by Howard Pyle
Now there was at that time a magician living in Florence named Montofacini. He was the most wise and learned man then living in Italy, or any other country upon which God’s sun shines on a clear day. He was so good a mathematician that he could tell by once looking at it how many drops there were in a glassful of wine. He could talk in three languages, and could discourse Latin and Greek besides as easily as he could talk good Florentine Italian. He could read the heavens and the stars as easily as one could read the paternoster in a book of prayers, printed in big, clear letters.
That evening a neighbor came to see Niccolo. “Why don’t you go,” said he, “to Montofacini in Florence, and talk to him about your son?”
Niccolo still sat upon the green bench, and still looked upon the ground as though he were searching for crickets.
He needed shaving, and his cheeks and chin were rough with a two days’ beard that grew upon them. He shook his head. “‘T would do no good,” said he, “to see Montofacini. He is a very wise man, but he could do no good here. Sebastiano has got the fever in his vitals. He is dried to a bone. He will die to-morrow, for the doctor says so.”
“But Montofacini will give you sound advice,” said the neighbor. “Advice is something. Listen! When a man is hungry a very small cake is better than no bread at all. Last week Giovanni Pisanti’s wife was sick of a colic. Her face was green and was covered all over with sweat, so that she shone like a blue glaze on a white earthen pot. What did Pisanti do? He went to Florence to see Montofacini. Montofacini gave him some red medicine in a bottle. And now the woman is about, singing like a bird and as strong as a grasshopper.”
Niccolo still shook his head stubbornly. “That was the colic she had,” said he. “You may cure the colic with red medicine, but when the fever eats into a strong man’s vitals you can’t cure that. Sebastiano will die to-morrow, for the doctor said so.”
“Well,” said the neighbor, “if my son were sick and going to die, I would go and see Montofacini and tell him all about the case. Maybe he could do something for the young man.”
So the neighbor talked. The next day Niccolo went into Florence and saw Montofacini.
Montofacini was a noble, tall man, with hair and beard as white as snow. He sat at his table, dressed all in black from top to toe. Niccolo came before him, and Montofacini looked at him as though his eyes could pierce the man through. For they seemed to be like long, sharp needles of pure light — they went in at the breast and out at the back, as though the glance was thrust through the heart, Montofacini hade Niccolo to sit down, and Niccolo did so. So far Niccolo had said nothing to him.
“Well,” said Montofacini, “I am sorry to hear that your son Sebastiano is sick. When a man of your age who is a widower loves a son and the son dies, it is like taking from him a strong staff of support. If he stumbles he falls.”
“I cannot guess how you know about me and my son,” said Niccolo, “but I came to see if you will help my son in his sickness. To-day he will die unless you help him to live. He has been sick,” said Niccolo, “this five weeks, and I could put my thumb and finger around his thigh-bone this minute. He is like a skeleton lying there alive upon his bed.”
“Have you not Dr. Faustani?” said Montofacini. “He is the best medico in Florence. He is watching your son, and if he dies it will be a decree of Providence. Trust to that decree, for Providence is always merciful.”
“And,” said Niccolo, “can you do nothing to help him? Nothing at all?”
“Perhaps I can,” said Montofacini, “but I am afraid to interfere with the east of the die made by Providence! You can hut turn over the die, but the six is opposite the one. Your misfortune may be six times as great as it was before.”
The tears started to run down Niccolo’s face. There were deep channels in his worn cheeks, and the tears ran down these like diamonds into the cracks. “Ah,” he said, “do not talk in that way! If you can save my son, do so and I will take the risks myself. My life is in him, and if his life is taken my life is taken also. Give me a charm to cure him if you can.”
Montofacini looked at the man, and his heart relented at the sight of his gray hair and his tears. “I will see,” said he, “what I can do. If I can cure him, I will do so. Come back at noon to-day and I will have a charm for you.”
Niccolo came hack as the hells rang for noon. Montofacini sat just where he had sat that morning. “I have a charm for your son’s life,” said he, “if you still want it, but think well before you take it. See!” He held up a little crystal globe about the bigness of a walnut. The sunlight shone upon it and made it glow as though with light from within. “Here,” said Montofacini, “is the sphere of your life’s fortune. Cherish it well, for if it breaks, your life will disappear from your body like smoke from a fagot. Outside of this, you will observe, is a mist as though you had breathed upon it. Wipe away this mist with a soft handkerchief so that the sphere is clear, and if the mist does not return, your misfortune will pass and your son will live. But do not let this mist gather, or else misfortune will come upon you and will settle about your head in a dark and gloomy cloud.”
Niccolo took the sphere carefully between his thumb and finger and looked at it. It was as though made of thin glass. There was some clear liquid within it that looked like wonderfully transparent water. He could not see it clearly, for the globe was covered with a mist as though the glass were frosted.
“Will you take it?” said Montofacini.
“Yes,” said Niccolo, “I will!”
“Then be careful of it, for if it is broken, your life will leave you in that moment.”
