Book: Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian

V >> Various >> Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian




Finally, Don Rocco crossed himself and got up.

"Now sit right here while I confess," said the Moro, as if there were
nothing against it. But Don Rocco caught him up. Had they not already
arranged that he should confess the next day? But the other would not
listen with that ear, and continued hammering away at his request with
obstinate placidity.

"Let us stop this," he said, all at once. "Pay attention, for I am
beginning!"

"But I tell you that it is not possible and that I will not have it,"
replied Don Rocco. "Go home, I tell you! I am going to bed at once."

He started to leave; but the Moro was too quick for him, rushed to the
door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket.

"No, sir! you don't go out of here! Might I not die to-night? Wouldn't
I, if the Lord just blew on me like this?"

And he blew on the petroleum lamp and put it out.

"And if I go to hell," he continued in a sepulchral voice, in the dark,
"you will go there too!"

The poor priest, at this unexpected violence, in the midst of this
darkness, lost his presence of mind. He no longer knew where he was, and
kept saying, "Let us go, let us go," trying to find the sofa, beating
the air with his extended hands. The Moro lighted a match on his sleeve,
and Don Rocco had a glimpse of the table, of the chairs, and of his
strange penitent, before it became darker than ever.

"Could you see? Now I shall begin; with the biggest sin. It is fifteen
years since I have been to confession, but my biggest sin is that I have
made love to that ugly creature, your servant."

"Body of Bacchus!'" involuntarily exclaimed Don Rocco.

"If I am familiar with the kitchen," continued the Moro, "it is because
I must have come here fifty times of an evening when you were not here,
to eat and drink with Lucia. Perhaps you have even found that some few
francs were missing..."

"I know nothing about it; no, I know nothing about it!" mumbled Don
Rocco.

"Some of those few small bills in your box, first compartment to the
left at the bottom."

Don Rocco gave forth a low exclamation of surprise and pain.

"Now, as for me, I have gotten through stealing," continued he; "but
that witch would carry off even your house. She is a bad woman, a bad
woman! We must get rid of her. Do you remember that shirt that you
missed last year? I have it on now and she gave it to me. I cannot give
it back because..."

"Never mind, don't bother, never mind," interrupted Don Rocco. "I'll
give it to you."

"Then there were some glasses 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
God. 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 God, 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 stitch 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 passage.



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 Mass 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 assert 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 glass 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 Mass 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 pass 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!"

Don Rocco looked at his fig tree as if he saw it for the first time. He
was fond of it, but he had never suspected that it possessed such
wonderful qualities.

"But it gives little figs," said he, in the tone of a father who hears
his son praised in his presence and rejoices, but says something severe
lest he become puffed up, and also to hide his own emotion. Then he
invited the professor to make himself at home in the house.

"No, no, my dear," answered the professor, silently laughing at that
phrase about the little figs. "Let us take a short stroll: it is
better."

Passing slowly across the courtyard, they came out into the vineyard,
whose festoons crowned both declivities of the hill, and they passed
along the easy, grassy ascent between one declivity and the other.

"It is delicious!" said the professor.

Between the immense cold sky and the damp shadows of the plain the last
glimpses of light were softly dying away on the grayish hill, on the red
vines, all at rest. The air was warm and still.

"Is all this yours?" asked the professor.

Don Rocco, perhaps through humility, perhaps through apprehension of
what the immediate future might bring, kept silence.

"Make up your mind to stay here, my son," continued he. "I know very
well, believe me, there is not another place as fortunate as this in the
whole diocese."

"Well, as for me!..." began Don Rocco.

Professor Marin stopped.

"By the way!" said he, "Countess Carlotta has spoken to me. Look here,
Don Rocco! I really hope that you will not be foolish!"

Don Rocco gazed savagely at his feet.

"Goodness!" continued the professor. "Sometimes the countess is
impossible, but this time, my dear son, she is right. You know that I
speak frankly. You are the only one here who does not know these things.
It is a scandal, my son! The whole village cries out against it."

"I have never heard, I have not..." mumbled Don Rocco.

"Now I tell you of it myself! and the countess has told you more than
once."

"You know what I answered her last night?"

"They were absurd things that you said to her."

At this blow Don Rocco shook himself a little, and with his eyes still
lowered spoke up eagerly in his own defence.

"I answered according to my convictions, and now I cannot change."

He was humble-hearted, but here was a question of justice and truth. To
speak according to truth, according to what one believes to be the
truth, is a duty; therefore, why did they persecute him?

"You cannot change?" said the professor, bending over him and fixing on
his face two squinting eyes. "You cannot change?"

Don Rocco kept silent.

The professor straightened up and started on his walk again.

"Very well," he said, with ostentatious quiet. "You are at liberty to do
so."

He suddenly turned to Don Rocco, who was following him with heavy steps.

"Gracious!" he exclaimed with annoyance, "do you really think that you
have in your house a regular saint? Do you take no account of the
gossip, of the scandal? To go against the whole country, to go against
those who give you your living, to go against your own good, against
Providence, for that creature? Really, if I did not know you, my dear
Don Rocco, I would not know what to think."

Don Rocco squirmed, winking furiously, as if he were fighting against
secret anguish, and breathless, as if words were trying to break forth
involuntarily.

"I cannot change; it is just that," said he when he got through his
grimaces. "I cannot."

"But why, in the name of heaven?"

"Because I cannot, conscientiously."

Don Rocco finally raised his eyes. "I have already told the countess
that I cannot go against justice."

