by little, the peculiar combination of right instincts and crooked arguments which he had in his head, showing him with the greatest charm of manner the fallacy of all his bad reasons and of all his good sense, and leaving him in a stupor of contrite humility. But the game lasted only a short while, because the countess dismissed the company with the excuse that it was after eleven o'clock. However, she asked Don Rocco to remain.

It was the Countess Carlotta who had chosen him, a few years before, as rector of the Church of St. Luke, which was her property. She took with him a sort of Episcopal air which was peacefully accepted by the thankful priest, as simple in spirit as he was humble-hearted.

"You would do better, my dear Don Rocco," said she when they were alone, "to bother yourself less with such affairs as that of Sigismondo, and a little more with your own."

"But why?" asked Don Rocco, surprised. "I do not know what you mean."

"Of course; the whole village knows it, but you are in complete ignorance."

Her eyes added quite clearly, "Poor simpleton." Don Rocco remained silent.

"When does Lucia return?" asked she. This Lucia was the servant of Don Rocco, to whom he had given permission to go home for five days.

"On Sunday," he answered. "To-morrow evening. Oh!" he suddenly exclaimed, smiling with satisfaction at his own keenness. "Now I understand, now I see what you mean. But it is not so, it is not so at all."

He had at last understood that it was a question of certain rumors current in the village on a love affair of his servant with a certain Moro, a bad specimen, well known at the police court, who combined craft with malevolence and strength in a most diabolical manner. Some believed that he was not entirely bad, but that necessity and the ill-treatment of an unjust master had led him to wrongdoing; but every one feared him.