Book: Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian

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




The cat, Melanio, who is dozing with half-open eyes, is somewhat bored
by these attentions. Raising himself on his four paws, he arches his
flexible body, and then rolls himself up into a ball, turning his back
upon his visitor.

"Dear me, Melanio is not very polite to-day," says Doretta, escorting
the doll back to the sofa. "But you mustn't be offended; he's very
seldom impolite. I think it must be the weather; doesn't the weather
make you sleepy too, Nini? ...Come, let's take a nap; go by-bye, baby,
go by-bye."

Nini sleeps. Her head rests upon a cushion, her little rag and horse-
hair body is wrapped in a woollen coverlet, her lids are closed; for
Nini raises or lowers her lids according to the position of her body.

Signor Odoardo looks at the clock and then glances out of the window. It
is two o'clock and the snow is still falling.

Doretta is struck by another idea.

"Daddy, see if I know my La Fontaine fable: Le corbeau et le renard."

"Very well, let's hear it," Signor Odoardo assents, taking the open book
from the little girl's hands.

Doretta begins:

"Maitre corbeau, sur un arbre perche,
Tenait en son bec un fromage;
Maitre...maitre...maitre..."

"Go on."

"Maitre..."

"Maitre renard."

"Oh, yes, now I remember:

Maitre renard, par l'odeur alleche,
Lui tint a peu pres ce langage:
He! bonjour..."

At this point Doretta, seeing that her father is not listening to her,
breaks off her recitation. Signor Odoardo has, in fact, closed the book
upon his forefinger, and is looking elsewhere.

"Well, Doretta," he absently inquires, "why don't you go on?"

"I'm not going to say any more of it," she answers sullenly.

"Why, you cross-patch! What's the matter?"

The little girl, who had been seated on a low stool, has risen to her
feet and now sees why her papa has not been attending to her. The snow
is falling less thickly, and the fair head of Signora Evelina has
appeared behind the window-panes over the way.

Brave little woman! She has actually opened the window, and is clearing
the snow off the sill with a fire-shovel. Her eyes meet Signor
Odoardo's; she smiles and shakes her head, as though to say: What
hateful weather!

He would be an ill-mannered boor who should not feel impelled to say a
word to the dauntless Signor Evelina. Signor Odoardo, who is not an ill-
mannered boor, yields to the temptation of opening the window for a
moment.

"Bravo, Signora Evelina! I see you are not afraid of the snow."

"Oh, Signor Odoardo, what fiendish weather!...But, if I am not mistaken,
that is Doretta with you...How do you do, Doretta?"

"Doretta, come here and say how do you do to the lady."

"No, no--let her be, let her be! Children catch cold so easily--you had
better shut the window. I suppose there is no hope of seeing you to-
day?"

"Look at the condition of the streets!"

"Oh, you men...you men!...The stronger sex...but no matter. Au revoir!"

"Au revoir."

The two windows are closed simultaneously, but this time Signora Evelina
does not disappear. She is sitting there, close to the window, and it
snows so lightly now that her wonderful profile is outlined as clearly
as possible against the pane. Good heavens, how beautiful she is!

Signer Odoardo walks up and down the room, in the worst of humors. He
feels that it is wrong not to go and see the fascinating widow, and that
to go and see her would be still more wrong. The cloud has settled again
upon Doretta's forehead, the same cloud that darkened it in the morning.

Not a word is said of La Fontaine's fable. Instead, Signor Odoardo
grumbles irritably:

"This blessed room is as cold as ever."

"Why shouldn't it be," Doretta retorts with a touch of asperity, "when
you open the window every few minutes?"

"Oho," Signer Odoardo says to himself, "it is time to have this matter
out."

And, going up to Doretta, he takes her by the hand, leads her to the
sofa, and lifts her on his knee.

"Now, then, Doretta, why is it that you are so disagreeable to Signora
Evelina?"

The little girl, not knowing what to answer, grows red and embarrassed.

"What has Signora Evelina done to you?" her father continues.

"She hasn't done anything to me."

"And yet you don't like her."

Profound silence.

"And SHE likes you so much!"

"I don't care if she does!"

"You naughty child!...And what if, one of these days, you had to live
with Signora Evelina?"

"I won't live with her--I won't live with her!" the child bursts out.

"Now you are talking foolishly," Signor Odoardo admonishes her in a
severe tone, setting her down from his knee.

She bursts into passionate weeping.

"Come, Doretta, come...Is this the way you keep your daddy
company?...Enough of this, Doretta."

