Well, the thicker the mud, the more productive the tide when it comes; but he was fairly sunk to his neck before it floated him out.
One day, gazing down, his attention was attracted to a figure which had halted near below his coign of espial. As things went, there was nothing so remarkable in this figure, in its alien speech or apparel, as to make it arresting otherwise than by reason of its contiguity to himself. It was simply that of a crinkled hag, swart, snake-locked, cowled, her dress jingling with sequins, her right hand clawed upon a crutch. She appeared, in fact, just an old Levantine hoodie-crow, of the breed which was familiar enough to Milan in these cataclysmic days, when all sorts of queer, tragic fowl were being driven northwards from overseas before a tidal wave of Islamism. For half Christendom was writhing at this time under the embroidered slipper of the Turk, while other half was fighting and scratching and backing within its own ranks, in a sauve qui peut from Sultan Mahomet's ever nearer-resounding tread.
From Bosnia and Servia and Hungary; from Negropont and the islands of the Greek Archipelago; from new Rome itself, whose desolated houses and markets weeping Amastris had been emptied to repeople; from Trebizond and the Crimea, it came endlessly floating, this waste drift of palaces and temples and antique civilisations, which had been wrecked and scattered by that ruthless hate. Ruined merchants and traders; unfrocked satraps; priests of outlandish garb; girl derelicts blooded and defiled by janissaries; childless mothers and motherless children—scared immigrants all, they wailed and wandered in the towns, denouncing in their despair the creed whose jealousies and corruptions had delivered them to this pass.
In the first of their coming, a certain indignant sympathy had helped to the practical amelioration of their bitter lot. Men scowled and muttered over the histories of their wrongs; took warning for a possible overthrow of the entire Christian Church; talked big of sinking all differences in a kingdom-wide crusade; and, finally, fell to fisticuffs upon the question of a common commander for this problematic host. After which the immigrants, always flocking in thicker, and making civil difficulties, fell gradually subject to an indifference, not to say intolerance, which was at least half as great as that from which they had fled. Fashion, moreover, began to find in the Ser Mahomet a figure more and more attractive, in proportion as he approached it, issuing from the mists of the Orient. It was ravished with, if it did not want to be ravished by, those adorable Spahis, with their tinkling jackets and sashes and melancholy, wicked faces. It adapted prettily to itself the caftan, and the curdee, and the turban; re-read Messer Boccaccio's most Eastern fables; acted them, too, in drawers of rose-coloured damask, and little talpoes, which were tiny jewelled caps of velvet, cocked, and falling over one ear in a tassel. But by that time the cult of immigrancy was discredited du haut en das.
Many of the unhappy wretches were drawn by natural process into such sinks as 'The Vineyard.' The poor are good to the poor, and pitiful—which is strange—towards any fall from prosperity. In the instance of this old woman, it was notable how she was humoured of the drifting populace. The very ladroni, who, outside their own rookery, might have tormented and soused her in the kennel, were content here to rally and banter her a little, showing their white teeth to one another in jokes whose bent she was none the worse for misapprehending. For she had not much Italian, it appeared; though what was hers she was turning to the best possible advantage in the matter of fortune-telling.
Tassino saw many brawny palms thrust out for her shrewd conning; echoed from his eyrie many of the Eccomi perdútos and O mè beátos which greeted her broken sallies. She got a mite here and there, and buzzed and mumbled over it, clutching it to her lean bosom. Presently some distraction, of rape or murder, carried her audience elsewhere, and she was left temporarily alone. Then Tassino, moved by a sudden impulse, reached down his arm through the grate and tapped her reverend crown. She started, and ducked, and peered up. He whispered out to her:—
'Zitto, old mother! Come up here, and tell me my fortune for money.'
She seemed to hesitate; he signified the way; and lo! on a thought she came. He met her at the door, and dragged her in.
'Tell me my fortune,' he said, and thrust out a dirty palm.
She pored over it, chuckling and pattering her little incomprehensible shibboleth. Presently she seemed to pounce triumphantly on a knot. She leered up, her hand still clutching his, her hair falling over her eyes.