THE VILLAGE SWAIN AT A BARGAIN.
Surely no man ever had his way with the girls better than Pietro! Though Bianca picks up a friend at Cerisola, and there is a great deal of talk about woollen stuffs, our swain still fancies even the female rubbish is trimmed and fitted to his special ear. Oh, blessed and invariable male content! A pretty girl in front who cannot fail to admire the best-looking man about, a glass of sour monferrato at the first village, and a pipe in your mouth—Paradise can offer nothing better! Excepting a good bargain, and for the better chance of that, all those other three good things are abandoned when once our Pietro gets into the thick of the cattle market. That poor pale little brindled heifer means success or failure, perhaps for the whole year, to our modest land and farm-owner. No wonder that knuckles come down bravely on the little three-legged table of the osteria where Pietro sits face to face over wine with the seller; no wonder that oaths are frequent, and words run high! Is it not a question of two whole francs? Nevertheless, they split the difference, and make up the quarrel till it needs must be opened afresh over the game of bowls, whither buyers and sellers soon carry every grievance.
As Pietro stands swinging his arm for the fling—handling the bowl or stooping for his aim, as he saunters about among the company or drinks his glass at the open-air bar—in all or each of these poses he is an object of admiration to many even more than to Bianca del Prato, who has seen him grow tall ever since the day, ten years ago, when he switched the cherry-bough back into her face! An object of admiration, and, though he is a simple-hearted fellow enough, to none more than to himself. Is he not young and healthy—what better can he do? And no doubt he is right! Though Bobbio can perhaps produce better and Cerisola several as good, our Pietro is a good enough example of his kind. He is not very religious; he will laugh at the priests to their face when they pass in procession, and make fun of their Latin, but he will bend his knee and doff his hat and wedge his person just within the church-door at benediction time, or when the bell sounds at the elevation, as a good Catholic should: what man of sense does more? And at a bargain he will hold his own to the last, and come off triumphant if it be only to one centesimo; what better praise can one give to a man’s honesty? Surely, Pietro Mazzacane is as good as you could wish for a village swain!
The Love-letter.
There are three of the village girls who are prettier than its other girls. One of them is red-haired and buxom, with pink cheeks and white arms—she is the most admired by townsfolk: village folk have another taste. Nettina, from the walnut-grove, carries the palm with them—she has a figure that is grand in its every line, and when she dances on the green on a festa night, she does not bound and frolic with uncurbed merriment, but moves stately through the ring, and has no mind for any foolish jest with men that are from the cities. Nettina is a very proud and modest maid—she cares for no new fashions of dress, she is thrifty and patient, and when she walks up the steep from the church to her father’s cottage she can bear the floursacks on her shoulders or the dry leaf on her head without show of weariness or stain. ‘What a fine chip of a woman,’ say the village suitors! But Nettina looks neither to right nor to left till a fitting offer be made and a trusty mediator ready to negotiate—so—to meet coming down the mountain or at the well of an evening or upon the piazza at Ave Maria and at the fair—Bianca even before Nettina is the pet of our village. She is grey-eyed and smooth-tongued, with long hair and lithe figure, not proud nor hasty, but good-tempered and merry, with ready jest, when the evening’s ‘chaff’ has hit the hardest. Moreover, she can deftly spin the distaff and weave linen on the hand-loom: Bianca is San Matteo’s second belle.
The daylight is gone, but the clearness of the summer’s night is as good as the sun. Supper has been cooked and eaten at home; the hearth is swept, and though the Angelus has finished sounding awhile ago, and resting-time is near, our Bianca sallies out into the white evening to do a commission that has been on her mind all day. The Signor Cappellano shall earn four soldi to-night, and who knows if he shall not earn some more on the day of the wedding, for Pietro Gambari is rich, and every priest shall have his due. Already she begins to dream of that pretty day in the mellow autumn, and of the silk dress, which surely such a promising lover will not fail to bestow for the marriage, even besides the gold which it is her right to expect! And so many confetti for the children! Bianca is rash. She is going to negotiate a little for herself, without the help, as yet, of the inevitable mediator. But only a little, to the extent of answering a love-letter! If the suitor be true and worthy, he will find the mediator to send to her father’s house.
There is an early moon. It hangs in the clear sky just above the church spire, and floods the piazzetta with grey light. The leaves of the walnut tree near by shiver gently, and the black cypresses in the burying-ground look very ghostly, but far off the moonlight only makes things lovelier. Everything is a little mystified in its treacherous beams, only the mountain’s outline looks more simply clear than even in daylight, when white vapours are prone to stray upon the border. Monte Bruno’s three cones stand, in even row, against the southern sky, and the moon is so bright that you can see the large chestnut that grows in one of the curves. Mon Pilato rears a tall mass into the nearer distance. The Cappellano’s cottage stands quite in the shadow of the oratory of San Gian-Battista, and there is even no light in the window this evening; but ghosts are few in the pious valleys of the Scrivia—Bianca has no fears.
‘Are you at home, Frà Giuseppe?’ she calls from below.
‘Who is it wants me at this hour of night?’ growls the under priest, as he comes out upon the stone balcony beneath his porch? ‘And is it you, Bianca bella? Come up, come up only!’ Even a priest is appeased by the sight of a pretty girl. ‘Who would have thought of your coming to visit an old man like me?’
The Cappellano knows as well as another what is likely to be the errand of a damsel who seeks him after working hours! But he is not in canonicals, and would not be averse to a little amusement on his own account before the love-letter business begins.