But, say what he pleases, Doretta must have her cry. Her brown eyes are
swimming in tears, her little breast heaves, her voice is broken by
sobs.

"What ridiculous whims!" Signer Odoardo exclaims, throwing his head back
against the sofa cushions.

Signor Odoardo is unjust, and, what is worse, he does not believe what
he is saying. He knows that this is no whim of Doretta's. He knows it
better than the child herself, who would probably find it difficult to
explain what she is undergoing. It is at once the presentiment of a new
danger and the renewal of a bygone sorrow. Doretta was barely six years
old when her mother died, and yet her remembrance is indelibly impressed
upon the child's mind. And now it seems as though her mother were dying
again.

"When you have finished crying, Doretta, you may come here," Signor
Odoardo says.

Doretta, crouching in a corner of the room, cries less vehemently, but
has not yet finished crying. Just like the weather outside,--it snows
less heavily, but it still snows.

Signor Odoardo covers his eyes with his hand.

How many thoughts are thronging through his head, how many affections
are contending in his heart! If he could but banish the vision of
Signora Evelina--but he tries in vain. He is haunted by those blue eyes,
by that persuasive smile, that graceful and harmonious presence. He has
but to say the word, and he knows that she will be his, to brighten his
solitary home, and fill it with life and love. Her presence would take
ten years from his age, he would feel as he did when he was betrothed
for the first time. And yet--no; it would not be quite like the first
time.

He is not the same man that he was then, and she, THE OTHER, ah, how
different SHE was from the Signora Evelina! How modest and shy she was!
How girlishly reserved, even in the expression of her love! How
beautiful were her sudden blushes, how sweet the droop of her long,
shyly-lowered lashes! He had known her first in the intimacy of her own
home, simple, shy, a good daughter and a good sister, as she was
destined to be a good wife and mother. For a while he had loved her in
silence, and she had returned his love. One day, walking beside her in
the garden, he had seized her hand with sudden impetuosity, and raising
it to his lips had said, "I care for you so much!" and she, pale and
trembling, had run to her mother's arms, crying out, "Oh, how happy I
am!"

Ah, those dear days--those dear days! He was a poet then; with the
accent of sincerest passion he whispered in his love's ear:

"I love thee more than all the world beside,
My only faith and hope thou art,
My God, my country, and my bride--
Sole love of this unchanging heart!"

Very bad poetry, but deliciously thrilling to his young betrothed. Oh,
the dear, dear days! Oh, the long hours that pass like a flash in
delightful talk, the secrets that the soul first reveals to itself in
revealing them to the beloved, the caresses longed for and yet half
feared, the lovers' quarrels, the tears that are kissed away, the
shynesses, the simplicity, the abandonment of a pure and passionate
love--who may hope to know you twice in a lifetime?

No, Signora Evelina can never restore what he has lost to Signor
Odoardo. No, this self-possessed widow, who, after six months of
mourning, has already started on the hunt for a second husband, cannot
inspire him with the faith that he felt in THE OTHER. Ah, first-loved
women, why is it that you must die? For the dead give no kisses, no
caresses, and the living long to be caressed and kissed.

Who talks of kisses? Here is one that has alit, all soft and warm, on
Signor Odoardo's lips, rousing him with a start.--Ah!...Is it you,
Doretta?--It is Doretta, who says nothing, but who is longing to make it
up with her daddy. She lays her cheek against his, he presses her little
head close, lest she should escape from him. He too is silent--what can
he say to her?

It is growing dark, and the eyes of the cat Melanio begin to glitter in
the corner by the stove. The man-servant knocks and asks if he is to
bring the lamp.

"Make up the fire first," Signor Odoardo says.

The wood crackles and snaps, and sends up showers of sparks; then it
bursts into flame, blazing away with a regular, monotonous sound, like
the breath of a sleeping giant. In the dusk the firelight flashes upon
the walls, brings out the pattern of the wall-paper, and travels far
enough to illuminate a corner of the desk. The shadows lengthen and then
shorten again, thicken and then shrink; everything in the room seems to
be continually changing its size and shape. Signor Odoardo, giving free
rein to his thoughts, evokes the vision of his married life, sees the
baby's cradle, recalls her first cries and smiles, feels again his dying
wife's last kiss, and hears the last word upon her lips,--DORETTA. No,
no, it is impossible that he should ever do anything to make his Doretta
unhappy! And yet he is not sure of resisting Signora Evelina's wiles; he
is almost afraid that, when he sees his enchantress on the morrow, all
his strong resolves may take flight. There is but one way out of it.

