‘Well, that’s what I say, and so I spoke up to him, “Signor Pietro, if you wish to know of me,” said I “you can ask Pasquale, the baker, at Ponte, and for me I will inform myself of you.” And that I have done surely, but Pasquale has heard no word of this fine youth, so when he lets it be written to me whether I go to the fair at Damigiano or no, I wish to say, “Signor Pietro, it may happen I go and it may happen I stay at home,” and who knows but that may bring him to his senses! Oh, but you who know the Latin will understand better than a poor girl like me!’
‘Surely, surely, figlia mia,’ replies the Cappellano, returning to his flourishes on the paper, ‘we will say all that and more.’ Yet, in truth, he is somewhat puzzled at the prospect of something outside of the elegant ready-made phrases that have served the parish for sentiment during the last twelve years. Bianca begins to grow suspicious after a few dozen lines.
‘You understand,’ she says, ‘he must come, and he must not think I want him to come. So I shall go on the arm of Pasquale, and if he comes I shall leave those two to arrange the business as well as they can. Not another smile from me till I see the gold of his gifts to me and know his position! I am an honest girl, and no fool! And who knows but it might please your honour to tell him,’ adds she, as though struck by an after-thought, ‘that Paolo of our village is speaking to the manente about me! It would be but a white lie, for it was true a while ago, and I could tell it quickly in confession!’
‘Oh, for that, no matter; but it is whether he would believe it, my daughter!’ replied Frà Giuseppe. Nevertheless, something he writes down. Poor credulous Bianca!
‘I want naught else,’ says she now, thinking of her pence.
But the priest means to earn something more yet out of this weary letter.
‘You have said nothing, hitherto,’ he complains! ‘Poor young man! He won’t know if you mean to have him or no! One must give him at least to understand if you mean to look favourably on his suit.’
‘But if I don’t know myself?’
‘Eh, eh, per Bacco; what is to be done then?’
There is a long pause. The scrivano’s pen glides cunningly over the sheet: it forms capital letters, and small letters, and flourishes; it reaches the bottom of the page, and then he takes the sand-box to sprinkle it over. Bianca has looked on gloomily. She has been watching her little earnings ebb sadly away in all those lines, and strokes, and dots, and yet it seems as though she were to get no good out of this epistle. She is very sore and angry.