Tales of My Native Town

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

VI

Thus, Rosa Catana, little by little, earned her inheritance from Don Giovanni Ussorio, who, in the March of 1871, died of paralysis.

III THE RETURN OF TURLENDANA

The group was walking along the seashore. Down the hills and over the country Spring was coming again. The humble strip of land bordering the sea was already green; the various fields were quite distinctly marked by the springing vegetation, and every mound was crowned with budding trees. The north wind shook these trees, and its breath caused many flowers to fall. At a short distance the heights seemed to be covered with a colour between pink and violet; for an instant the view seemed to tremble and grow pale like a ripple veiling the clear surface of a pool, or like a faded painting.

The sea stretched out its broad expanse serenely along the coast, bathed by the moonlight, and toward the north taking on the hue of a turquois of Persia, broken here and there by the darker tint of the currents winding over its surface.

Turlendana, who had lost the recollection of these places through a long absence, and who in his long peregrinations had forgotten the sentiments of his native land, was striding along with the tired, regular step of haste, looking neither backward nor around him.

When the camel would stop at a tuft of wild grass, Turlendana would utter a brief, hoarse cry of incitement. The huge reddish quadruped would slowly raise his head, chewing the morsel heavily between his jaws.

“Hu, Barbara!”

The she-ass, the little snowy white Susanna, protesting against the tormenting of the monkey, from time to time would bray lamentingly, asking to be freed of her rider.

But the restless Zavali gave her no peace; as though in a frenzy, with quick, short gestures of wrath, she would run over the back of the beast, jump playfully on her head, get hold of her large ears; then would lift her tail and shake the hairs, hold it up and look through the hairs, scratch poor Susanna viciously with her nails, then lift her hands to her mouth and move her jaws as though chewing, grimacing frightfully as she did so. Then suddenly, she would jump back to her seat, holding in her hands her foot, twisted like the root of a bush, and sit with her orange coloured eyes, filled with wonder and stupor, fixed on the sea, while wrinkles would appear on her head, and her thin pinkish ears would tremble nervously. Without warning she would make a malicious gesture, and recommence her play.

“Hu, Barbara!”

The camel heard and started to walk again.

When the group reached the willow tree woods, at the mouth of the River Pescara, figures could be seen upon its right bank, above the masts of the ships anchored in the docks of Bandiera. Turlendana stopped to get a drink of water from the river.

The river of his native place carried to him the peaceful air of the sea. Its banks, covered with fluvial plains, lay stretched out as though resting from their recent work of fecundity. The silence was profound. The cobwebs shone tranquilly in the sun like mirrors framed by the crystal of the sea. The seaweed bent in the wind, showing its green or white sides.

“Pescara!” said Turlendana, with an accent of curiosity and recognition, stopping still to look at the view.

Then, going down to the shore where the gravel was clean, he kneeled down to drink, carrying the water to his mouth in his curled up palm. The camel, bending his long neck, drank with slow, regular draughts. The she-ass, too, drank from the stream, while the monkey, imitating the man, made a cup of her hands, which were violet coloured like unripe India figs.

“Hu, Barbara!” The camel heard and ceased to drink. The water dripped unheeded from his mouth onto his chest; his white gums and yellowish teeth showed between his open lips.

Through the path marked across the wood by the people of the sea, the little group proceeded on its way. The sun was setting when they reached the Arsenale of Rampigna. Turlendana asked of a sailor who was walking beside the brick parapet:

“Is that Pescara?”

The sailor, astonished at the sight of the strange beasts, answered Turlendana’s question:

“It is that,” and left his work to follow the stranger.

The sailor was soon joined by others. Soon a crowd of curious people had gathered and were following Turlendana, who went calmly on his way, unmindful of the comments of the people. When they reached the boat-bridge, the camel refused to pass over.

“Hu, Barbara! Hu, hu!” Turlendana cried impatiently, urging him on, and shaking the rope of the halter by which he led the animal. But Barbara obstinately lay down upon the ground, and stretched his head out in the dust very comfortable, showing no intention of moving.

The people jesting gathered about, having overcome their first amazement, and cried in a chorus:

“Barbara! Barbara!”

As they were somewhat familiar with monkeys, having seen some which the sailors had brought home, together with parrots, from their long cruises, they were teasing Zavali in a thousand different ways, handing her large greenish almonds, which the monkey would open, gluttonously devouring the sweet fresh meat.

