by Ouida
As with him, amidst his happiness, there will sometimes arise a wistful longing, not for the homage of the world, not for his old hours of triumph, not for the sight of multitudes waiting on the opening of his lips, but for that magical power for ever perished, that empire for ever lost over all the melody of earth, that joy and strength of utterance, which are now for ever as dead in him as the song is dead in the throat of the shot bird, so upon her, for no fault of her own, the weight of a guilt not her own lies heavily, and the ineffaceable past is like a ghost that tracks her steps; from her memory the pollution of her marriage never can pass away, and to her purity her life is for ever defiled by those dead years, which are like mill-stones hung about her neck.
She was innocent always, and yet — . When the moths have gnawed the ermine, no power in heaven or earth can make it ever again altogether what once it was.
“You never regret?” Vere says to him, as they stand together, and see the evening colours of glory shine on the snow summits.
“I? Regret that I lost the gas-glare to live in heavens light! Can you ask such a thing?”
“Yet you lost so much, and—”
“I have forgotten what I lost. Nay, I lost nothing. I passed away off the worlds ear while I was yet great, how well that is — to be spared all the discontent of decadence, all the pain of diminished triumphs, all the restless sting of new rivalries, all the feebleness of a fame that has outlived itself — how well that is!”
She smiles; that grave and tender smile which is rather from the eyes than on the mouth.
“You say that because you are always generous. Yet when I think of all I cost you, I wonder that you love me so well.”
“You wonder! That is because you cannot see yourself; humility blinds you, as vanity blinds other women.”
“They called me too proud—”
“Because you were not as they were; what could they understand of such a soul as yours?”
“You understand me and God sees me — that is enough.”
He takes her hands in his, and his kiss on them has as reverent and knightly a grace as that with which he had bent to her feet in the day of Szarisla.
What is the world to them? what is the bray and the tinsel of a mountebank’s show to those who watch the stars and dwell in the gracious silence of the everlasting hills?
In the bright evening light of the spring-time at the same hour the crowds go down the Boulevards of Paris. The black horses of Prince Zouroff go with them; he is sitting behind them alone. His face is gloomy, his eyes are sullen. On the morrow he marries his old friend Jeanne, Duchesse de Sonnaz.
Russia, which permits no wife to plead against her husband, set him free and annulled his marriage on the testimony of servants, who, willing to please, and indifferent to a lie the more, or a lie the less, bore the false witness that they thought would be agreeable to their lord.
Too late he repents; too late he regrets; too late, he thinks, as alas! we all think: “Could I have my life back, I would do otherwise!”
In her own carriage, down the Avenue du Bois, drives the Duchesse de Sonnaz, with her children in front of her; her face is sparkling, her eyes are full of malice and entertainment; the Faubourg finds her approaching marriage with her lost Paul’s old friend, one natural and fitting. With a satisfied soul she says to herself, as the setting sun gilds Paris:
“Avec un peu d’esprit, on arrive à tout.”
For marriage she does not care, but she loves a triumph, she enjoys a vengeance — she has both.
“Je ferai danser mon ours” she reflects, as the eyes of her mind glance over her future.
The Princess Nelaguine drives also in her turn out of the avenue and down the Champs Elysées; with her is her old comrade, Count Schondorff, who says to her:
“And you alone know your brother’s divorced wife! Oh, surely Nadine—”
“I know the wife of Corrèze; I know a very noble woman who was the victim of my own brother and of Jeanne,” answers the little Russian lady with asperity and resolve. “My dear Fritz, she had no sin against my brother, no fault in her anywhere, I have told the Emperor the same thing, and I am not a coward, though I shall salute Jeanne on both cheeks to-morrow because life is a long hypocrisy. Yes, I know Vera. I shall always love her; and honour her too. So does the Duchess of Mull. She was the martyr of a false civilisation, of a society as corrupt as that of the Borgias, and far more dishonest. She had chastity, and she had also courage. We, who are all poltroons, and most of us adulteresses, when we find a woman like that gibbet her, pour encourager les autres.”
At the same hour Lady Dolly, too, rolls home from Hyde Park, and ascends to her little fan-lined boudoir, and cries a little, prettily, with her old friend Adine, because she has just learned that Jura, poor dear Jura, has been killed in the gun-room at Camelot by the explosion of a rifle he had taken down as unloaded.
“Everything is so dreadful,” she says with a little sob and shiver. “Only to think that I cannot know my own daughter! And then to have to wear ones hair flat, and the bonnets are not becoming, say what they like, and the season is so stupid; and now poor dear Jack has killed himself, really killed himself, because nobody believes about that rifle being an accident, he has been so morose and so strange for years, and his mother comes and reproaches me when it is all centuries ago, centuries! and I am sure I never did him anything but good!”
Other ladies come in, all great ladies, and some men, all young men, and they have tea out of little yellow cups, and sip iced syrups, and sit and talk of the death at Camelot as they chatter between the four walls with the celebrated fans hung all over them, amidst them the fan of Maria Teresa once sent to Félicité.
