Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian Part 5

"Then there were some gla.s.ses of wine, but I didn't drink them all myself. And then there is the silver snuff-box with the portrait of Pius Ninth."

"Body of Bacchus!" exclaimed Don Rocco, who thought he still had in his box that precious snuff-box given him by an old colleague. "That also?"

"I drank it; yes, sir, it took me fifteen days. Do not get excited, for we are in confession."

"What's that?"

It was a noise against the gate of the courtyard. A hard knock or a stone.

"It is evil-doers," said the Moro. "Rascally night-birds. Or perhaps some sick person. I'll go at once to find out."

"Yes, yes," said Don Rocco hastily.

"I will go and return to-morrow," continued the other, "for I see that you certainly do not care to confess me to-night."

He took out some matches and re-lighted the lamp, saying:

"Listen, Don Rocco, I want to be an honest man and work; but I must change my residence, and for the first few days how can I get along?

You understand what I mean."

Don Rocco scratched his head.

"You are to come to-morrow morning of course," he said.

"Naturally! But I have a few debts here; and going around in broad daylight, I should like to show my face without being ashamed."

"Very well," responded Don Rocco, frowning considerably, but in a benevolent tone. "Wait a moment."

He took a lamp, left the sitting-room, and returned immediately with a ten-franc bill.

"Here you are," said he.

The man thanked him and left, accompanied by the priest, who carried the lamp as far as the middle of the courtyard and waited there until the Moro called to him from outside the gateway that no one was there.

Then Don Rocco went to close the gate, and re-entered the house.

He could not go to bed at once. He was too agitated. Body of Bacchus!

he kept repeating to himself. Body of Bacchus! One could hardly have imagined so extraordinary a case, and for it to happen to him, of all men! His head felt as confused as when he played at tresette and did not understand the game and every one badgered him. What a chaos there was in that head of good and of bad, of bitterness and of consolation!

The more extraordinary did the thing appear to him, with the greater faith, with the more timorous reverence, did he refer it all to the hand of G.o.d. In thinking over his entrance into the kitchen, and that man seated at the hearth, memory gave him a stronger spasm of fear than the reality had, and it was immediately succeeded by mystic admiration of the hidden ways of the Lord. Certainly Lucia's fault was a bitter one, but how clearly the design of Providence could be seen in it! It led a man to the house of the priest; through sin to grace. What a great gift he had received from G.o.d, he the last of the priests of the parish, one of the last of the diocese! A soul so lost, so hardened in evil! He felt scruples at having allowed himself to be moved too strongly by the deception of his servant, the loss of the snuff-box.

Kneeling by his bed, he recited, amid rapid winks, an interminable series of Paters, Aves, and Glorias, and prayed the Lord, St. Luke, and St. Rocco to help him in properly directing this still immature confession. Heavens! to come to confession with a string of oaths and to accuse others more than himself! To Don Rocco the heart of the Moro appeared under an image which pleased him, it seemed so new and clear.

A healthy fruit with a first spot of decay; only in his case the image was reversed.

When he had gone to bed and was lying on his side, ready to sleep, it occurred to him that the next day Lucia would arrive. This thought immediately suggested another, and made him turn right over flat on his back.

It brought up, in fact, a grave problem. Had the Moro spoken of Lucia in confession or not? Don Rocco remembered that he had made no remark when the man, having blown out the light, declared that he wished to confess. Neither had he done so later when the man said: "Don't get excited, for we are in confession." Therefore, there was at least a grave doubt that this had been a real confession; and even if the penitent had afterwards interrupted it, this did not in the least detract from its sacramental character, had it existed; and, consequently, what about Lucia? And his answer to the Countess Carlotta? Body of Bacchus! It seemed the case of Sigismondo. Don Rocco cast a formidable frown at the ceiling.

He remembered the pereat mundus, and the arguments of that well of science, that extraordinary man, the professor. It would be impossible now to send away Lucia. And finally the dark words of Countess Carlotta were quite clear to him. He himself must leave: pereat Rochus.

The hour was striking in the clock tower. The voice of the clock was dear to him by night. His rugged heart softened somewhat, and Satan saw his chance to show him the peaceful little church surrounded by the cypresses, his own, all his own, and a certain fig tree that was dear to him under the bell-tower; he made him feel the sweetness of the cells rendered holy by so many pious souls of old, the sweetness of living in that quiet niche of St. Luke, so well suited to his humble person, in the exercise of a ministry of deed and of word, without worldly aims and without responsibility of souls. Satan further showed him the difficulty of finding a good place; reminded him of the needs of his old father and his sister, poor peasants, one of them now too old and the other too infirm to gain their livelihood by working. And Satan finally turned casuist and sought to prove that, without betraying the secret, he could still send away the servant on some pretext, or even with none. But at this suggestion of profiting by the confession Don Rocco raised such a frightful frown that the devil fled without waiting for more. Let him keep Lucia, then, and let her see to it that she followed the sacred text: Nemo potest duobus dominis servire. Just see how the words of holy writ fitted the occasion! Don Rocco sought to mentally st.i.tch together the last sentences of his sermon, but it was too fatiguing an attempt for him. He might have succeeded, however, had he not fallen asleep in the midst of a most difficult pa.s.sage.

III.