After much urging and persistent shouting, Turlendana succeeded in conquering the stubbornness of the camel, and that enormous architecture of bones and skin rose staggering to his feet in the midst of the instigating crowd.

From all directions soldiers and sailors flocked over the boat bridge to witness the spectacle. Far behind the mountain of Gran Sasso the setting sun irradiated the spring sky with a vivid rosy light, and from the damp earth, the water of the river, the seas, and the ponds, the moisture had arisen. A rosy glow tinted the houses, the sails, the masts, the plants, and the whole landscape, and the figures of the people, acquiring a sort of transparency, grew obscure, the lines of their contour wavering in the fading light.

Under the weight of the caravan the bridge creaked on its tar-smeared boats like a very large floating lighter. Turlendana, halting in the middle of the bridge, brought the camel also to a stop; stretching high above the heads of the crowd, it stood breathing against the wind, slowly moving its head like a fictitious serpent covered with hair.

The name of the beast had spread among the curious people, and all of them, from an innate love of sensation, and filled with the exuberance of spirits inspired by the sweetness of the sunset and the season of the year, cried out gleefully:

“Barbara! Barbara!” At the sound of this applauding cry and the well-meant clamour of the crowd, Turlendana, who was leaning against the chest of his camel, felt a kindly emotion of satisfaction spring up in his heart.

The she-ass suddenly began to bray with such high and discordant variety of notes, and with such sighing passion that a spontaneous burst of merriment ran through the crowd.

The fresh, happy laughter spread from one end of the bridge to the other like the roar of water falling over the stones of a cataract.

Then Turlendana, unknown to any of the crowd, began to make his way through the throng. When he was outside the gates of the city, where the women carrying reed baskets were selling fresh fish, Binchi-Banche, a little man with a yellow face, drawn up like a juiceless lemon, pushed to the front, and as was his custom with all strangers who happened to come to the place, offered his services in finding a lodging.

Pointing to Barbara, he asked first:

“Is he ferocious?”

Turlendana, smiling, answered, “No.”

“Well,” Binchi-Banche went on, reassured, “there is the house of Rosa Schiavona.” Both turned towards the Pescaria, and then towards Sant’ Agostino, followed by the crowd. From windows and balconies women and children leaned over, gazing in astonishment at the passing camel, admiring the grace of the white ass, and laughing at the comic performances of Zavali.

At one place, Barbara, seeing a bit of green hanging from a low loggia, stretched out his neck and, grasping it with his lips, tore it down. A cry of terror broke forth from the women who were leaning over the loggia, and the cry spread to other loggias. The people from the river laughed loudly, crying out, as though it were the carnival season and they were behind masks:

“Hurrah! Hurrah!”

They were intoxicated by the novelty of the spectacle, and by the invigourating spring air. In front of the house of Rosa Schiavona, in the neighbourhood of Portasale, Binchi-Banche made a sign to stop.

“This is the place,” he said.

It was a very humble one-story house with one row of windows, and the lower walls were covered with inscriptions and ugly figures. A row of bats pinned on the arch formed an ornament, and a lantern covered with reddish paper hung under the window.

This place was the abode of a sort of adventurous, roving people. They slept mixed together, the big and corpulent truckman, Letto Manoppello, the gipsies of Sulmona, horse-traders, boiler-menders, turners of Bucchianico, women of the city of Sant’ Angelo, women of wicked lives, the bag-pipers of Atina, mountaineers, bear-tamers, charlatans, pretended mendicants, thieves, and fortune-tellers. Binchi-Banche acted as a go-between for all that rabble, and was a great protégé of the house of Rosa Schiavona.

When the latter heard the noise of the newcomers, she came out upon the threshold. She looked like a being generated by a dwarf and a sow. Very diffidently she put the question:

“What is the matter?”

“There is a fellow here who wants lodging for his beasts, Donna Rosa.”

“How many beasts?”

“Three, as you see, Donna Rosa—a monkey, an ass, and a camel.”

The crowd was paying no attention to the dialogue. Some of them were exciting Zavali, others were feeling of Barbara’s legs, commenting on the callous spots on his knees and chest. Two guards of the salt store-houses, who had travelled to the sea-ports of Asia Minor, were telling in a loud voice of the wonderful properties of the camel, talking confusedly of having seen some of them dancing, while carrying upon their necks a lot of half-naked musicians and women of the Orient. The listeners, greedy to hear these marvellous tales, cried:

“Tell us some more! Tell us some more!” They stood around the story-tellers in attentive silence, listening with dilated eyes.

