by Ouida
Oratorical dust is easily thrown in the eyes of all multitudes, but never so easily as here.
The Marchese called a few of them together in his own room and showed them a map.
‘He is laughing at you,’ he said to them. ‘Look where the Mongolian Empire is, and Russia and China.’
But the map did not convince them. ‘If we get it for nothing, without fighting, Mongolia will be a good thing,’ they said stubbornly, and the idea grew in Pomodoro that the Marchese was a poor spirit, and unworthy to represent them.
As they were used to be led by the priests, so they were now led by the placemen.
The advantage of the exchange was questionable.
Signore Luca Finti made his oration successfully in the Pretura of Pomodoro, speaking in the same chamber where Carmelo had been brought to judgement, since it was the largest in that town; and the good folks who heard him, understanding about one half that he said, and dazzled by the other half, imbibed only the conviction that they were the glory and wonder of Europe, and said one to another that to be sure the Marchese Roldano had never told them all these fine things.
Then the agents of Signore Finti, sitting there as mere auditors, muttered to their neighbours that it was the interest of the nobility everywhere and at all seasons to keep the people ignorant; and this idea worked its way into the shaven heads of the Pomodorians and stirred their vanity as yeast stirs the flour, and made them say one to another in the streets in the evening, as they lounged and smoked and chattered, that it was a very fine thing to be a great nation, and to have ships bigger than any that could be boasted of even by that great buccatone and buscatore, England.
The Pomodorian mind was not wide, nor was it brilliant; it understood wine, oil, and dyes, but there it closed; it thought England was somewhere down Rome way, as it thought Austria was somewhere over the hills; it still believed in the priest’s blessing on the fields, in the poisonous nature of frogs, in the weather prophecies of its calendario, in hydrophobia being as common as catarrh, and in other things of a like en‐
* Hypocrite.
† Brawler, bully.
lightenment; it did not in the least know what a congress meant, nor where the Epirus was, and it had a vague notion of Europe as of a disorderly place beyond seas where you sent pictures and wine when you had more than you wanted of either.
Yet so strong is the power of vanity, and so strong is the power of oratory, that Pomodoro voted by a big majority for Messer Luca Finti, because he had told them he would make them a Power, though he had never said he would cheapen bread, extinguish conscription, or lighten any of the burdens with which the land is laden, as a pack‐mule is ‘chinked’ on the march.
Great is the might of words — above all, is it great in Italy.
CHAPTER XI.
ALL this while that Pomodoro was in a political fever and ferment, Carmelo languished in his prison cell. Everyone had quite forgotten him except his father and his brothers and his betrothed. Old Pastorini had to pay heavily for him to have a separate cell and a little better food; at least it seemed a heavy expense for the miller, who was by no means rich, and had a large family dependent on him, and had had his gains much lessened of late years by a great steam mill that worked at Pomodoro, and took away much of the grain of the neighbouthood. Old Pastorini had gone to an attorney in the town and put his son’s cause in his hands, seeing how badly for want of a lawyer things had fared with Carmelo; but the lawyer had said, ‘After the elections: after the elections,’ and no more could be got out of him, though he accepted his preliminary fees.
‘After the elections,’ said the miller with a tremulous sigh to his son, in the few times he was allowed to visit the prison.
Carmelo shook his head.
He had known men innocent of any crime kept in prison for months and months, without being allowed a trial; it is probably by way of compensation that assassins and thieves are allowed very often to go scot free for months and months without being had up to justice.
Carmelo had changed greatly; the lithe, active, bright‐eyed, sunburned youth, always at work in the air, up when the dusk of dawn veiled the earth, accustomed to spend his blithe strength in healthy labour, was shut up here as a young lion is shut up in a cage, and grew pallid, shrunken, hollow‐eyed; a sullen dull anger slumbered in his eyes, and a listless despondency had replaced this calm yet buoyant spirits.