He slept little and arose at dawn. Before going down he stepped to the window to consult the weather. In stepping back his eyes fell on the entrance to the cellar. It was open.

Don Rocco went down to the cellar, and came out again with a most unusual expression. The wine was no longer there. Neither wine nor cask. But outside there were fresh marks of wheels.

Don Rocco followed these as far as the main road. There they disappeared. There remained but a short curve from the edge to the middle of the road into the labyrinth of all the other wheel tracks.

Don Rocco did not think at that time to go in search of the authorities in order to make a complaint. Ideas came to him very slowly, and perhaps this particular one would not be due before midday.

On the contrary he returned, wrapped in meditation, to St. Luke. "Those blows," said he to himself, "that stone thrown! It is fortunate that the Moro was with me then; otherwise, he would have been suspected." He went back to the cellar entrance, examined minutely the fractured door, contemplated the place where the cask had stood, and, scratching his head, went into the church to repeat some prayers.

IV.

At Ma.s.s there was a crowd. Both before and after it there was a great deal of talk of the theft. Everybody wanted to see the empty cellar, the broken door, the traces of the wheels.

Two bottles which had escaped the thieves disappeared into the pockets of one of the faithful. No one understood how the priest could have avoided noticing something; because he did a.s.sert without further explanation that he had heard nothing. The women were sorry for him, but the men for the most part admired the deed and laughed at the poor priest, who had the great fault, in their eyes, of being abstemious and not knowing how to mingle with people with that easy-going fraternity which comes only from emptying the wine gla.s.s together.

They laughed, especially during the sermon, at the deep frown on the priest's face, which they attributed to the empty cellar.

No one mentioned the Moro. Neither did he appear at St. Luke, either at the Ma.s.s or afterwards; so that poor Don Rocco was full of scruples and remorse, fearing that he had not conducted the affair properly. But quite late the police arrived, examined everything, and questioned the priest. Had he no suspicions? No, none. Where did he sleep? How did it happen that he had not heard? Really, he did not know himself; there had been people in the house. At what time? Some time between eleven and one o'clock. One of the police smiled knowingly, but Don Rocco, innocent as a child, did not notice it. The other one asked if he did not suspect a certain Moro, knowing, as they did, that shortly before eleven o'clock he had been seen going up to St. Luke. At once Don Rocco showed great fervor in protesting that the man was certainly innocent, and, somewhat pressed by questions, brought forth his great reason: it was precisely the Moro who had visited him at that hour, on his own business. "Perhaps it was not on the business that you think," said the policeman. "If you knew what I think!" Don Rocco did not know, and in his humble placidity did not wish to know. He never bothered himself with the thoughts of others. It was sufficiently difficult for him to get a little lucidity into his own. They asked him a few more questions, and then left, carrying with them the only object that they found in the cellar, a corkscrew, which the scrupulous Don Rocco was not willing, through the uncertainty of his memory, to claim as belonging to him, although he had paid his predecessor twice the value of it. And now his cellar and his conscience were equally clear.

Towards dusk on the same day Don Rocco was reading the office, walking up and down for a little exercise without going far from the house. Who could tell? Perhaps that man might yet come. Every now and then Don Rocco would stop and listen. He heard nothing but the voices of wagon-drivers on the plain below, the noise of wheels, the barking of dogs. Finally there was a step on the little path that led down through the cypress trees; a step slow but not heavy, a lordly step, with a certain subdued creak of ecclesiastical shoes; a step which had its hidden meaning, expressing to the understanding mind a purpose which, though not urgent, was serious.

The gate opened, and Don Rocco, standing in the middle of the courtyard, saw the delicate, ironical face of Professor Marin.

The professor, when he perceived Don Rocco, came to a stand, with his legs well apart, his hands clasped behind his back, silently wagging his head and his shoulders from right to left, and smiling with an inexpressible mixture of condolence and banter. Poor Don Rocco on his side looked at him, also silent, smiling obsequiously, red as a tomato.

"The whole business, eh?" finally said the professor, cutting short his mimicry and becoming serious.

"Yes, the whole business," answered Don Rocco in sepulchral tones.

"They didn't leave a drop."

"Thunder!" exclaimed the other, stifling a laugh; and he came forward.

"It is nothing, nothing at all, you know, my son," said he with sudden good nature. "Give me a pinch. It is nothing," he continued, taking the snuff. "These are things that can be remedied. The Countess Carlotta has made so much wine that, as I say, for her a few casks more, a few casks less... You understand me! She is a good woman, my son, the Countess Carlotta; a good woman."

"Yes, good, good," mumbled Don Rocco, looking into his snuff-box.

"You are a lucky man, my dear," continued Marin, slapping him on the shoulder. "You are as well off here as the Pope."

"I am satisfied, I am satisfied," said Don Rocco, smiling and smoothing out his brows for a moment. It pleased him to hear these words from an intimate friend of the Countess Carlotta.

The professor gazed around admiringly as if he saw the place for the first time. "It is a paradise!" said he, letting his eyes pa.s.s along the dirty walls of the courtyard and then raising them to the fig tree picturesquely hidden under the bell-tower in the high corner between the gateway and the old convent.

"Only for that fig tree!" he added. "Is it not a beauty? Does it not express the poetry of the southern winter, tepid and quiet? It is like a word of sweetness, of happy innocence, tempering the severity of the sacred walls. Beautiful!"