Then one of the guards, an old man whose eyelids were drawn up by the wind of the sea, began to tell of the Asiatic countries, and as he went on, his imagination became excited by the stories which he told, and his tales grew more wonderful.

A sort of mysterious softness seemed to penetrate the sunset. In the minds of the listeners, the lands which were described to them rose vividly before their imaginations in all their strange splendour. Across the arch of the Porta, which was already in shadow, could be seen boats loaded with salt rocking upon the river, the salt seeming to absorb all the light of the evening, giving the boats the appearance of palaces of precious crystals. Through the greenish tinted heavens rose the crescent of the moon.

“Tell us some more! Tell us some more!” the younger of those assembled were crying.

In the meanwhile Turlendana had put his beasts under cover and supplied them with food. This being done, he had again set forth with Binchi-Banche, while the people remained gathered about the door of the barn where the head of the camel appeared and disappeared behind the rock gratings.

On the way Turlendana asked:

“Are there any drinking places here?”

Binchi-Banche answered promptly:

“Yes, sir, there are.” Then, lifting his big black hands he counted off on his fingers:

“The Inn of Speranza, the Inn of Buono, the Inn of Assau, the Inn of Zarricante, the Inn of the Blind Woman of Turlendana....”

“Ah!” exclaimed the other calmly.

Binchi-Banche raised his big, sharp, greenish eyes.

“You have been here before, sir?”

Then, with the native loquacity of the Pescarese he went on without waiting for an answer:

“The Inn of the Blind Woman is large, and they sell there the best wine. The so-called Blind Woman is a woman who has had four husbands....”

He stopped to laugh, his yellowish face wrinkling into little folds as he did so.

“The first husband was Turlendana, a sailor on board the ships of the King of Naples, sailing from India to France, to Spain, and even as far as America. He was lost at sea, no one knows where, for the ship disappeared and nothing has ever been heard from it since. That was about thirty years ago. Turlendana had the strength of Samson; he could pull up an anchor with one finger ... poor fellow! He who goes to sea is apt to have such an end.”

Turlendana was listening quietly.

“The second husband, whom she married after five years of widowhood, was from Ortona, a son of Ferrante, a damned soul, who was in conspiracy with smugglers in Napoleon’s time, during the war with England. They smuggled goods from Francavilla up to Silvi and Montesilvano—sugar and coffee from the English boats. In the neighbourhood of Silvi was a tower called ‘The Tower of Saracini,’ from which the signals were given. As the patrol passed, ‘Plon, plon, plon, plon!’ came out from behind the trees....” Binchi-Banche’s face lighted up at the recollection of those times, and he quite lost himself in the pleasure of describing minutely all those clandestine operations, his expressive gestures and exclamations adding interest to the tale.

His small body would draw up and stretch out to its full height as he proceeded.

“At last the son of Ferrante was, while walking along the coast one night, shot in the back by a soldier of Murat, and killed.

“The third husband was Titino Passacantando, who died in his bed of a pernicious disease.

“The fourth still lives, and is called Verdura, a good fellow who does not adulterate the wine of the inn. Now, you will have a chance to try some.”

When they reached the much praised inn, they separated.

“Good night, sir!”

“Good night!”

Turlendana entered unconcernedly, unmindful of the curious attention of the drinkers sitting beside the long tables. Having asked for something to eat, he was conducted to an upper room where the tables were set ready for supper.

None of the regular boarders of the place were yet in the room. Turlendana sat down and began to eat, taking great mouthfuls without pausing, his head bent over his plate, like a famished person. He was almost wholly bald, a deep red scar furrowed his face from forehead to cheek, his thick greyish beard extended to his protruding cheek bones, his skin, dark, dried, rough, worn by water and sun and wrinkled by pain, seemed not to preserve any human semblance, his eyes stared into the distance as if petrified by impassivity.

Verdura, inquisitive, sat opposite him, staring at the stranger. He was somewhat flushed, his face was of a reddish colour veined with vermilion like the gall of oxen. At last he cried:

“Where do you come from?”

