They finally departed; they stopped for a few moments at the house of the tailor, where they heard sad relations of this terrible march,—the usual story of violence and plunder. The tailor’s family, however, had remained unmolested, as the army did not pass that way.
“Ah, signor curate!” said the tailor, as he was bidding him farewell, “here is a fine subject to appear in print!”
After having proceeded a short distance, our travellers beheld melancholy traces of the destruction they had heard related. Vineyards despoiled, not by the vintager, but as if by a tempest; vines trampled under foot; trees wounded and lopped of their branches; hedges destroyed; in the villages, doors broken open, window-frames dashed in, and streets filled with different articles of furniture and clothing, broken and torn to pieces. In the midst of lamentations and tears, the peasants were occupied in repairing, as well as they could, the damage done; while others, overcome by their miseries, remained in a state of silent despair. Having passed through these scenes of complicated woe, they at last succeeded in reaching their own dwellings, where they witnessed the same destruction. Agnes immediately occupied herself in reducing to order the little furniture that was left her, and in repairing the damage done to her doors and windows; but she did not forget to count over in secret her crowns, thanking God in her heart, and her generous benefactor, that in the general overthrow of order and safety she at least had fallen on her feet.
Don Abbondio and Perpetua entered their house without being obliged to have recourse to keys. In addition to the miserable destruction of all their furniture, whose various fragments impeded their entrance, the most horrible odours for a time drove them back; and when these obstacles were at last surmounted, and the rooms were entered, they found indignity added to mischief. Frightful and grotesque figures of priests, with their square caps and bands, were drawn with pieces of coal upon the walls in all sorts of ridiculous attitudes.
“Ah, the hogs!” cried Perpetua.—“Ah, the thieves!” exclaimed Don Abbondio. Hastening into the garden, they approached the fig-tree, and beheld the earth newly turned up, and, to their utter dismay, the tomb was opened, and the dead was gone. Don Abbondio scolded Perpetua for her bad management, who was not slack in repelling his complaints. Both pointing backwards to the unlucky hiding place, at length returned to the house, and set about endeavouring to purify it of some of its accumulated filth, as at such a time it was impossible to procure assistance for the purpose. With money lent them by Agnes, they were in some measure enabled to replace their articles of furniture.
For some time this disaster was the source of continual disputes between Perpetua and her master; the former having discovered that some of the property, which they supposed to have been taken by the soldiers, was actually in possession of certain people of the village, she tormented him incessantly to claim it. There could not have been touched a chord more hateful to Don Abbondio, since the property was in the hands of that class of persons with whom he had it most at heart to live in peace.
“But I don’t wish to know these things,” said he. “How many times must I tell you that what has happened has? Must I get myself into trouble again, because my house has been robbed?”
“You would suffer your eyes to be pulled from your head, I verily believe,” said Perpetua; “others hate to be robbed, but you, you seem to like it.”
“This is pretty language to hold, indeed! Will you be quiet?”
Perpetua kept silence, but continually found new pretexts for resuming the conversation; so that the poor man was obliged to suppress every complaint at the loss of such or such a thing, as she would say, “Go and find it at such a person’s house, who has it, and who would not have kept it until now if he had not known what kind of a man he had to deal with.”