"Doretta," says Signor Odoardo.

"Father?"

"Are you going to copy out your letter to your grandmamma this evening?"

"Yes, father."

"Wouldn't you rather go and see your grandmamma yourself?"

"With whom?" the child falters anxiously, her little heart beating a
frantic tattoo as she awaits his answer.

"With me, Doretta."

"With YOU, daddy?" she exclaims, hardly daring to believe her ears.

"Yes, with me; with your daddy."

"Oh, daddy, DADDY!" she cries, her little arms about his neck, her
kisses covering his face. "Oh, daddy, my own dear daddy! When shall we
start?"

"To-morrow morning, if you're not afraid of the snow."

"Why not now? Why not at once?"

"Gently--gently. Good Lord, doesn't the child want her dinner first?"

And Signor Odoardo, gently detaching himself from his daughter's
embrace, rises and rings for the lamp. Then, instinctively, he glances
once more towards the window. In the opposite house all is dark, and
Signora Evelina's profile is no longer outlined against the pane. The
weather is still threatening, and now and then a snowflake falls. The
servant closes the shutters and draws the curtains, so that no profane
gaze may penetrate into the domestic sanctuary.

"We had better dine in here," Signor Odoardo says. "The dining-room must
be as cold as Greenland."

Doretta, meanwhile, is convulsing the kitchen with the noisy
announcement of the impending journey. At first she is thought to be
joking, but when she establishes the fact that she is speaking
seriously, it is respectfully pointed out to her that the master of the
house must be crazy. To start on a journey in the depth of winter, and
in such weather! If at least they were to wait for a fine day!

But what does Doretta care for the comments of the kitchen? She is
beside herself with joy. She sings, she dances about the room, and
breaks off every moment or two to give her father a kiss. Then she pours
out the fulness of her emotion upon the cat Melanio and the doll Nini,
promising the latter to bring her back a new frock from Milan.

At dinner she eats little and talks incessantly of the journey, asking
again and again what time it is, and at what time they are to start.

"Are you afraid of missing the train?" Signor Odoardo asks with a smile.

And yet, though he dissembles his impatience, it is as great as hers. He
longs to go away, far away. Perhaps he may not return until spring. He
orders his luggage packed for an absence of two months.

Doretta goes to bed early, but all night long she tosses about under the
bed-clothes, waking her nurse twenty times to ask: "Is it time to get
up?"

Signor Odoardo, too, is awake when the man-servant comes to call him the
next morning at six o'clock.

"What sort of a day is it?"

"Very bad, sir--just such another as yesterday. In fact, if I might make
the suggestion, sir, if it's not necessary for you to start to-day--"

"It is, Angelo. Absolutely necessary."

At the station there are only a few sleepy, depressed-looking travellers
wrapped in furs. They are all grumbling about the weather, about the
cold, about the earliness of the hour, and declaring that nothing but
the most urgent business would have got them out of bed at that time of
day. There is but one person in the station who is all liveliness and
smiles--Doretta.

The first-class compartment in which Signor Odoardo and his daughter
find themselves is bitterly cold, in spite of foot-warmers, but Doretta
finds the temperature delicious, and, if she dared, would open the
windows for the pleasure of looking out.

"Are you happy, Doretta?"

"Oh, SO happy!"

Ten years earlier, on a pleasanter day, but also in winter, Signor
Odoardo had started on his wedding-journey. Opposite him had sat a young
girl, who looked as much like Doretta as a woman can look like a child;
a pretty, sedate young girl, oh, so sweetly, tenderly in love with
Signor Odoardo. And as the train started he had asked her the same
question:

"Are you happy, Maria?"

And she had answered:

"Oh, so happy!" just like Doretta.

The train races and flies. Farewell, farewell, for ever, Signora
Evelina.

And did Signora Evelina die of despair?

Oh, no; Signora Evelina has a perfect disposition and a delightful home.
The perfect disposition enables her not to take things too seriously,
the delightful home affords her a thousand distractions. Its windows do
not all look towards Signor Odoardo's residence. One of them, for
example, commands a little garden belonging to a worthy bachelor who
smokes his pipe there on pleasant days. Signora Evelina finds the worthy
bachelor to her taste, and the worthy bachelor, who is an average-
adjuster by profession, admires Signora Evelina's eyes, and considers
her handsomely and solidly enough put together to rank A No. 1 on
Lloyd's registers.