Turlendana, without raising his head, replied simply:

“I come from far away.”

“And where do you go?” pursued Verdura.

“I remain here.”

Verdura, amazed, was silent.

Turlendana continued to lift the fishes from his plate, one after another, taking off their heads and tails, and devouring them, chewing them up, bones and all. After every two or three fishes he drank a draught of wine.

“Do you know anybody here?” Verdura asked with eager curiosity.

“Perhaps,” replied the other laconically.

Baffled by the brevity of his interlocutor, the wine man grew silent again. Above the uproar of the drinkers below, Turlendana’s slow and laboured mastication could be heard. Presently Verdura again Ventured to open his mouth.

“In what countries is the camel found? Are those two humps natural? Can such a great, strong beast ever be tamed?”

Turlendana allowed him to go on without replying.

“Your name, Mister?”

The man to whom this question was put raised his head from his plate, and answered simply, as before:

“I am called Turlendana.”

“What?”

“Turlendana.”

“Ah!”

The amazement of the inn keeper was unbounded. A sort of a vague terror shook his innermost soul.

“What? Turlendana of this place?”

“Of this place.”

Verdura’s big azure eyes dilated as he stared at the man.

“Then you are not dead?”

“No, I am not dead.”

“Then you are the husband of Rosalba Catena?”

“I am the husband of Rosalba Catena.”

“And now,” exclaimed Verdura, with a gesture of perplexity, “we are two husbands!”

“We are two!”

They remained silent for an instant. Turlendana was chewing the last bit of bread tranquilly, and through the quiet room you could hear his teeth crunching on it. Either from a natural benignant simplicity or from a glorious fatuity, Verdura was struck only by the singularity of the case. A sudden impulse of merriment overtook him, bubbling out spontaneously:

“Let us go to Rosalba! Let us go! Let us go!”

Taking the newcomer by the arm, he conducted him through the group of drinkers, waving his arms, and crying out:

“Here is Turlendana, Turlendana the sailor! The husband of my wife! Turlendana, who is not dead! Here is Turlendana! Here is Turlendana!”

IV TURLENDANA DRUNK

The last glass had been drunk, and two o’clock in the morning was about to strike from the tower clock of the City Hall.

Said Biagio Quaglia, his voice thick with wine, as the strokes sounded through the silence of the night filled with clear moonlight:

“Well! Isn’t it about time for us to go?”

Ciavola, stretched half under the bench, moved his long runner’s legs from time to time, mumbling about clandestine hunts-in the forbidden grounds of the Marquis of Pescara, as the taste of wild hare came up in his throat, and the wind brought to his nostrils the resinous odour of the pines of the sea grove.

Said Biagio Quaglia, giving the blond hunter a kick, and making a motion to rise:

“Let us go.”

Ciavola with an effort rose, swaying uncertainly, thin and slender like a hunting hound.

“Let us go, as they are pursuing us,” he answered, raising his hand high in a motion of assent, thinking perhaps of the passage of birds through the air.

Turlendana also moved, and seeing behind him the wine woman, Zarricante, with her flushed raw cheeks and her protruding chest, he tried to embrace her. But Zarricante fled from his embrace, hurling at him words of abuse.

On the doorsill, Turlendana asked his friends for their company and support through a part of the road. But Biagio Quaglia and Ciavola, who were indeed a fine pair, turned their backs on him jestingly, and went away in the luminous moonlight.

Then Turlendana stopped to look at the moon, which was round and red as the face of a friar. Everything around was silent and the rows of houses reflected the white light of the moon. A cat was mewing this May night upon a door step. The man, in his intoxicated state, feeling a peculiarly tender inclination, put out his hand slowly and uncertainly to caress the animal, but the beast, being somewhat wild, took a jump and disappeared.

Seeing a stray dog approaching, he attempted to pour out upon it the wealth of his loving impulses; the dog, however, paid no attention to his calls, and disappeared around the corner of a cross street, gnawing a bone. The noise of his teeth could be heard plainly through the silence of the night.

Soon after, the door of the inn was closed and Turlendana was left-standing alone under the full moon, obscured by the shadows of rolling clouds. His attention was struck by the rapid moving of all surrounding objects. Everything fled away from him. What had he done that they should fly away?