But there was no one to take any heed of that. Even the lawyer retained for him, who visited him once and asked him some rapid questions, said impatiently: ‘There are a hundred causes to be heard before yours. I doubt if you will get sentence before All Saints’ Day.’
For though the attorney had taken up his cause, being tempted by the sight of the elder Pastorinis’ well‐thumbed national notes, he did not much care for it; he felt that it was not very nice work, to defend a lad unpopular without.the municipal powers, and who was guilty of having assaulted a guard. These cases get a lawyer in bad odour.
In the room in the Carcere where he was spending his wretched hours, of no use or profit to himself or to mankind, Carmelo, through the open window, barred close high up in the wall, could hear the roar of the assembled people inside the Pretura, as they were applauding this speech which was Greek to them. The Pretura was opposite to him, and not many metres divided the one building of Law from the other.
He had heard from his gaoler what was going on; why the town was in such tumult night and day; and he knew that one of the Liberals was standing against the old, white‐haired, regal‐looking Marquis.
‘Perhaps if he be elected he would do something for us,’ thought Carmelo wistfully. ‘Perhaps he would take away all those clerks and guards, and say the poor dogs might use the legs God gave them?’
And Carmelo’s heavy heart rose a little, and he felt a little hopeful and glad when his gaoler told him, at twilight, that Luca Finti was elected Deputy for Pomodoro by so large a majority that no ballot was needed.
When the twilight deepened into night bands played, rockets went off, fireworks threw their many‐coloured reflections into the prison cell, where Carelo sat on his wooden bench.
Unless one of the candidates has two‐thirds of the votes, there is a ballot after the polling.
Pomodoro drank too much, and fought a little, and rejoiced greatly, having a vague serious idea that it had done something very fine indeed in electing the advocate from Naples.
‘Shall we be any the better?’ said Carmelo doubtfully to his gaoler, a chatty, good‐humoured man, who was sorry for him.
The gaoler shrugged his shoulders.
‘He is going to give us gas and a tromböi.’
‘Gas! We had never vine disease, nor rose disease, till there was gas in the city,’ said Carmelo, and here he did not exaggerate; for in Italy neither were known until gas works were introduced.
The gaoler shrugged his shoulders again.
‘Our people want it. He says he will get it.’
Tramway.
‘And besides?—’
‘Well, nothing much besides, except that we are to be a bigger nation than England or any in Europe.’
‘What is England?’ said Carmelo.
‘It is a place where the poor souls have no wine of their own, I think,’ said the gaoler. ‘And they make cannons and cheese. You see their people over here now and then. They carry red bibles, and they go about with their mouths open and catch flies, and they run into all the little old dusty places; you must have seen them.’
‘And why do we want to have anything to do with them?’
‘They will come in ships and fire at us if we are not bigger and stronger than they,’ said the gaoler. ‘We must build iron
The bocca aperta of the English physiognomy is always a great diversion to all Italians.
houses, that float, and go on the sea, and meet them.’
‘What is the sea?’ said Carmelo; for how should he know, he who never had been out of the confines of Santa Ros
alia.
But the gaoler was not very sure himself, and so said sharply he ‘had no time for talk,’ and withdrew the pewter plate that had carried in his prisoner’s supper, and fastened the bolts and bars roughly, and then went out to see the fireworks, and talk about England with people who did not ask inconvenient questions.
He found everybody excited and enraptured about the gas that was to come to them through the mediation of the new Deputy. They did not know in the least why they wanted it; they had none of them anything to do after dusk; they had their own pure olive oil to burn, that hurt no eyesight, and gave a sweet pale light that suited the summer nights. But they thought that gas and a tromböi were signs of progress and prosperity. There are many wiser people who make the self‐same error.
The railway hissed and roared twenty miles off them, where the city was; they knew that would never come nearer to them; but they saw no reason why they should not rejoice in a tall brick chimney, staring black and foul, and straight and frightful, up against their bright blue skies, and a hideous engine tearing up, and tearing along, their winding country lanes. Other towns, no bigger than theirs, had these blessings; and Signore Luca Finti had promised the same to them.
