In a boisterous profusion of thanks, old Babbo and the Donna uttered their gratitude, while Gerald and Marietta kissed their benefactor’s hand, and moved on.
‘He’s a noble Signor,’ muttered old Gaetana; ‘and I’d swear by the accent of his words he is no Florentine.’
‘Thou art right for once, old lady,’ said the servant, as he led the way; ‘he’s of the north, and the best blood of Piedmont.’
CHAPTER XV. A TUSCAN POLICE COURT
Long before their generous patron had awoke the following morning, the little company of Babbo were standing as prisoners in the dread presence of the Prefetto. Conducted by a detachment of the carabinieri, and secured with manacles enough to have graced the limbs of galley-slaves, the vagabonds as they were politely called, were led along through the streets, amid the jokes and mockeries of a very unsympathising public.
Tuscan justice, we are informed by competent authority, has not made, either in its essence or externals, any remarkable progress since the time we are now speaking of. The same ruinous old edifice stands the Temple of Justice; the same dirt and squalor disgraces its avenues and approaches; the same filthy mob beset the doors—a ragged mob, in whose repulsive features a smashed decalogue is marked, amid whom, in hot and eager haste, are seen some others, a shadow better in dress, but more degraded still in look—the low advocates of these courts, ‘Cavallochi,’ as they are styled—a class whose lives of ignominy and subornation would comprise almost every known species of rascality. By these men are others goaded on and stimulated to prefer claims against the well-to-do and respectable; by them are charges devised, circumstances invented, perjuries provided, at the shortest notice. They have their company of false witnesses ready for any accusation—no impugnment upon their credit being the fact that they live by perjury, and have no other subsistence.
Meet president of such a court was the scowling, ill-dressed, and ill-favoured fellow who, with two squalid clerks at his side, sat judge of the tribunal. A few swaggering carabinieri, with their carbines on their arms, moved in and out of the court, buffeting the crowd with rude gestures, and deporting themselves like masters of the ignoble herd around them. By these, as it seemed—for all was mere conjecture here—were the cases chosen for adjudication, the selection of the particular charges being their especial province. Elbowing their way through the filthy corridors, where accusers and accused were inextricably mingled—the prisoner, and the plaintiff, and the witness all jammed up together, and not unfrequently discussing the vexed question to be tried with all the virulence of partisans—the carabiniere makes his choice among these, aided, not impossibly, by a stimulant, which in Italy has its agency throughout all ranks and gradations of men.
In this vile assemblage of all that was degrading and wretched our poor strollers were now standing, their foreign aspect and their title of vagabonds obtaining for them a degree of notice the reverse of flattering. Sarcastic remarks upon their looks, their means of life, and, stranger still, their poverty, abounded; and these from a mob whose gaunt and famished faces and tattered rags bespoke the last stage of destitution.
The Babbo, indeed, was a picture of abject misery; bankrupt was written on every line of his poor old face, through which the paint of forty years blended with the sickly hues of hunger and fear. He turned upon the bystanders a glance of mild entreaty, however, that in a less cruel company could not have failed to meet some success. Not so Donna Gaetana: her stare was an open defiance, and even through her bleared eyes there shot sparks of fiery passion that seemed only in search of a fitting object for their attack.