With unsteady steps, he moved towards the river. The thought of that universal flight as he moved along, occupied profoundly his brain, changed as it was by the fumes of the wine. He met two other street dogs, and as an experiment, approached them, but they too slunk away with their tails between their legs, keeping close to the wall and when they had gone some little distance, they began to bark. Suddenly, from every direction, from Bagno da Sant’ Agostino, from Arsenale, from Pescheria, from all the lurid and obscure places around, the roving dogs ran up, as though in answer to a trumpet call to battle and the aggressive chorus of the famishing tribe ascended to the moon.

Turlendana was stupefied, while a sort of vague uneasiness awoke in his soul and he went on his way a little more quickly, stumbling over the rough places in the ground. When he reached the corner of the coopers, where the large barrels of Zazetta were piled in whitish heaps like monuments, he heard the heavy, regular breathing of a beast. As the impression of the hostility of all beasts had taken a hold on him, with the obstinacy of a drunken man, he moved in the direction of the sound, that he might make another experiment.

Within a low barn the three old horses of Michelangelo were breathing with difficulty above their manger. They were decrepit beasts who had worn out their lives dragging through the road of Chieti, twice every day, a huge stage-coach filled with merchants and merchandise. Under their brown hair, worn off in places by the rubbing of the harness, their ribs protruded like so many dried shingles through a ruined roof. Their front legs were so bent that their knees were scarcely perceptible, their backs were ragged like the teeth of a saw, and their skinny necks, upon which scarcely a vestige of mane was left, drooped towards the ground.

A wooden railing inside barred the door.

Turlendana began encouragingly:

“Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!”

The horses did not move, but breathed together in a human way. The outlines of their bodies appeared dim and confused through the bluish shadow within the barn, and the exhalations of their breath blent with that of the manure.

“Ush, ush, ush!” pursued Turlendana in a lamenting tone, as when he used to urge Barbara to drink. Again the horses did not stir, and again:

“Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!” One of the horses turned and placed his big deformed head upon the railing, looking with eyes which seemed in the moonlight as though filled with troubled water. The lower skin of the jaw hung flaccid, disclosing the gums. At every breath the nostrils palpitated, emitting moist breath, the nostrils closing at times, and opening again to give forth a little cloud of air bubbles like yeast in a state of fermentation.

At the sight of that senile head, the drunken man came to his senses. Why had he filled himself with wine, he, usually so sober? For a moment, in the midst of his forgetful drowsiness, the shape of his dying camel reappeared before his eyes, lying on the ground with his long inert neck stretched out on the straw, his whole body shaken from time to time by coughing, while with every moan the bloated stomach produced a sound such as issues from a barrel half filled with water.

A wave of pity and compassion swept over the man, as before him rose this vision of the agony of the camel, shaken by strange, hoarse sobs which brought forth a moan from the enormous dying carcass, the painful movements of the neck, rising for an instant to fall back again heavily upon the straw with a deep, indistinct sound, the legs moving as if trying to run, the tense tremor of the ears, and the fixity of the eyeballs, from which the sight seemed to have departed before the rest of the faculties. All this suffering came back clearly to his memory, vivid in its almost human misery.

He leaned against the railing and opened his mouth mechanically to again speak to Michelangelo’s horse:

“Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!” Then Michelangelo, who from his bed had heard the disturbance, jumped to the window above and began to swear violently at the troublesome disturber of his night’s rest.

“You damned rascal! Go and drown yourself in the Pescara River! Go away from here. Go, or I will get a gun! You rascal, to come and wake up sleeping people! You drunkard, go on; go away!”

Turlendana, staggering, started again towards the river. When at the cross-roads by the fruit market, he saw a group of dogs in a loving assembly. As the man approached, the group of canines dispersed, running towards Bagno. From the alley of Gesidio came out another horde of dogs, who set off in the direction of Bastioni.

All of the country of Pescara, bathed in the sweet light of the full moon of the springtime, was the scene of the fights of amorous canines. The mastiff of Madrigale, chained to watch over a slaughtered ox, occasionally made his deep voice heard, and was answered by a chorus of other voices. Occasionally a solitary dog would pass on the run to the scene of a fight. From within the houses, the howls of the imprisoned dogs could be heard.

