Yet Caterina is no miracle of a servant. In many a lone and cheerless home of Italian priest can I call to mind such a woman as this—such a fond and faithful drudge, with harsh ways and soft heart! And where the priest is old, having plodded out his life in some little secluded parish, amid a people more uneducated than himself—there the servant is old also, and the one has almost drifted into a shape and mould of the other’s nature and mind. For, as far as home-companionship goes, are these not all-in-all to each other? There is no wife for a comrade, there are no children to keep the old life burning to the end, in these homes of the Roman priesthood. And yet, who shall pretend that they are always sad? If you have been to see them now with me, surely, for all their quarrels, for all her loud voice and his cunningly judged and well-feigned meekness, you will scarcely say this is an unhappy house!
So the lasagne are cooked and eaten with a good relish, and Maddalena has her portion upon the door-step, spite of Caterina’s vehement remonstrances beforehand. Neither is a little plateful denied to the pretty contadinella who comes presently to the door with a summons for the prevosto. ‘Did I not tell you that you had best hasten up the hill without further delay?’ says Caterina, sending forth her parting shaft. And the priest sallies out on his mission while the girl gets detained awhile for a gossip. For this one is a favourite; she is young and merry, and comes not too often nor a begging. Caterina loves her well enough.
Il Signor Cappellano.
The Signor Prevosto is parish priest, and yet he is little more than a peasant. The Signor Cappellano is under-priest, and he is just nothing more than a peasant. ‘Abbiate pazienza,’ his own parishioners would say if they were excusing his deficiencies to you! What would you have? San Matteo is not a large parish; though its hamlets lie far from one another, and it takes a long while on a weary way to bear the Sacrament to the sick, or even to offer homely advice to marriageable girl or ill-used wife, still the parish does not require three priests. And since they are kept merely to say a mass each on Sundays and holy days, why, they must manage with what pay they can get, for the best of the tithes must go to the rectory.
So the Cappellano has little to do and little to earn for doing it. The Church gives him a cottage and a slip of barren land that lies mostly alongside of the stream’s bed; the cottage is weathertight and sufficient for himself and his old servant, and, with the aid of heaven’s mighty sun and man’s patient care, the land brings forth produce enough to keep two souls and two bodies—what more could an under-priest expect? Michaelmas daisies stand with goodly sunflowers in a row before his porch, brilliant pomi d’oro ripen their fruit against the southern wall, while the gourds trail large leaves and golden flowers along the ground, among wheat and beans and potatoes. Neither he nor old Ninetta taste meat more than once a week, but what of that? The minestra is as wholesome without, and of polenta one never wearies, only the Signor Cappellano himself must till the ground and sow and reap and manure again, or even the pumpkins would not grow large nor the maize fill its cones, so how can you expect him to be other than a peasant? ‘Abbiate pazienza di lui!’
‘Frà Giuseppe’ has the care of the parish school. Perhaps he gets paid a trifle more for it—a trifle that goes towards the meat on festa days; be that as it may, if you come down the hill from the ‘Square Village’ towards the church, early upon any morning but a Sunday or a Thursday, you may hear certain monotonous sounds that leave no doubt as to the employment pursued beneath the thatched roof of the Cappellano’s outhouse. The sound is the sound of lessons repeated, of moral tales read aloud, often of the switching of boys’ calves, oftener of the poor pedagogue’s swearing. He knows little enough himself, but the boys know less, and will never know more, because both teacher and pupil are sure that knowledge is quite useless, having got along, and seen others get along, very well without it thus far.
The school hours last till ten o’clock only—if he does not receive much, at least Frà Giuseppe gives but little—the best of the day is all in front, and the Cappellano makes good use of it. Besides digging trenches amidst maize and rice, training the vine, pruning the fig and the cherry tree, besides kicking the shins of refractory urchins, and having altogether a good deal to do with the boys, he has something to do with the girls too—he is the writer of village love-letters. The post is one of some importance: Frà Giuseppe turns another honest penny by it.
But this is scarcely a matter we speak of. The love-letters—and even other letters, would-be business letters, which Frà Giuseppe writes for the parish—cannot always be free from little white lies and intrigues of an innocent nature if they are to satisfy their purchasers, and in this, as in other trades, one must go heart and soul into one’s affair, and always work for the most lucrative market. So it is not as Cappellano that Frà Giuseppe writes his customers’ letters, but only as village Scrivano, and that is quite a different thing, and not a thing to be mentioned in the same breath with his priestly title. One is not forced to be consistent, and though, for the half-hour when he is in canonicals, the under-priest thinks fit—as under-priests do everywhere—to differ from his superior in matters of religious theory, though as in this case, he belongs to the Ultramontane party when he wears robe and biretta, and would fain make a stir in the parish about the Prevosto’s laxity and so forth—in fact, though the Signor Cappellano be a bit of a bigot in intention, both time and policy forbid him any indulgence of his opinion in practice.
‘Life is short and argument is long,’ says he. Were he possessed of ever so much more influence than he has in the parish he would still be a poor man, whose gourds and vines must always be a great deal more important to him than the souls of human creatures.
So, in other things beside the writing of letters, does the Cappellano wear two faces, and having salved conscience by the preaching of fiery doctrines within the church’s walls of a Sunday and feast-day at Second Mass—he has the worldly wisdom to be nothing more outside the pulpit than that which he really is: a peasant amongst peasant neighbours. Who can afford to be a priest all day long for so poor a salary? One must needs have a little fun to one’s victuals when poverty forbids better sauce, or even a priest’s digestion would suffer, and the Signor Cappellano knows well enough fun is not to be got by a strict face outside the church doors.