The result is that the bachelor now and then looks up at the window, and
the Signora Evelina now and then looks down at the garden. The weather
not being propitious to out-of-door conversation, Signora Evelina at
length invites her neighbor to come and pay her a visit. Her neighbor
hesitates and she renews the invitation. How can one resist such a
charming woman? And what does one visit signify? Nothing at all. The
excellent average-adjuster has every reason to be pleased with his
reception, the more so as Signora Evelina actually gives him leave to
bring his pipe the next time he comes. She adores the smell of a pipe.
Signora Evelina is an ideal woman, just the wife for a business man who
had not positively made up his mind to remain single. And as to that,
muses the average-adjuster, have I ever positively made up my mind to
remain single, and if I have, who is to prevent my changing it?

And so it comes to pass that when, after an absence of three months,
Signor Odoardo returns home with Doretta, he receives notice of the
approaching marriage of Signora Evelina Chiocci, widow Ramboldi, with
Signor Archimede Fagiuolo.

"Fagiuolo!" shouts Doretta, "FAGIUOLO!" [Footnote: Fagiuolo: a
simpleton.]

The name seems to excite her unbounded hilarity; but I am under the
impression that the real cause of her merriment is not so much Signora
Evelina's husband as Signora Evelina's marriage.






COLLEGE FRIENDS

BY

EDMONDO DE AMICIS

The Translation by Edith Wharton.

[Footnote: Although "College Friends" is rather a reverie than in any
strict sense a story (something in the spirit of "The Reveries of a
Bachelor," if an analogy may be sought in another literature), it has
been thought best to include it here as one of the best-known of De
Amicis' shorter writings. Indeed it is the leading piece in his chief
volume of "Novelle," so that he has himself included it with his tales.]



I.

There are many who write down every evening what they have done during
the day; some who keep a record of the plays they have seen, the books
they have read, the cigars they have smoked--but is there one man in a
hundred, nay, in a thousand, who, at the end of the year, or even once
in a lifetime, draws up a list of the people he has known? I don't mean
his intimate friends, of course--the few whom he sees, or with whom he
corresponds; but the multitude of people met in the past, and perhaps
never to be encountered again, of whom the recollection returns from
time to time at longer and longer intervals as the years go by, until at
length it wholly fades away. Which of us has not forgotten a hundred
once familiar names, lost all trace of a hundred once familiar lives?
And yet to my mind this forgetfulness implies such a loss in the way of
experience, that if I could live my life over again I should devote at
least half an hour a day to the tedious task of recording the names and
histories of the people I met, however uninteresting they might appear.

What strange and complex annals I should possess had I kept such a list
of my earliest school-friends, supplementing it as time went on by any
news of them that I could continue to obtain, and keeping track, as best
I might, of the principal changes in their lives! As it is, of the two
or three hundred lads that I knew there are but twenty or thirty whom I
can recall, or with whose occupations and whereabouts I am acquainted--
of the others I know absolutely nothing. For a few years I kept them all
vividly in mind; three hundred rosy faces smiled at me, three hundred
schoolboy jackets testified more or less distinctly to the paternal
standing, from the velvet coat of the mayor's son to the floury
roundabout of the baker's offspring; I still heard all their different
voices; I saw where each one sat in school; I recalled their words,
their attitudes, their gestures. Gradually all the faces melted into a
rosy blur, the jackets into a uniform neutral tint; the gestures were
blent in a vague ripple of movement, and at last a thick mist enveloped
all and the vision disappeared.

It grieves me that it should be so, and many a time I long to burst
through the mist and evoke the hidden vision. But, alas! my comrades are
all scattered; and were I to try to seek them out, one by one, how many
devious twists and turns I should have to make, and to what strange
places my search would lead me! From a sacristy I should pass to
barracks, from barracks to a laboratory, thence to a lawyer's office;
from the lawyer's office to a prison, from the prison to a theatre, from
the theatre, alas! to a cemetery, and thence, perhaps, to a merchant
vessel lying in some American or Eastern port. Who knows what
adventures, what misfortunes, what domestic tragedies, what
transformations in appearance, in habits, in life, would be found to
have befallen that mere handful of humanity, within that short space of
time!