Now a still stranger trouble took hold upon the brain of the drunken man. In front of him, behind him, around him, the imaginary flight of things began to take place again more rapidly than before. He moved forward, and everything moved away from him, the clouds, the trees, the stones, the river banks, the poles of the boats, the very houses,—all retreated at his approach. This evident repulsion and universal reprobation filled him with terror. He halted. His spirit grew depressed. Through his disordered brain a sudden thought ran. “The fox!” Even that fox of a Ciavola did not wish to remain with him longer! His terror increased. His limbs trembled violently. However, impelled by this thought, he descended among the tender willow trees and the high grass of the shore.

The bright moon scattered over all things a snowy serenity. The trees bent peacefully over the bank, as though contemplating the running water. Almost it seemed as though a soft, melancholy breath emanated from the somnolence of the river beneath the moon. The croaking of frogs sounded clearly. Turlendana crouched among the plants, almost hidden. His hands trembled on his knees. Suddenly he felt something alive and moving under him; a frog! He uttered a cry. He rose and began to run, staggering, amongst the willow trees impeding his way. In his uneasiness of spirit, he felt terrified as though by some supernatural occurrence.

Stumbling over a rough place in the ground, he fell on his stomach, his face pressed into the grass. He got up with much difficulty, and stood looking around him at the trees. The silvery silhouette of the poplars rose motionless through the silent air, making their tops seem unusually tall. The shores of the river would vanish endlessly, as if they were something unreal, like shadows of things seen in dreams. Upon the right side, the rocks shone resplendently, like crystals of salt, shadowed at times by the moving clouds passing softly overhead like azure veils. Further on the wood broke the horizon line. The scent of the wood and the soft breath of the sea were blended.

“Oh, Turlendana! Ooooh!” a clear voice cried out.

Turlendana turned in amazement.

“Oh, Turlendana, Turlendanaaaaa!”

It was Binchi-Banche, who came up, accompanied by a customs officer, through the path used by the sailors through the willow-tree thicket.

“Where are you going at this time of night? To weep over your camel?” asked Binchi-Banche as he approached.

Turlendana did not answer at once. He was grasping his trousers with one hand; his knees were bent forward and his face wore a strange expression of stupidity, while he stammered so pitifully that Binchi-Banche and the customs officer broke out into boisterous laughter.

“Go on! Go on!” exclaimed the wrinkled little man, grasping the drunken man by the shoulders and pushing him towards the seashore. Turlendana moved forward. Binchi-Banche and the customs officer followed him at a little distance, laughing and speaking in low voices.

He reached the place where the verdure terminated and the sand began. The grumbling of the sea at the mouth of the Pescara could be heard. On a level stretch of sand, stretched out between the dunes, Turlendana ran against the corpse of Barbara, which had not yet been buried. The large body was skinned and bleeding, the plump parts of the back, which were uncovered, appeared of a yellowish colour; upon his legs the skin was still hanging with all the hair; there were two enormous callous spots; within his mouth his angular teeth were visible, curving over the upper jaw and the white tongue; for some unknown reason the under lip was cut, while the neck resembled the body of a serpent.

At the appearance of this ghastly sight, Turlendana burst into tears, shaking his head, and moaning in a strange unhuman way:

“Oho! Oho! Oho!”

In the act of lying down upon the camel, he fell. He attempted to rise, but the stupor caused by the wine overcame him, and he lost consciousness.

Seeing Turlendana fall, Binchi-Banche and the customs officer came over to him. Taking him, one by the head and the other by the feet, they lifted him up and laid him full length upon the body of Barbara, in the position of a loving embrace. Laughing at their deed, they departed.

And thus Turlendana lay upon the camel until the sun rose.

V THE GOLD PIECES

Passacantando entered, rattling the hanging glass doors violently, roughly shook the rain-drops from his shoulders, took his pipe from his mouth, and with disdainful unconcern looked around the room.

In the tavern the smoke of the tobacco was like a bluish cloud, through which one could discern the faces of those who were drinking: women of bad repute; Pachio, the invalided soldier, whose right eye, affected with some repulsive disease, was covered by a greasy greenish band; Binchi-Banche, the domestic of the customs officers, a small, sturdy man with a surly, yellow-hued face like a lemon without juice, with a bent back and his thin legs thrust into boots which reached to his knees; Magnasangue, the go-between of the soldiers, the friend of comedians, of jugglers, of mountebanks, of fortune-tellers, of tamers of bears,—of all that ravenous and rapacious rabble which passes through the towns to snatch from the idle and curious people a few pennies.

