"Perfectly," Ratì answered; and the Commissary vexed at this wrangle, and at the twist his paternal admonition had received, took himself off without ceremony.
Hardly had he disappeared when Carlascia scolded angrily: "You take the sugar again if you dare, you!" and hit Francis Joseph a formidable knock on the side of the head. This worthy had expected quite different treatment, and ran off to hide among the beans. Then Bianconi had it out with his wife, scolding her roundly, and swearing that in the future he would look after the sugar himself; and upon her daring retort: "What business is it of yours, after all?" he flung out: "Everything is my business, everything is my business!" and turning his back upon her, strode off, puffing and tingling, to the spot where his attentive wife had prepared the fishing-rod and the polenta, and began to bait the two great hooks he used in catching tench. In the olden days that little world was even more completely isolated from the great world than at present, and was, even more than at present, a world of silence and of peace, in which the functionaries of both State and Church, and, following their venerable example, many faithful subjects as well, dedicated several hours a day to edifying contemplation. Seated first on the West, the Receiver cast two hooks attached to a single line, two tempting mouthfuls of polenta, as far out from the shore as possible; when the line was stretched tight, when the float seemed firmly anchored in quiet expectation, the Imperial and Royal personage placed the short rod delicately upon the low wall, and sat down to contemplate. To the east of him the sedentario, as the customs-guard was then called, crouching on the humble landing-stage in front of another float, smoked his pipe and contemplated. A few steps beyond old, half-starved Cüstant, a retired white-washer, sacristan and churchwarden, one of the patricians of the village of Oria, sat in contemplation, on the prow of his boat, a lofty, prehistoric, tall hat on his head, the magic wand in his hand, his legs dangling above the water, and his soul concentrated on his own particular float. Seated on the edge of a small field, in the shade of a mulberry-tree and a large, black, straw hat, the puny, thin, be-spectacled Don Brazzova, parish-priest of Albogasio, was lost in contemplation, his image reflected in the clear water. In a kitchen-garden of Albogasio Inferiore, between the banks of the Ceron and that of Mandroeugn, another patrician in a jacket and high boots, the churchwarden Bignetta, called el Signoron, the fine gentleman, sitting stiff and solemn, upon an eighteenth century chair, with the famous rod in his hand, watched and contemplated. Under the fig-tree at Cadate, Don Giuseppe Costabarbieri sat in contemplation. At S. Mamette the doctor, the grocer, and the shoemaker were hanging over the water and contemplating most diligently. At Cressogno the Marchesa's florid cook was contemplating. Opposite Oria, on the shady deserted shore of Bisgnago, a dignified arch-priest from lower Lombardy was in the habit of leading a life of contemplation for forty days every year. All alone he sat, with three rods resting at his feet, while with the air of a bishop, he contemplated the three floats belonging to these rods—two with his eyes, one with his nose. If some one, passing far out on the lake could have seen all these brooding figures without perceiving the rods, the lines, and the floats, he would have thought himself in a country inhabited by hermits and ascetics, who, weary of the earth, were contemplating the sky in this liquid mirror, simply for the sake of greater convenience.
As a matter of fact, all these ascetics were fishing for tench, and no mystery the future of humanity might contain could be of more importance to them than those mysteries at which the little float secretly hinted, when, as if possessed by a spirit, it showed signs of growing unrest, and, at last, even of mental derangement; for, after dipping and jerking, now forward, now backward, it would at last, in the utter confusion of its ideas, choose the desperate course of plunging head foremost into the depths. These phenomena, however, occurred only at rare intervals, and some of the contemplators would pass whole half-days without noticing the slightest movement in their floats. Then each one, removing his eyes from the bit of cork, would follow a line of thought running parallel with the line attached to the rod. Thus it sometimes happened that the arch-priest would land an episcopal see, the "fine gentleman," a wood that had once belonged to his ancestors, the cook, a tench from the hills, rosy and fair, and Cüstant, an order from government to whitewash the peak of Cressogno. As to Carlascia, his second line was usually of a political nature, and the reason of this will be more readily grasped if we reflect that the main line, the one attached to the rod, often awoke in his big, dull head certain political considerations which the Commissary Zérboli had suggested to him. "You see, my dear Receiver," Zérboli had once said, when discoursing weakly about the events which had taken place on the sixth of February in Milan, "you who fish for tench, can easily understand this matter. Our great monarchy is fishing with a line. The twin baits are Lombardy and the Venetian provinces; two round and tempting morsels, with iron inside. Our monarchy has cast them there at its feet, opposite the lurking-place of that foolish little fish, Piedmont. In 1848 it grabbed at the bait Lombardy, but eventually succeeded in spitting it out and making off. Milan is our float. When Milan moves, it means that the little fish is just beneath. Last year the float moved a wee bit, but the dear little fish had only sniffed at the bait. But wait, some day there will be a violent movement, and we shall give a jerk; there will be some struggling, some floundering, but we shall land our little fish, and never let it escape again, the little white, red, and green pig!"
