Footnotes
[ [I] A short, pointed beard, called la mosca, and worn by patriots in those days. [Translator's note.]
[ [J] Box, red; leaves, green; flower, white. The Italian colours, so the worthy Receiver scents sedition. [Translator's note.]
[ [K] Box, red; leaves, green; flower, white. The Italian colours, so the worthy Receiver scents sedition. [Translator's note.]
CHAPTER II
THE MOONSHINE AND CLOUD SONATA
The sun was sinking behind the brow of Monte Brè and darkness was rapidly covering the precipitous shores and the houses of Oria, stamping the purple and gloomy profile of the hill on the luminous green of the waves, which were running obliquely towards the west, still high, but foamless in the tired breva. The lights in Casa Ribera had been the last to go out. Standing against the steep vineyards of the mountainside dotted with olives, it spanned the narrow road that follows the coast-line, its modest façade rising from the clear water, and flanked on the west, towards the village, by a little hanging-garden, divided into two tiers, on the east, towards the church, by a small terrace raised on pillars, which framed a square of church ground. In this façade there was a small boathouse where at that time the boat belonging to Franco and Luisa lay rocking on the jostling waves. Above the boathouse a slender gallery united the hanging-garden on the west and the terrace on the east, and looked out upon the lake by means of three windows. They called it a loggia, perhaps because it really had been one in olden times. The old house bore incrusted here and there several of these venerable, fossil names, which had survived through tradition, and represented, in their apparent absurdity, the mysteries of the religion of domestic walls. Behind the loggia was a spacious hall, and there were two rooms more behind that. On the west was the small dining-room, its walls covered with little, illustrious, paper men, each under his own glass and in his own frame, each in a dignified attitude, like the illustrious in flesh and blood, looking as if his colleagues did not exist at all, and the world was gazing at him alone. On the east was the alcove-room, where next to her parents, in her own little bed, slept Signorina Maria Maironi, born in August, 1852.
From the great rococo chests to the bed-rooms, the kitchen cupboard, the black clock in the little dining-room, the sofa in the loggia, with its brown cover, sprinkled with red and yellow Turks; from the straw-bottomed chairs to the armchairs with disproportionately high arms, the furniture of the house all belonged to the epoch of the illustrious men, most of whom wore the wig and pigtail. Even though it did appear to have just descended from the garret, it seemed, nevertheless, to have regained in the light and air of its new surroundings certain lost habits of cleanliness, a decided interest in life, and the dignity of old age. Thus a collection of disused words might to-day be composed by the breath of some aged and conservative poet, and reflect his serene and graceful senility. Under the mathematical and bureaucratic rule of Uncle Piero, chairs and armchairs, tables large and small, had lived in perfect symmetry, and the privilege of immobility had been extended to the very mats themselves. The only piece of furniture which might have been called movable, was a grey and blue cushion, an abortive mattress, which the engineer, during his short visits at Oria, carried with him when he moved from one easy-chair to another. When he was absent the caretaker respected all relics of him to such an extent as never to dare touch them familiarly, or dust the less visible parts. This caused the housekeeper to fly into a rage, regularly, every time they returned to Valsolda. The master, vexed that a little dust should cause so much scolding of a poor peasant, would reprimand her, and suggest that she do the dusting herself; and when the woman—by way of a scornful retort—would demand, wrathfully, if she was to kill herself with dusting the house every time they came, he would answer good-naturedly: "If you kill yourself once, that will be sufficient."
The cultivation of the little garden as well as of a kitchen-garden he owned to the east of the church grounds, he left entirely to the caprice of the caretaker. Only once, two years before Luisa's marriage, arriving at Oria at the beginning of September, and finding six stalks of maize growing on the second terrace of the little garden, did he allow himself to say to the man: "Look here, my friend. Couldn't you really get along without those six stalks of Indian corn?"