Then, too, there were the belles of the Fiorentino Hall, three or four women faded from dissipation, their cheeks painted brick colour, their eyes voluptuous, their mouths flaccid and almost bluish in colour like over-ripe figs.

Passacantando crossed the room, and seated himself between the women Pica and Peppuccia on a bench against the wall, which was covered with indecent figures and writing. He was a slender young fellow, rather effeminate, with a very pale face from which protruded a nose thick, rapacious, bent greatly to one side; his ears sprang from his head like two inflated paper bags, one larger than the other; his curved, protruding lips were very red, and always had a small ball of whitish saliva at the corners. Over his carefully combed hair he wore a soft cap, flattened through long use. A tuft of his hair, turned up like a hook, curled down over his forehead to the roots of his nose, while another curled over his temple. A certain licentiousness was expressed in every gesture, every move, and in the tones of his voice and his glances.

“Ohe,” he cried, “Woman Africana, a goblet of wine!” beating the table with his clay pipe, which broke from the force of the blow.

The woman Africana, the mistress of the inn, left the bar and came forward towards the table, waddling because of her extreme corpulence, and placed in front of Passacantando a glass filled to the brim with wine. She looked at him as she did so with eyes full of loving entreaty.

Passacantando suddenly flung his arm around the neck of Peppuccia, forced her to drink from the goblet, and then thrust his lips against hers. Peppuccia laughed, disentangling herself from the arms of Passacantando, her laughter causing the unswallowed wine to spurt from her mouth into his face.

The woman Africana grew livid. She withdrew behind the bar, where the sharp words of Peppuccia and Pica reached her ears. The glass door opened, and Fiorentino appeared on the threshold, all bundled up in a cloak, like the villain of a cheap novel.

“Well, girls,” he cried out in a hoarse voice, “it is time for you to go.” Peppuccia, Pica, and the others rose from their seats beside the men and followed their master.

It was raining hard, and the Square of Bagno was transformed into a muddy lake. Pachio, Magnasangue, and the others left one after another until only Binche-Banche, stretched under the table in the stupor of intoxication, remained. The smoke in the room gradually grew less, while a half-plucked dove pecked from the floor the scattered crumbs.

As Passacantando was about to rise, Africana moved slowly towards him, her unshapely figure undulating as she walked, her full-moon face wrinkled into a grotesque and affectionate grimace. Upon her face were several moles with small bunches of hair growing out from them, a thick shadow covered her upper lip and her cheeks. Her short, coarse, and curling hair formed a sort of helmet on her head; her thick eyebrows met at the top of her flat nose, so that she looked like a creature affected with dropsy and elephantiasis.

When she reached Passacantando, she grasped his hands in order to detain him.

“Oh, Giuva! What do you want? What have I done to you?”

“You? Nothing.”

“Why then do you cause me such suffering and torment?”

“I? I am surprised!... Good night! I have no time to lose just now,” and with a brutal gesture, he started to go. But Africana threw herself upon him, pressing his arms, and putting her face against his, leaning upon him with her full weight, with a passion so uncontrolled and terrible that Passacantando was frightened.

“What do you want? What do you want? Tell me! What do you want? Why do I do this? I hold you! Stay here! Stay with me! Don’t make me die of longing; don’t drive me mad! What for? Come,—take everything you find ...”

She drew him towards the bar, opened the drawer, and with one gesture offered him everything it contained. In the greasy till were scattered some copper coins, and a few shining silver ones, the whole amounting to perhaps five lire.

Passacantando, without saying a word, picked up the coins and began to count them slowly upon the bar, his mouth showing an expression of disgust. Africana looked at the coins and then at the face of the man, breathing hard, like a tired beast. One heard the tinkling of the coins as they fell upon the bar, the rough snoring of Binchi-Banche, the soft pattering of the dove in the midst of the continuous sound of the rain and the river down below the Bagno and through the Bandiera.

“Those are not enough,” Passacantando said at last. “I must have more than those; bring out some more, or I will go.”

He had crushed his cap down over his head, and from beneath his forehead with its curling tuft of hair, his whitish eyes, greedy and impudent, looked at Africana attentively, fascinating her.

“I have no more; you have seen all there is. Take all that you find ...” stammered Africana in a caressing and supplicating voice, her double chin quivering and her lips trembling, while the tears poured from her piggish eyes.