Bianconi had laughed heartily at this, and often when he sat down to fish, he would amuse himself by ruminating on this graceful simile, from which would generally arise other subtle and profound political musings. That morning the lake was quiet and most favourable to contemplation. The tallest grass of the precipitous bottom could be seen standing erect, a sign that there was no under-current. The baited hook cast far out, sunk straight and slowly, the line stretched evenly and smoothly below the float which sailed behind it a little way, surrounded by a series of tiny rings, that told of the ticklings of small carp, and then sunk into repose, a sign that the bait was resting on the bottom, and that the carp no longer worried it. The fisherman placed the short rod on the low wall, and fell to thinking of Engineer Ribera.
Though he was not aware of it Bianconi had a large dose of meekness in one corner of his heart which God, without informing him of it, had made with a false bottom. The world had proof of this in 1859, when the dear little fish, having swallowed the bait Lombardy, with the hook, the line, the rod, the Commissary, and everything else, Bianconi took to planting national and constitutional cabbages at Precotto. In spite of this hidden meekness, as he now laid down his rod and reflected that poor, old Engineer Ribera was to be fished for, he experienced a singular satisfaction, neither in his heart, nor his head, nor in any of the usual senses, but in a particular sense of his own, purely Imperial and Royal! Indeed he had no consciousness of himself as distinct from the Austrian governing organism. Receiver at a small frontier customs-house, he considered himself the point of the nail on a finger of the state; then, as a police-agent, he considered himself a microscopic eye under that nail. His life was that of the monarchy. If the Russians tickled the skin of Galicia, he felt the itching at Oria. The greatness, the power, the glory of Austria inflated him with unbounded pride. He would not admit that Brazil was vaster than the Austrian Empire, or that China was more thickly populated, or that the Archangel Michael could take Peschiera, or the Almighty Himself take Verona. His real Almighty was the Emperor; he respected the One in Heaven as an ally of the one at Vienna.
So, although he had never suspected that Engineer Ribera was an unfaithful subject, the Commissary's words—gospel truth to him—had carried conviction with them, and the idea of getting hold of this untrustworthy servant fired the zeal of the royal eye and the imperial finger nail. He called himself an ass for not having seen through this man before. Oh, but there was still time to catch him and hold him fast, fast, fast! "You just leave it to me! Just leave it to me, Signor Comm——"
He broke off suddenly and seized the rod. Gently, almost without moving, the float had printed a ring on the water, the sign of a tench. Bianconi clutched the rod tight, holding his breath. Another dip of the float, another and larger ring; the float moved slowly, slowly upon the water, and then stopped. Bianconi's heart was beating violently; the float moved still a little further on the surface, and then went under; zag! Bianconi gave a jerk, and the rod bowed with the tugging on the line of a hidden fish. "Peppina, I've got him!" shouted Carlascia, losing his head. "The guadèll, the guadèll!" The customs-guard turned round enviously: "Have you got him, Scior Recitòr?" Cüstant, consumed with envy, gave no sign, not even turning his tall hat. Ratì and Signora Peppina came rushing up, the latter bringing the guadèll, a long pole with a large net at the end of it, used for bagging the tench in the water, for it would be a desperate risk to lift it up by the line. Bianconi took the line and began drawing it in very slowly. The tench was not yet visible, but must surely be enormous. The line came in smoothly for a few feet, and then was jerked violently back; then it began to come in again, nearer, ever nearer, until, far down below the surface, underneath the very noses of the three personages, something yellow flashed, a monstrous shadow! "Oh, the beauty!" said Signora Peppina under her breath. Ratì exclaimed: "Madone, Madone!" But Bianconi spoke never a word, and only pulled and pulled cautiously. It was a fine, big fellow, short and fat, with a dark back and a yellow belly, this fish that was coming up from the depths, nearly exhausted and moving crosswise with evident reluctance.
The three faces did not please the fish, for it suddenly turned tail upon them, and once more dived furiously towards the depths. At last, however, completely exhausted, it followed the line, and appeared at the foot of the wall, its gilded belly uppermost. Signora Peppina, almost upside down on the parapet, plunged her rod as far as it would go, seeking in vain to bag the unhappy fish. "By the head!" shouted her husband. "By the tail!" piped Ratì. At the noise, at sight of that terrible net, the fish struggled and dived. Peppina worked harder than ever, but could find neither head nor tail. Bianconi pulled and the tench rose to the surface once more, coiled itself up, and with a mighty jerk, snapped the line, and shot off amid the foam. "Madone!" exclaimed Ratì, while Peppina continued to hunt about in the water with her rod. "Where is that fish? Where is that fish?" Bianconi, who had sat as one petrified, still grasping the line, now faced about in a rage; he kicked Ratì, caught his wife by the shoulder, and shook her like a bag of nuts, loading her with reproaches. "Has it made off, Scior Recitòr?" asked the customs-guard mellifluously. Cüstant turned his tall hat just a little, glanced towards the scene of the disaster, and then, returning to the contemplation of his own placid float, mumbled in an indulgent tone: "Minga pratich! Not skillful!"
Meanwhile the tench had returned to its native grass-grown depths, melancholy but free, like Piedmont after Novara. It is, however, doubtful if the poor Engineer-in-Chief will be equally fortunate.