“She has so much to bear, and she is such a dear little woman!” say all the friends of Lady Dolly. “And it is very dreadful for her not to be able to know her own daughter. She always behaves beautifully about it, she is so kind, so sweet! But how can she know her, you know? — divorced, and living out of the world with Corrèze!”
So the moths eat the ermine; and the world kisses the leper on both cheeks.
A Village Commune
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
APPENDIX.
CHAPTER I.
SANTA ROSALIA in Selva is a village anywhere you will betwixt the Adrian and the Tyrrhene seas, betwixt the Dolomites and the Abruzzi. It is not necessary to indicate its geographical position more clearly; it is sufficient to say that it is a little Italian borgo, like many another, lying under the sweet blue skies of this beloved and lovely land that has been mother to Theocritus and Tasso. A village white as a seashore stone; lying along a river green as the Adige; with low mountains in sight across a green table‐land of vine and chestnut, olive and corn; with some tall poplars by the water, and a church with a red brick bell‐tower, and the bell swinging behind its wooden cage. Across the fields and along the side of the hills are scores of other villages; narrow r
oads run between them all in a network hidden under vine leaves; and some hundreds of house‐roofs make up together what is called the Commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda. Of this commune the chief place, because the largest village, is Santa Rosalia. Santa Rosalia in Selva; so called because thus named in days when the woods had covered it up as closely as a blackbird’s nest is covered with the long leaves that it builds in; Santa Rosalia in Selva, a simple, honest, fresh, and most rural place, with sunburnt women plaiting straw upon its doorsteps, and little naked children tumbling about like Loves escaped from the panels of Correggio; with the daffodils and the odorous narcissus growing in spring‐time everywhere among the grass and corn, and in the autumn the ox‐carts going with the tubs of gathered grapes slowly down its single street: a street without a paving‐stone, and without a shop except the butcher’s stall and the grocer’s, and one little old dim penthouse‐like place where in the gloom an old woman sells cakes and toys and rosaries.
The bright green country lies close about Santa Rosalia, and indeed is one with it, and in summer so overlaps it, and roofs it in, with vine‐foliage and clouds of silvery olive leaf that nothing is to be seen of it except the bell‐tower of its chief church, San Giuseppe, with a statue of the saint upon its roof pointing heavenward.
Things had always come and gone easily in Santa Rosalia in the old days, and even in the new. With revolutions and the like it had had nothing to do. It never talked politics. When men who had remembered wine ten centimes a flask found it rise to a hundred they scratched their heads and were puzzled; being told it was the cost of liberty, they took the explanation simply as a matter of fact, and thought liberty was a name for the vine disease.
When the church was whitewashed, and the trattoria was turned into the Caffè Vittorio Emanuele, and the conscription placards were pasted on the bridge, and the Imperial taxes established themselves in a brand‐new stucco‐plastered public office next the butcher’s, with a shield upon it, bearing a white cross on a red ground, Santa Rosalia did not take much notice: everything grew dear indeed, but some said it was the gas away in the city did it, and some said it was the railway, and some said it was the king, and some said it was all the fault of liquid manure; but still nobody troubled much about anything, and everybody continued to go to mass, and do his best to be happy, until — the events took place that I propose to record.
The Commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda, whose centre is the village of Santa Rosalia, is, like all Italian communes, supposed to enjoy an independence that is practically a legislative autonomy. So long as it contributes its quota to the Imperial taxes, the Imperial Government is supposed to have nothing to do with it, and it is considered to be as free as air to govern itself; so everybody will tell you; and so inviolate is its freedom that even the Prefect of its province dare not infringe upon it — or says so when he wants to get out of any trouble.
Anybody who pays five francs’ worth of taxes has a communal vote in this free government, and helps to elect a body of thirty persons, who in turn elect a council of seven persons, who in turn elect a single person called a syndic, or, as you would call him in English, a mayor. This distilling and condensing process sounds quite admirable in theory. Whoever has the patience to read the pages of this book will see how this system works in practice.
Now in Vezzaja and Ghiralda the thirty persons do nothing but elect the seven persons, the seven do nothing but elect the one person, and the one person does nothing but elect his secretary; and the secretary, with two assistants dignified respectively by the titles of Chancellor and Conciliator, does everything in the way of worry to the public that the ingenuity of the official mind can conceive. The secretary’s duties ought to be simply those of a secretary anywhere, but by a clever individual can be brought to mean almost anything you please in the shape of local tyranny and extortion; the chancellor (cancelliere) has the task of executing every sort of unpleasantness against the public in general, and sends out by his fidus Achates, the Usher, all kinds of summons and warrants at his will and discretion; as for the conciliator (giudice conciliatore), his office, as his name indicates, is supposed to consist in conciliation of all local feuds, disputes, and debts, but as he is generally chiefly remarkable for an absolute ignorance of law and human nature, and a general tendency to accumulate fees anywhere and anyhow, he is not usually of the use intended, and rather is famous for doing what a homely phrase calls setting everybody together by the ears. It being understood that all these gentry are men who, in any other country would be butchers, or bakers, or candlestick makers, it is readily to be understood likewise that they are not an absolutely unmixed boon to the community over which they reign; at their very best they have been book‐keepers or scriveners, or bankrupt petty tradesmen who have some interest with the prefect of the province or the syndic of the commune, and as they usually are, all three alike, little Gesslers in temperament and almost uncontrolled in power, it is easy to imagine that their yoke is by no means light upon the necks of their neighbours and subjects, and that they dance the devil’s dance, humorously, over its finances and its fortunes. Power is sweet, and when you are a little clerk you love its sweetness quite as much as if you were an emperor, and may be you love it a good deal more.