Meanwhile Messer Luca Finti was sitting supping with the Syndic of Pomodoro and the Giunta, and as the Syndic of Santa Rosalia was indisposed, his excellent locum tenens and secretary was invited in his stead, at the new Deputy’s request, and tasted the sweets of a just reward.
In the piazza of Santa Rosalia the news was received in another spirit.
Messer Nellemane had worked for Messer Luca Finti, and that one fact was quite enough for the community that enjoyed the many blessings of his reign.
A morning or two after the elections, Viola was sitting at her door with Raggi by her side.
Raggi (an abbreviation of sunbeam), so named because she was of a light yellow colour, was a little dog that the girl had found seven years before, stray and miserable in a vine path, with a little tattered red coat adhering to her body, which showed that she must have been a runaway dancing dog.
Raggi was never claimed by any master, and had long made the joy of Viola’s life; the tricks and saltatory talent that Raggi, when rested and recovered, voluntarily displayed, proved that her career must have been professional, while her large liquid eyes had a sadness which betokened that she had had her share in those vicissitudes and maltreatments which no artistic career is ever without. Raggi had quickly become the idol of all the children of Santa Rosalia, and was a very happy little dog, though she always remained timid. She was not old, but she would still waltz if any guitar or accordion were sounding, and would walk erect, and beg, and beat an imaginary drum in the prettiest way possible. This morning she was sleeping on her mistress’s skirts; and that was what she now liked to do best of all.
As she slept there and Viola plaited, not lifting her eyes from the tress of straw, there passed by the door Angelo Saghari; the old man who had been rural guard of the place ever since Viola could remember; who had never molested anybody, and had always seemed as harmless as the old grey cat that dozed amongst the twine and sugar of Gigi’s general shop. But old Angelo had been threatened with dismissal for supineness, and had been fired to emulation of Bindo’s deeds by the fact that half the fines went into the pocket of the guard who was sharp enough to smell out a contravention; from a quiet, good‐natured, neighbourly soul he had become as suspicious, spiteful, and cunning an old spy as could be manufactured by the infusion of the spirit of the communal code. The blood of his aged veins was turning sour because Bindo and his colleague were always getting the fines instead of himself, and so angry was he now that woe betided any luckless child who spun a top, or any hapless dog that wagged a tail, within a rood of Angelo.
As he went grumpy and glum, because of these things, his sword hanging at his side, with which he could hack a dog handily, though he never dared draw it on a thief, his eyes spied out little yellow‐haired Raggi asleep on her mistress’s gown.
The dog was certainly not chained; the dog had not even a collar; the grey hairs of Angelo stood erect with horror.
He had known Raggi seven years, and had stood and laughed a hundred times to see her waltz, and beat the drum, to divert the children in the piazza. But now he only beheld in Raggi an object for contravention. As to Napolean all men were food for powder, so, to those imbued with the communal code, all living things are food for fines. Can a fine be screwed out of them? that is the only question.
He went up to Viola, therefore, and said roughly: ‘Your dog is loose!’
Viola looked up and laughed, despite the sadness of her heart.
‘Raggi? Why it is Raggi! Are they going to tell me to tie Raggi? That would be too cruel; why Raggi is the darling of everybody. What would the children do without her? Though, to be sure, she is a little rheumatic and stiff now, poverina—’
Angelo was frowning heavily, and writing with a pencil in his book.
‘I have a right to seize the dog, and I have a mind to do it for your impudent answers,’ he said harshly. ‘The dog is loose. It is an offense against the laws of the commune, as you are very well aware. Your father will be summoned—’
‘But, Angelo!’ cried Viola in stupefaction, not believing her own ears. ‘Raggi is just as she has been for seven years and more. What has she done? What can you mean? You have patted and petted her yourself all these years, and laughed so to see her dance — you are joking!—’
‘You will find it no joke,’ said Angelo harshly, feeling a little ashamed of himself. ‘Your dog can be no exception to the rest. Your father will have to pay, and if I see the beast loose again, I shall take it to the guard house, and it will be killed unless you pay twenty francs. You are warned.’