Niccolo took the crystal globe home with him. He cleared the mist from it with a soft red handkerchief of silk. He could see within the globe very clearly now; there was what looked like bright water in it. In a little while the mist returned, and it was nearly as cloudy as ever. Again he cleared it. By and by the mist returned again. Niccolo worked over it for a long, long time, rubbing it and rubbing it. The sweat ran from his face in streams, but still he wiped the mist from the globe.
After a while it seemed to him it remained clearer than it had been before. Yes, it stayed clear for a longer and a longer time. He felt cheerful and encouraged. At last the mist did not return for a long time, and the globe was much brighter than it had been at first. Again he rubbed it, and now it was clear. It gleamed and shone as though it were a living eye, bright and vitreous like water. It seemed to Niccolo as though he had saved his son’s life. He went into the sick-room to see him. Yes, indeed, he could see there was a great change. The young man’s eyes no longer roved restlessly hither and thither, but were steady and tranquil. His breath was even and undisturbed. He looked at his father as though he knew him. His forehead was no longer dry and burning, but was cool and moist.
The doctor came into the room. He seemed to be struck with surprise at the looks of Sebastiano. He came to the bedside and felt his wrists, his forehead, and his body. He spoke to the young man, and he answered calmly and rationally. “This is strange,” said the doctor as though to himself; “I do not understand how this is. The young man is very different from what I have seen him before. He has not been thus for five weeks. He will get well if nothing now happens to him.”
Niccolo heard his words. His heart leaped within him. His legs grew suddenly weak beneath him. He sat down upon a chair that was near. He did not say anything to the doctor, but he knew that he had saved his son’s life by rubbing clear that sphere of crystal. He wept into his handkerchief.
This was how Niccolo Ramselli saved his son’s life. Thereafter he watched him like a hawk, and nursed him like fresh bread. For a long time he remembered only that his son had been close to death, that the scythe had missed him, and it was he who had warded off the stroke of the conqueror.
So Sebastiano grew slowly back to health again. His skeleton filled up with good, wholesome fat. He sat in a chair outside of the house and warmed himself in the bright sunshine. But as he grew better hi
s father slowly forgot to be always tender toward him. He was sometimes short in his speech and contradicted him very sharply. Then he would be sorry for his irritation and speak words of repentance, but again he would be sharp in his discourse.
In short, Sebastiano was rapidly growing well again.
Niccolo Ramselli made up his mind that it behooved him to marry. He said: “A man should not carry all his eggs in one basket, as I do mine. Sebastiano came near dying. If he had died, how would it then have been with me? By and by I should have been an old man alone in the world. Yes, I will marry; I am but forty-eight years old, and have plenty of good days before me yet. Let me marry a young wife, and I may, perhaps, have children by her. Even if I do not, she will still be young; and when I am old, if she loves me, as I believe she will, I shall have a hand to support me when my feet grow uncertain and I stumble in going down the path of life.”
So, having made up his mind, he began to look about for a fit girl to marry.
Ettore Savisini lived a near neighbor to Niccolo Ramselli, and the two had known each other and had been friends for twenty-two years, ever since Ettore was married. For Ettore had a wife, but no children. In this he was shut away from the rest of the world, and while other husbands and wives had noise and tumult in the house when the children were home, their house was silent. No one teased the dog; no one robbed the cherry-tree; no one chased the chickens.
And yet the two were a loving couple, as husbands and wives go in this world. He did not beat her at all; he did not swear at her unless the need arose; he did not even scold her unless there was just occasion for it. Yet they had no children.
At last Ettore said to his wife, whose name was Maria: “Well, little apple, we have no children, and are not likely after all these years to have any. Listen; your sister Serafina had a little girl that she left behind her when she died. Now her father is also dead, for he was drowned in the sponge-fishing. The child was left alone in the world, and is living now with her grandmother. Let us send for the little one to come here to make our home bright for us.”
Maria Savisini began to weep. She had always wanted children of her own, but Heaven had not been kind to her. Now she was asked to bring a cuckoo bird to fill the nest that her imagination had so often peopled with noisy, curly-headed brats of her own. Now she would have no children. Her house would be as lonely as a nest from which the bird of hope had flown, and Elisabetta Rambolli would come to settle there. Well, that was right. If Heaven refused one children of one’s own, one should do what one could elsewhere.
So the upshot of it was that Ettore hitched his little gray donkey to the gay cart in which he carried pumpkins to town, and drove away to Fovezzano, where Elisabetta lived with her grandmother; and that same day he returned home, bringing the girl with him.
She was only fourteen years old when she came. She made no noise or disturbance in the house. She seemed to be sad and serious. She entered very quietly and without tears into the new household, and made the fires and boiled the water and cooked the macaroni, and was as though she had always belonged there. She had no home to be sorry for and no people to grieve after.
So four years had passed, and now Elisabetta was the prettiest girl that came to the store at San Domenico. When she came there of a morning, with her short petticoats, her bare feet, and a red - and - yellow handkerchief wrapped around her head, every young man who met her turned him to look after her, and even the great lord who sat like a fat poodle in his gilded chariot would say to his wife, “There, that is the prettiest girl I have seen for a great many days!”