Tyranny is a very safe amusement in this liberated country. Italian law is based on that blessing to mankind, the Code Napoléon, and the Code Napoléon is perhaps the most ingenious mechanism for human torture that the human mind has ever constructed. In the cities its use for torment is not quite so easy, because where there are crowds there is always the fear of a riot, and besides there are horrid things called newspapers, and citizens wicked and daring enough to write in them. But always in the country, the embellished and filtered Code Napoléon can work like a steam plough; there is nobody to appeal, and nobody to appeal to; the people are timid and perplexed; they areas defenceless as the sheep in the hand of the shearer; they are frightened at the sight of the printed papers, and the carabinier’s sword; there is nobody to tell them that they have any rights, and besides, rights are very expensive luxuries anywhere, and cost as much to take care of as a carriage horse.
Now and then the people find out their rights, and light a barrel of petroleum with them, and are blamed: it is foolish, no doubt, and it is terrible, but the real blame lies with their masters, who leave them no other light than the petroleum glare. That they do not use their petroleum for anything except their household lamps is due to the patience and the docility of the people; it is not due to the embellished and filtered version of the Code Napoléon, nor to the administrators of it.
Santa Rosalia is a rambling place, straggling along one side of the green impetuous river; of course it possesses what it calls a piazza, and makes a sort of pretence at being a town; but the grass grows long in its stones all over the place, and its folks are as rustic as villagers can be. There were never very many people in the lowly borgo, but the few there were, at the time of which I write, dwelt in good harmony together.
There was Luigi Canterelli (always called Gigi) who dealt in all kinds of useful things from hammers to pins, from drugs to broad beans; there was Ferdinando Gambacorta (known only as Nando), who was plumber and cartwright and carpenter all in one; there was Leopoldo Franceschi (Poldo), who was locksmith, blacksmith, whitesmith, and farrier; there was Raffaelle Dando (Faello) who was the big butcher, and there was Alessandro Montauto (Sandro) who was the little one; there was Vincenzio Torriggiani (Cencio) who was the tailor of the community and might be seen sitting all day long cross‐legged and hard at work on his threshold and for ever ready for a gossip; there was Filippo Rasselluccio (Lippo) who was the baker and also trafficked in grain and seeds; there was Guiseppe Lante (Beppo) who had a trattoria and wine shop, and would roast you a dozen thrushes or fry you a dozen artichokes against all the cooks in Christendom. There was Leonardo Mariani (Nardo) who kept a paint and oil and brush shop, and also kept the post‐office after his own manner, which was to spread the letters out
upon his counter and let them lie there till somebody should come in who would be going the way to which they were addressed, and would consent to take them thither. There was the apothecary, of course, il dottore Guarino Squillace, who was paid by the commune about 20 l. pounds a year to look after its bodies; and there was Dom Lelio, the Vicar of San Guiseppe, who was paid about twenty shillings a month by the State to look after its souls; and there was the miller, Demetrio Pastorini, who dwelt on the river, and had handsome sons and daughters to the number of seven, and there were a great many other very poor people, nondescripts, getting their bread anyhow; and outside the village there were of course all the small gentry and many contadini and fattori who dashed through the place on fiery horses or in jingling break‐neck bagheri, those bastard offspring of a cart and a gig.
Santa Rosalia had been made into the centre of a new commune some decades ago; but though wine had become ten times the old price, and taxes had become fifty times heavier, Santa Rosalia had not felt its new shoe pinch very terribly, for its syndic had been a very just and excellent person (as does sometimes actually happen), a certain Marchese Palmarola, as simple as Cincinnatus and as gentle as S. Frances. But unhappily for Santa Rosalia, Palmarola had died of tertian fever one hot summer time, and another and different person had been elected in his place, the Cavaliere Anselmo Durellazzo. The Marchese had seen to everything himself; had never signed a paper or a form without reading it, and enquiring into the case that required it; had let many foolish and cruel regulations be dead letters, and had never been known to be unjust to either rich or poor. Most people are unjust to one or the other. But then the Marchese had been a Catholic and a gentleman, and so had been silly enough to believe in such an antiquated thing as moral responsibility.
The Cavaliere Durellazzo had not these scruples; he had been a wax candle manufacturer on a large scale in a city, and though the Church had helped to make his fortune, he was much given to laughing at it; with his millions he had purchased estates in the commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda, and the Giunta thought there was nobody better for a syndic; he thought so too. He was a fat, easy‐going, sleepy man, and as soon as he came into office signed some hundreds of blank forms to save himself all trouble; he cared for nothing except playing dominoes and begin bowed to by his peasantry. As he had passed all his life in bowing himself, it was a new sensation.