Then Angelo shuffled off, feeling that Bindo himself could not have said or done better. Viola took the little yellow dog up in her arms and kissed it convulsively and sobbed over it.
‘Oh, Raggi! What has come to the world that we are all treated like galley slaves, and you poor pretty things like wild beasts!’ she murmured over the dog; and it seemed to this gentle and pious girl that she could spring at the cruel hearts of all these men, and stab them to death for the sheer sweet sake of justice.
For it is the noblest natures that tyranny drives to frenzy.
‘Dominiddio!’ cried Pippo when he came home. ‘I’d throttle Angelo sooner than I’d throttle an adder. Oh, the vile old creature, when he has known me all my life, and saw you baptised with the holy water! Lord, Lord! how are we to live? Was not life hard enough to the likes of us at all times? Is Raggi a wolf or a bear? Can a dog live tied down with a string as you tie a call‐bird to a trap? They are mad! They are all gone clean mad, and it is we who have to bear all the brunt of it. The gentlemen can’t know of it. The gentlemen can’t know.!’
The gentlemen did know of it, however, well enough, and when they sat at their weekly meeting, listened to the reports read by Messer Nellemane, and applauded the zeal of the rural guards. None of the gentlemen lived in Santa Rosalia itself, and when they drove through it they like to have no wooden disc rolling from a child’s hand across their road, no dog barking at their gigs’ wheels; and cared very little by what means their laws were enforced, or what poor household was sold up under their rules. For thorough, absolute, selfish indifference to the wrongs and the sorrows of the people, there is nothing comparable to the apathy of an Italian of the new régime. It is an apathy so obtuse, so self‐complacent, and so pachydermatous, that one longs sometimes to see it blasted and shaken into ruins by the roar and leap of an avenging people.
Angelo kept his word, and Pippo was summoned for having Raggi loose, or, according to the amenities of the printed papers, was invited to make amends for a transgression.
Poor old Pippo, being advised by his timid neighbour, Cecco the cooper, to do anything for peace and quietness, went and submitted by being fined two francs, and had to go without wine for a week.
‘Two francs because Raggi slept on your gown!’ he said to his daughter twenty times a day; it seemed to him an oppression so monstrous that the world had never seen one like it.
Viola, trembling for the safety of Raggi, put an old bit of ribbon about the neck of the dog, and tied a long string to it; but no municipality being wholly able to change the nature of animals, and it being quite impossible to perpetually pin a dog to your side, Raggi walked about the piazza, and went to her playmates the children with the string trailing behind her, and more summonses rained in on Pippo.
Not summonses alone, moreover, for there came with them a taxpaper which claimed on account of Raggi, seven years’ tax at six francs the year, and all the spese attending delay added thereto; in all, some seventy odd francs. With this came documents for various contraventions concerning the cutting of the reeds and the running of the brook, condemning Filippo Mazzetti in contumacy for not having attended to the various calls for these great and punishable offences; and the sum total of this was so terrible that the old man, when it was read to him by his daughter, dropped down, white as a sheet, and stared with gasping breath and suffocating heart, till the terrified maiden screamed that he was in a fit, and all the neighbours ran in to help.
Pippo was not in a fit: but when one after another these papers rained in upon him with their inexorable demands, the buoyant, brave, ignorant, harmless life of him seemed to collapse under a great terror, as a bird sinks down that is stoned.
He had never complained of his lot, though it had never been a good one; he had never thought it hard to have to labour for his bread all the year round; he had accepted his destiny cheerfully, never quarrelling with God or man about it; but now the docility of his soul turned and writhed, and he called out against his fate, and he rose at every dawn with a great fear, like ice, at his heart. For what does ruin mean to the poor man? It means death; a slow, long death of hard‐drawn hunger.