Est, Est, Est. Propter nimium est,
Johannes de Fuc., D. meus, mortuus est.
It is said that the wine-loving prelate left orders that a barrel of the very best muscatel should be spilled over his tomb every year on the anniversary of his death, and this ceremony was faithfully performed down to the end of the seventeenth century, when it was forbidden by a certain Cardinal Barbarigi, of unconvivial memory. The best wine of Montescone is still called Est, Est. [Translator's note.]
CHAPTER IV
CARLIN'S LETTER
Franco went down the hill very, very slowly, absorbed in the world of things within him, so crowded with thoughts and with new sensations. Stopping every now and then to contemplate the grey road and the small dark fields, he would touch the leaves of a grape-vine or the stones of a low wall, in order to feel the reality of the external world, to convince himself that he was not dreaming. Not until he had reached the Contrada dei Mal'ari in Casarico, and was standing before the little door of Gilardoni's tiny house, did he recall Mamma Teresa's dark words concerning the secret Gilardoni had imparted to her, and he wondered what this mystery could be, which must not be revealed to Luisa. To tell the truth the mother's advice had not satisfied him entirely. "How could I ever hide anything from my wife?" he thought as he knocked at the door.
Professor Beniamino Gilardoni, son of "Carlin de Dàas," had been educated at the expense of old Don Franco Maironi, Marchesa Orsola's husband, an eccentric man, capricious and violent, but at the same time, very generous. When Carlin died it became apparent that Maironi's generosity had not been necessary. Beniamino inherited quite a little hoard, and this maddened Don Franco, who held him responsible for the paternal hypocrisy, turned his back upon him, and would have nothing more to do with him for the short time he survived his agent. The young man chose the career of teacher, was professor of Latin at the gymnasium of Cremona, and of philosophy at the lyceum of Udine. Of a delicate constitution, apprehensive of physical suffering, and extremely misanthropical, he resigned his professorship in 1842, and came to Valsolda to enjoy the modest fortune his father had left him. Dasio, his native village, perched just below the dolomitic rocks of the Arabione, was too high up and inconvenient for him. He sold his possessions there, purchased the olive-grove of Sedorgg above Casarico, and a small villa on the edge of the lake, in Casarico itself. It was so small as to be almost a toy villa, and from its shape he called it the "Greek II or Pi" in imitation of the "Digamma" of Ugo Foscolo. From the Contrada dei Mal'ari a short passage led to the little courtyard flanked by a tiny portico, open on the lake-side and surrounded by tall oleanders. It overlooked six miles of water, green, grey or blue, according to the hour, as far as Monte S. Salvatore there in the distance, stooping, under the burden of its melancholy hump, towards the humble hills of Carona beneath it. On the east of the little house there was a kitchen-garden, fabulously large for that part of the world, the dimensions of which Engineer Ribera was wont to define by means of the following surveyor's description: "Large field called il Campone, measuring seven tavole." Now seven tavole correspond to twenty or twenty-two square metres! The Professor cultivated it with the aid of his little servant Giuseppe, called Pinella, and of a small collection of French treatises. He sent to France for the seeds of the most highly esteemed qualities of vegetables, which sometimes came up in shameless disregard of their certificates of baptism, and indeed of any honestly baptised family. It would then happen that philosopher and servant, stooping over the beds, their hands on their knees, would raise their eyes from these mocking sprouts, and gaze at each other, the philosopher honestly disappointed, the servant hypocritically so. In one corner of the garden, in a little stable constructed according to the most approved principles, dwelt a small Swiss cow, which had been purchased after three months of diligent study, and had turned out as delicate and fleshless as the master himself, who—in spite of the Swiss cow and four Paduan hens—often found it impossible to make himself a cup of custard in his own house. In the wall supporting the garden on the lake-side, against whose base the breva drove the swelling waves, he had made some openings in which, following Franco Maironi's advice, he had planted many American aloes, many roses and some caper-bushes, thus binding together the substantial contents of his kitchen-garden, as he was wont to say, with poetic elegance of form. And for the love of the poetic, he had left a small corner of his kitchen-garden uncultivated. The tallest of reeds had sprung up there, and in front of these reeds the Professor had erected a sort of belvedere, a lofty, wooden platform, very rustic and primitive, where, in pleasant weather, he passed many happy hours with the mystic books he loved, enjoying the coolness of the breva, and the murmuring of reeds and waves. At a distance the colour of the platform could not be distinguished from that of the reeds, and the Professor looked as if he were seated on air, book in hand, like any magician. In the little salon he kept the small collection of works on kitchen-gardening, the mystic books, the treatises on necromancy, and gnosticism. The writings on hallucinations and dreams he kept in a tiny study adjoining his bedroom, a sort of ship's cabin, into which lake and sky seemed to pour through the window.
After the death of old Maironi the Professor had once more taken to visiting the family, but the Marchesa did not please him particularly, and her son Don Alessandro, Franco's father, pleased him still less. So he ended by going there only once a year. When the lad Franco entered the lyceum his grandmother—his father had been dead some time—begged Gilardoni to give him some lessons during the Autumn. Master and pupil resembled each other in their easy enthusiasms, in their fits of violent but fleeting passion, and both were ardent patriots. When the necessity for lessons no longer existed they continued to meet as friends, though the Professor was some twenty years older than Franco. Gilardoni admired his pupil's genius, but Franco, on the other hand, held the half-Christian, half-rationalist philosophy of his master, and his mystical tendencies, in small esteem. He laughed at the other's passion for books and theories on horticulture and landscape gardening, a passion which was entirely devoid of all common sense. But nevertheless, he loved him sincerely for his goodness, his candour, his ardent soul. Franco had been the Professor's confidant at the time of his unfortunate passion for Signora Rigey, and later, Franco, in his turn, confided in the Professor. Gilardoni was much affected by the news, and told Franco that, his heart being still full to overflowing of that unchanging devotion, he should feel as if he were, in a way, becoming Franco's father, even though Signora Teresa herself would have none of him. Franco showed little appreciation of this metaphysical paternity. This passion for Signora Rigey seemed to him simply an aberration, and he was more than ever confirmed in his opinion that the Professor's head was not worth much, but that his heart was of gold.
So he knocked at the door, and Beniamino himself came to open it, bearing a little oil lamp. "Well done," said he. "I was beginning to think you were not coming, after all."
Gilardoni was in his dressing-gown and slippers, with a sort of white turban on his head, and he exhaled a strong odour of camphor. He looked like a Turk, like Gilardoni Bey, but the thin, sallow face which smiled beneath the turban had nothing Turkish about it. Encircled by a short, reddish beard, pompously embellished in the middle by a fine, big nose, red and pimply, the face was lighted up by two beautiful blue eyes, still very youthful, and full of simple kindness and poetry.