Niccolo Ramselli said: “Yonder is the girl I want for my wife. She is young, beautiful, a good housekeeper, and only eighteen years old. If I can win her I will win a treasure, for she is as pretty as a painted picture of the Virgin.”
So that evening he went to Ettore’s house after supper, and then the two sat’ side by side for a long time, watching the gold and crimson light fade out of the sky over above the opposite hill, the stars shine out, and the bats flicker in angular flight against the brightness.
Then Niccolo said:— “Ettore, your niece is a beautiful girl. She is gentle and mild, a good housekeeper, and as patient as ever was the maid Griselda. She is now eighteen years old. Had you thought of marrying her to any one?”
“No,” said Ettore, “I had not. She is useful to us. We love her, and to whom should I marry her? She is portionless and will have no prospects in time to come. Who would climb so thick a hedge to pluck a berry on the other side?”
“I would do that,” said Niccolo. “I would do that, even if I tore my shirt in climbing it. Listen, Ettore; I have no wife, for God took her eighteen years ago. I have a son who is now nearly a man, and who in a little while will be thinking of looking out for his own life. I will take the girl if you will give her to me, and will be glad to have her. Give her to me.”
“Do you mean this?” said Ettore.
“I mean it,” said Niccolo, “and a thousand times more. She is very beautiful, and my heart goes out to her. I want her for my wife.”
Ettore rubbed his hand over his chin and thought of what Niccolo had said. At last he spoke. “I will think,” he said, “of what you say, and will let you know what I have thought to-morrow.”
So the next day Niccolo came again to Ettore’s house dressed in his very best. His jacket was rich. It had a double row of brass buttons down the front, and they shone in the daylight like disks of pure, bright gold. His shirt was white, and his breeches were green. He had a knit crimson sash about his waist with the bow hanging behind, and his shirt was fine and as white as milk. He looked the very picture of a prosperous contadino. “What answer have I?” said he.
“What answer?” said Ettore. “Well, did you ever hear the answer the moon gave the dog? The moon shone, and the dog said: ‘Yah, yah! You are fine! You are fine!’ But the moon listened to him and said nothing.”
“And does she say nothing?” said Niccolo.
“That is what she says,” said Ettore. “She does not say yes, and she does not say no. She asks me whether you are too bashful to ask her yourself. Then she laughs at the thought. She says you are too old to speak of marriage to a young girl; but if you speak, why not lift up your voice and call it out so that she can hear what you say.”
“So I will call it out,” said Niccolo; “I will call it out now. Where is she?”
“She is not here,” said Ettore; “she went up the road awhile ago to Pia Grinchini’s.”
“Then I will go back home,” said Niccolo, “and come again to-morrow.” Niccolo talked a great deal that evening to his boy Sebastiano about Elisabetta. At first Sebastiano listened, but by and by he got up from where he sat and began to walk up and down in the dusk.
Niccolo talked on and on about her, for the more he talked the more he loved her. And still Sebastiano walked up and down in the darkness.
Suddenly he said, as though he were barking, “You are too old for the girl, or she is too young for you.”
Niccolo stopped suddenly in his speech. “What say you?” said he. “Too old, say you? I am not too old; I will not be fifty for two years. I am older than she is, but, God wot, I am not too old. A man may lack a tooth and yet eat a peach, if it is ripe.”
“I am a better match for her than you,” said Sebastiano. “I am not three years older than she. Better that than twenty-three.”
Niccolo was silent for a moment or two. Then he laughed aloud. “Yes,” said he, and laughed again. “Well, I will talk reason with you. The girl is poor, and I have plenty for her and for myself. What would you have to keep her on?”
“Let me take this place,” said Sebastiano, “and I will farm it. You shall be the father of the family and nurse the children, and I will care for you for the longest day you live.”
The red mounted to Niccolo’s face hidden in the darkness. “No,” said he, in a loud voice, “my money is mine and I will keep it. I will not give up my farm or rock my grandson’
s cradle!”
“Very well,” said Sebastiano; “if not me, then let some one speak who is more near to the girl’s age. She is a good girl, and as beautiful as she is good. Any one would take her and work for her without a soldo of dower.”
“Go,” said Niccolo, “and see that the cow is in the byre.” He did not like Sebastiano’s talk, especially as his heart told him that there was more truth in what he said than could be packed into a hazel-nut.
The next day Niccolo went to Ettore’s house, and this time he saw Elisabetta. He took her hand and held it in his own. He did not let it go immediately, and the sparks of pure love shot up his arm and through his heart like twenty bright and sharp arrows of Cupid. “Tell me,” he said, “have you an answer for me? Will you marry me?”
“What answer shall I give you?” said she. “I am too young to think of marrying.”
“No!” said Niccolo, “you are the ripe age to think of it. Your people are dead and you have no dower. Marry me and I will dower you.”
She turned her face away. By and by she turned it to him again. There were tears in her beautiful shining eyes. “I like you,” said she, “but not as you would have me like you. My heart has flown elsewhere like a bird, and now it is in a golden cage and some one holds it.” Niccolo was silent, and then he said, “Has this other one told you that he loves you?”
“No,” said Elisabetta, “he has not.” And now the tears rolled down her cheeks like bright jewels.