Franco came near letting the steamer pass Argegno without moving from his seat.

CHAPTER IX
FOR BREAD, FOR ITALY, FOR GOD

Eight months later, in September, 1855, Franco was occupying a miserable attic in Via Barbaroux, Turin. In February he had obtained the post of translator for the Opinione, with a monthly salary of eighty-five lire. Later he began to write the parliamentary reports, and his salary was raised to a hundred lire. Dina, the manager of the paper, was fond of him, and procured him extra work outside the office, thus adding twenty-five or thirty lire to his earnings. Franco lived on sixty lire a month. The rest went to Lugano to be carried thence to Oria by the faithful hands of Ismaele. To live a month on sixty lire took more courage than Franco himself had believed he possessed. The hours at the office, the translating—a laborious task for one full of scruples and literary timidity—weighed more heavily upon him than the privations; moreover he felt even sixty lire was too large a sum, and reproached himself for not being able to do with less.

He had attached himself to six other refugees, some of whom were Lombards, others Venetians. They ate together, walked together, conversed together. With the exception of Franco and a young man from Udine, all the others were between thirty and forty years of age. All were extremely poor, and not one of them had ever consented to accept a penny from the Piedmontese Government as a subsidy. The young man from Udine came of a rich family, of Austrian tendencies, and received not a penny from home. He was a good flutist, gave four or five lessons a week, and played in the small orchestras of second-rate theatres. A notary from Padua was copyist in Boggio's office. A lawyer from Caprino, Bergamasco, who had seen service at Rome in 1849, was book-keeper at a large establishment in Via Nuovo, where umbrellas and walking-sticks were sold, and for this reason his friends had dubbed him "the knave of clubs." A fourth, a Milanese, had been through the campaign of 1848 as one of Carlo Alberto's scouts. His present occupation was to quarrel continually with "the knave of clubs," for reasons of provincial rivalry, to teach fencing in a couple of boarding schools, and in winter to play the piano behind a mysterious curtain in halls where polkas were danced at a penny each. The others lived on insufficient allowances from their families. All except Franco were unmarried, and all were gay. They called themselves, and were called by others, the "seven wise men," and in their wisdom they dominated Turin from the elevated positions of seven attics, scattered all over the city from Borgo San Dalmazzo to Piazza Milano.

Franco's was the most wretched of these attics, the rent being only seven lire a month. No member of this band had any services whatsoever performed for them, save the notary from Padua, for whom the doorkeeper's sister carried water to his attic, and had he not been the calm philosopher he was, the merciless teasings of his friends would have made him regret Marga's devotion. They all cleaned their own boots. The most skilful with his hands was Franco, and it was his lot to sew on his friends' buttons when they did not wish to humble themselves by applying to the lawyer and his Marga, who, nevertheless, often had her hands full, "poor, overworked woman that I am!" The young man from Udine had a sweetheart, a little tota [N] from the first booth in Piazza Castello on the corner of Po, but he was jealous, and would not allow her to sew on buttons for any one. The friends took their revenge by calling her "the puppet," because she sold puppets and dolls. However, thanks to "the puppet," he was the only member of the band whose clothes were always in order, and whose cravat was always tied in a graceful knot. They took their meals at a restaurant in Vanchiglia, which they had christened "Stomach-ache Tavern," and where they had lunch and dinner for thirty lire a month. Their only extravagance was the bicierîn, a mixture of coffee, milk, and chocolate, costing only fifteen centimes. They drank this in the morning, the Venetians at the Café Alfieri, the others at Café Florio. All except Franco, however. He went without the bicierîn and the torcètt, a cake costing a penny that went with it, in order that he might lay by enough for a little trip to Lugano, and a trifling present for Maria. In the winter they walked under the porticoes of Po, the "wise ones" in the vicinity of the University, while the more light-minded frequented the porticoes on the San Francesco side. After their walk they would go to a coffee-house, where the one whose turn it was would sip a cup of coffee, while the others read the newspapers and looted the sugar basin. Once a week, to satisfy the "knave of clubs," they would betake themselves to a den in Via Bertola, where the purest and most exquisite Giambava wine was to be had.