“Well,” said Passacantando softly, bending over her, “well, do you think I don’t know that your husband has some gold pieces?”

“Oh, Giovanni! ... how can I get them?”

“Go and take them, at once. I will wait for you here. Your husband is asleep, now is the time. Go, or you’ll not see me any more, in the name of Saint Antony!”

“Oh, Giovanni!... I am afraid!”

“What? Fear or no fear, I am going; let us go.”

Africana trembled; she pointed to Binchi-Banche still stretched under the table in a heavy sleep.

“Close the door first,” she said submissively.

Passacantando roused Binchi-Banche with a kick, and dragged him, howling and shaking with terror, out into the mud and slush. He came back and closed the door. The red lantern that hung on one of the shutters threw a rosy light into the tavern, leaving the heavy arches in deep shadow, and giving the stairway in the angle a mysterious look.

“Come! Let us go!” said Passacantando again to the still trembling Africana.

They slowly ascended the dark stairway in the corner of the room, the woman going first, the man following close behind. At the top of the stairway they emerged into a low room, planked with beams. In a small niche in the wall was a blue Majolica Madonna, in front of which burned, for a vow, a light in a glass filled with water and oil. The other walls were covered with a number of torn paper pictures, of as many colours as leprosy. A distressing odour filled the room.

The two thieves advanced cautiously towards the marital bed, upon which lay the old man, buried in slumber, breathing with a sort of hoarse hiss through his toothless gums and his dilated nose, damp from the use of tobacco, his head turned upon one cheek, resting on a striped cotton pillow. Above his open mouth, which looked like a cut made in a rotten pumpkin, rose his stiff moustache; one of his eyes, half opened, resembled the turned over ear of a dog, filled with hair, covered with blisters; the veins stood out boldly upon his bare emaciated arm which lay outside the coverlet; his crooked fingers, habitually grasping, clutched the counterpane.

Now, this old fellow had for a long time possessed two twenty-franc pieces, which had been left him by some miserly relative; these he guarded jealously, keeping them in the tobacco in his horn snuff-box, as some people do musk incense. There lay the shining pieces of gold, and the old man would take them out, look at them fondly, feel of them lovingly between his fingers, as the passion of avarice and the lust of possession grew within him.

Africana approached slowly, with bated breath, while Passacantando, with commanding gestures, urged her to the theft. There was a noise below; both stopped. The half-plucked dove, limping, fluttered to its nest in an old slipper at the foot of the bed, but in settling itself, it made some noise. The man, with a quick, brutal motion, snatched up the bird and choked it in his fist.

“Is it there?” he asked of Africana.

“Yes, it is there, under the pillow,” she answered, sliding her hand carefully under the pillow as she spoke. The old man moved in his sleep, sighing involuntarily, while between his eyelids appeared a little rim of the whites of his eyes. Then he fell back in the heavy stupor of senile drowsiness.

Africana, in this crisis, suddenly became audacious, pushed her hand quickly forward, grasped the tobacco box and rushed towards the stairs, descending with Passacantando just behind her.

“Lord! Lord! See what I have done for you!” she exclaimed, throwing herself upon him. With shaking hands, they started together to open the snuff-box and look among the tobacco for the gold pieces. The pungent odour of the tobacco arose to their nostrils, and both, as they felt the desire to sneeze, were seized with a strong impulse to laugh. In endeavouring to repress their sneezes, they staggered against one another, pushing and wavering. But suddenly an indistinct growling was heard, then hoarse shouts broke forth from the room above, and the old man appeared at the top of the stairs. His face was livid in the red light of the lantern, his form thin and emaciated, his legs bare, his shirt in rags. He looked down at the thieving couple, and, waving his arms like a damned soul, cried:

“The gold pieces! The gold pieces! The gold pieces!”

VI SORCERY

When seven consecutive sneezes of Mastro Peppe De Sieri, called La Brevetta, resounded loudly in the square of the City Hall, all the inhabitants of Pescara would seat themselves around their tables and begin their meal. Soon after the bell would strike twelve, and simultaneously, the people would become very hilarious.

For many years La Brevetta had given this joyful signal to the people daily, and the fame of his marvellous sneezing spread through all the country around, and also through the adjoining countries. His memory still lives in the minds of the people, for he originated a proverb which will endure for many years to come.