"What justice! Your justice is blind, my dear. Blind, deaf, and bald.
And if you said a foolish thing yesterday do you wish to repeat it again
to-day? And if you do not believe what is said of Lucia are there
lacking reasons for sending away a servant? Send her away because she
does not take the spots off your coat, because she does not darn your
stockings. Anything! Send her away because she cooks your macaroni
without sauce, and your squash without salt."

"The real reason would always be the other one," answered Don Rocco
gloomily.

Even Professor Marin could not easily answer an argument of this kind.
He could only mumble between his teeth: "Holy Virgin, what a pig-head!"

They reached the few consumptive cypresses along the ridge that led from
the hill to another still higher hill. There they stopped again; and the
professor, who was fond of Don Rocco on account of his simple goodness,
and also because he could make him the butt of amiable banter, made him
sit down by his side on the grass, and attempted a final argument,
seeking in every way to extract from him his reasons for continuing so
long to believe in the innocence of Lucia; but he did not succeed in
getting at any result. Don Rocco kept always referring to what he had
said the evening before to Countess Carlotta, and repeated that he could
not change.

"Then, good-bye St. Luke, my son," said the resigned Marin.

Don Rocco began to wink furiously, but said not a word.

"The Countess Carlotta was expecting you today," said the professor,
"but you did not go to her. She therefore charged me to tell you that if
you did not immediately consent to send away Lucia on the first of
December, you will be free for the new year, and even before if you
wish."

"I cannot leave before Christmas," said Don Rocco timidly. "The parish
priest always needs assistance at that time."

The professor smiled.

"What do you suppose?" said he. "That Countess Carlotta hasn't a priest
ready and waiting? Think it over, for there is still time."

Don Rocco communed with himself. It rarely happened that he went through
so rapid a process of reasoning. Granted, that this woman was a cause
for scandal in the country, and that the countess had another priest at
her disposal, the decision to be taken was obvious.

"Then," he answered, "I will leave as soon as possible. My father and my
sister were to come and visit me one of these days. So that now it will
be I who will visit them instead."

He even had in his heart the idea of taking this woman away from the
village with him. His people had no need of a servant, and he, if he
delayed finding a place, would not be able to keep her. But certain
reasonable ideas, certain necessary things, never reached his heart, and
reached his head very late, and when they did Don Rocco would either
give himself a knock on the forehead, or a scratch behind, as if it
bothered him.

In returning to St. Luke the professor told how the police were in
search of the Moro, who was suspected as an accomplice in a recent
highway murder, certain authors of which had fallen that very morning
into the hands of justice. Don Rocco heard this not without
satisfaction; for he now was able to explain why the man had not come.
"Who knows," he made bold to say, "that he may not have gone away, and
that he may not return? And then all this gossip will come to an end. Do
you not think so?"

"Yes, my dear," answered the professor, who understood the point of his
discourse, "but you know the Countess Carlotta. Henceforth whether the
Moro goes or remains is of no consequence to her. Lucia must be
dismissed."

Don Rocco said no more, neither did the professor. The former
accompanied the latter as far as the church cypresses, stood looking
after him until he disappeared at the end of the lane, and then
returned, sighing, to his house. Later, when, bending under the weight
of his cloak, he was passing, lamp in hand, through the entry leading to
the choir of St. Luke, his doubt of the previous night came up again
violently. "Had it really been a confession?" He stopped in the shadow
of the deserted entry, looking at the lamp, giving vent for a moment to
the sweet, tempting thoughts of the inert spirit. "Were he to take some
pretext to send the woman away, to live and die in peace in his St.
Luke." All at once his heart began to beat fiercely. These were thoughts
from the devil. In the same way as perhaps in ancient times and in the
same place some monk, tormented by heated nocturnal visions of love and
of pleasure, may have done, Don Rocco made hastily the sign of the
cross, hastened to the choir, and became immersed in a devout reading of
the prayer-book.



V.

Ten days after, at the same hour, Don Rocco was praying before the
altar of the Virgin, under the pulpit.

He was on the eve of leaving St. Luke for ever. He had agreed with the
Countess Carlotta to give as an excuse a brief absence, a visit of a
couple of weeks to his old father; and to write afterwards that for
family reasons he could not return, and then this had happened that the
poor old peasant, before learning of the new state of affairs, had
written, asking for assistance; and Don Rocco had been obliged to sell
some furniture as well to save cost of transportation as in order not to
arrive home with empty hands. He was returning with the intention of
remaining as short a time as possible, and of going away as chaplain
wherever it pleased the Curia to which he had directed his request.

No certain information had been secured, either of the wine or of the
thieves; but suspicions were rife against a woman who kept an inn, a new
favorite of the Moro, who was thought to have received the wine. The
Moro was said by some to have fled, by others to have gone into hiding.
It seemed as if the police were of the second opinion. They came and
went, searching everywhere, but always uselessly.

Lucia had returned, and for several days had behaved in an unusual and
peculiar manner. She neglected her work, was brusque with her master,
and wept without apparent motive. One evening she went out, saying that
she intended going to the parish church to say her prayers. At nine
o'clock Don Rocco, as she had not returned, went philosophically to bed,
and never knew at what time she came into the house. On the contrary, he
congratulated himself the next day on the happy change that had taken
place in her, owing to her religious exercises, because she seemed no
longer as she had been, but was quiet, attentive, active, spoke with
satisfaction of the approaching departure, the position which Don Rocco
hoped to find for her with a certain arch-priest, a friend of his; a
promotion for her. She seemed to be possessed of an entirely novel
ascetic zeal. As soon as Don Rocco retired for the night, she would go
to church to spend there hour after hour.

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