The flutist from Udine of course went to the theatres, and by his means some of the others went gratis from time to time, but always to the play, and usually either to the Rossini or Gerbino theatres. For Franco to be obliged to pass the posters at the Regio and the other opera houses was a far greater trial than to be obliged to clean his own boots and lunch off two square inches of omelet that was so thin it would have served admirably to observe the spots on the sun through. He had had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of a certain C., a Venetian, who was secretary at the department of Public Works, and who presented him to the family of a most distinguished major in the sanitary corps, also Venetian, and who owned a piano and was in the habit of receiving a few friends of an evening, on which occasions he would regale them with a cup of most excellent coffee of a quality almost unique in the Turin of those days. When, for one reason or another, the "seven wise men" did not spend the evening together, Franco would go to this gentleman's house in Piazza Milano, to make music, to converse on art with the daughters, or to discuss politics with his hostess, a fierce Venetian patriot, a woman of great talents, and possessed of a strenuous soul, who had not only borne heroically all the hardships and the bitterness of exile, but had sustained the courage of her husband, whose first steps had been most painful and difficult; for those precious, honest old numskulls of the inflexible Piedmontese administration had actually obliged this already famous professor of the University of Padua to submit to an examination, before they would admit him into the army as surgeon. [O]

The correspondence between Turin and Oria did not indeed reflect the true state of mind of Franco and Luisa; it ran on smoothly and affectionately enough, but with great caution and reserve on either side. Luisa had expected that Franco would answer her note, and resume the great discussion. As he never mentioned either the note or what had passed between them that last night, she risked an allusion. It was allowed to pass unheeded. As a matter of fact Franco had several times started to write with the intention of confuting his wife's opinions. Before beginning he always felt himself strong, and was convinced that with a little thought he could easily discover crushing arguments, and, indeed, arguments he believed to be such would rush to his pen, but when they were set down in writing, he would at once be forced to recognise their inadequacy. Though surprised and grieved he would make another attempt, but always with the same result. Nevertheless his wife was certainly in error; this he never for a moment doubted, and there must be a way of demonstrating it to her. He must study. But what, and how? He consulted a priest to whom he had been to confession soon after his arrival in Turin. This priest, a little misshapen old man, who was fiery and very learned, invited him to his house in Piazza Paisana, and began to help him enthusiastically, suggesting a number of books, some for his own perusal, and others to be sent to his wife. He was a learned Orientalist, and an enthusiastic Thomist, and had taken a great fancy to Franco, of whose genius and culture he had formed an opinion which was perhaps exaggeratedly favourable. At one time he was on the point of proposing to him the study of Hebrew, and indeed insisted upon his reading St. Thomas. He went so far as to sketch for Franco the outlines of a letter to his wife, with a list of the arguments he must expound. Franco had at once fallen in love with the enthusiastic little old man, who, moreover, had the pure expression of a saint. He began to study St. Thomas with great ardour, but did not persevere long. He felt he was embarking upon a sea without beginning and without end, across which he was unable to steer a straight course. The scholastic scheme of treatment, that sameness in the form of argument for and against, that icy Latin, dense with profound thought, and colourless on the surface, had successfully routed all his good intentions at the end of three days. Of the arguments contained in the sketch for the letter he understood only a small part. He got the priest to explain them to him, understood somewhat better, and prepared to open a campaign with them, but found himself as much encumbered by them as was David by the armour of Saul. They weighed upon him, he could not handle them, he felt they were not his own and never would be. No, he could not present himself before his wife with Professor G.'s priestly hat and tunic, a theological lance in his hand, and entrenched behind a shield of metaphysics. He recognised that he was not born to philosophise in any way; he was destitute of the very power of strictly logical reasoning, for indeed his glowing heart, rich in tenderness and indignation, would too often interfere, speaking for or against, according to its own passions. One evening at Casa C. he was playing the andante of Beethoven's twenty-eighth sonata, when, with quivering nerves and flashing eyes, he said in a low tone: "Ah! This, this, this!" He was reflecting that no theologian, no doctor, could communicate the religious sentiment as Beethoven does. As he played on he put his whole soul into the music, and longed for Luisa's presence that he might play this divine andante to her, that he might unite himself to her, praying thus in an ineffable spasm of the spirit. But he did not reflect that Luisa who, moreover, was far less sensitive to music than he was, would probably have attributed another meaning to the andante, that of the painful conflict between our affections and our convictions.

He went to G., returned the works of St. Thomas and confessed his utter incapacity in such humble and feeling language, that after a few moments of frowning and uneasy silence, the old priest forgave him. "There, there, there!" said he, resignedly taking back the first volume of the Somma. "Commend yourself to our Lord, and let us hope He Himself will act." Thus ended Franco's theological studies.