And yet those are not the friends that I most long to see again. Indeed,
if we analyze that sense of mournful yearning which makes us turn back
to childhood, we shall be surprised to find how faint is the longing for
our old comrades, nay, we may even discover that no such sentiment
exists in us. And why should it, after all? We were often together, we
were merry, we sought each other out, we desired each other's
companionship; but there was no interchange between us of anything that
draws together, that binds closer, that leaves its mark upon the soul.
Our friendships were unmade as lightly as they were made. What we wanted
was somebody to echo our laughter, to climb trees with us, and return
the ball well; and as the pluckiest, liveliest, and most active boys
were best fitted to meet these requirements, it was upon them that our
choice usually fell. But did we feel kindly towards the weaklings? Did
it ever occur to us, when a comrade looked sad, to ask: What ails you?
or, if he answered that somebody lay dead at home, did we have any tears
for his sorrow? Ah, we were not real friends!

It has probably happened to many of you to come across a companion of
your primary-school days, after the lapse of fifteen years or so. You
receive a letter in an unfamiliar hand, you glance at the signature, and
you shout out: "What? Is HE alive?" On with your hat and off you rush to
the hotel. Your heart thumps as you run, and you race upstairs to his
door in hot haste, laughing, rejoicing, and thinking to yourself that
you wouldn't have missed those few minutes for any amount of money.
Well, those few minutes are the best. You bounce into the room, and find
yourself embracing a strange man in whom, as you look at him more
closely, you can just discern some faint resemblance to the lad you used
to know; one of you exclaims, "How are you, old man?" the other plunges
breathlessly into some old school reminiscence; and then... that's all.

You begin to say to yourself: "Who IS this strange man? what has he been
doing all these years? what has been going on in his soul? is he good or
bad, a believer or a sceptic? I have nothing in common with him, I don't
know the man! He must be observed and studied first--how can I call him
a friend?"

What you think of him, he thinks of you, and conversation languishes.
With your first words you may have discovered that you and he have
followed opposite paths in life; he betrays his democratic tendencies,
you, your monarchical leanings; you try him on literature, he retaliates
with the culture of silk-worms. Before telling him that you are married,
you take the precaution to ask if he has a wife; he answers, "What do
you take me for?" and you take leave with a touch of the finger-tips and
a smile that has died at its birth.

The friends of infancy! Dear indeed above all others when the years of
boyhood have been spent with them; mere phantoms otherwise! And
childhood itself! I have never been able to understand why people long
to return to it. Why mourn for years without toil, without suffering,
without intelligent belief, without those outbursts of fierce and bitter
sorrow that purify the soul and uplift the brow in a splendid renewal of
hope and courage? Better a thousand times to suffer, to toil, to fight
and weep, than to let life exhale itself in a ceaseless irresponsible
gayety, causeless, objectless, and imperturbable! Better to stand
bleeding on the breach than to lie dreaming among the flowers.



II.

I was seventeen years old when I made the acquaintance of my dearest
friends, in a splendid palace which I see before me as clearly as though
I had left it only yesterday. I see the great courtyard, the stately
porticos, the saloons adorned with columns, statues and bas-reliefs;
and, amidst these beautiful and magnificent objects, vestiges of the
bygone splendors of the ducal residence, the long lines of bedsteads and
school-benches, the hanging rows of uniforms, dirks and rifles. Five
hundred youths are scattered about those courts and corridors and
staircases; a dull murmur of voices, broken by loud shouts and sonorous
laughter, reverberates through the most distant recesses of the huge
edifice. What animation! What life! What varieties of type, of speech
and gesture! Youths of athletic build, with great moustaches and
stentorian voices; youths as slim and sweet as girls; the dusky skin and
coal-black eyes of Sicily; the fair-haired, blue-eyed faces of the
north; the excited gesticulation of Naples, the silvery Tuscan
intonation, the rattling Venetian chatter, a hundred groups, a hundred
dialects; on this side, songs and noisy talk, on that side running,
jumping, and hand-clapping; men of every class, sons of dukes, senators,
generals, shopkeepers, government employees; a strange assemblage,
suggesting the university, the monastery, and the barracks: with talk of
women, war, novels, the orders of the day; a life teeming with feminine
meannesses and virile ambitions; a life of mortal ennui and frantic
gayety, a medley of sentiments, actions, and incidents, absurd, tragic,
or delightful, from which the pen of a great humorist could extract the
materials for a masterpiece.

Such was the military college of Modena in the year 1865.



III.

I cannot recall the two years that I spent there without being beset by
a throng of memories from which I can free myself only by passing them
all in review, one after another, like pictures in a magic-lantern; now
laughing, now sighing, now shaking my head, but feeling all the while
that each episode is dear to me and will never be forgotten while I
live.

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