The marchesa's carriage passes through Corellia at a foot's pace. The driver has no choice. It is most difficult to drive at all—the street is so narrow, and the door-steps of the houses jut out so into the narrow space. The horses, too, hired at Lucca, twenty miles away, are tired, poor beasts, and reeking with the heat. They can hardly keep their feet upon the rugged, slippery stones that pave the dirty alley. As the marchesa passes slowly by, wan-faced women—colored handkerchiefs gathered in folds upon their heads, knitting or spinning flax cut from the little field without upon the mountain-side—put down the black, curly-headed urchins that cling to their laps—rise from where they are resting on the door-step, and salute the marchesa with an awe-struck stare. She, in no mood for condescension, answers them with a frown. Why have these wan-faced mothers, with scarcely bread to eat, children between their knees? Why has God given her none? Again the impious thought rises within her which tempted her when standing before the marriage-bed in the nuptial chamber. "God is my enemy." "He has smitten me with a curse." "Why have I no child?" "No child, nothing but her"—and she flashes a savage glance at Enrica, who has sunk backward, covering her tear-stained face with a black veil, to avoid the peering eyes of the Corellia townsfolk—"nothing but her. Born to disgrace me. Would she were dead! Then all would end, and I should go down—the last Guinigi—to an honored grave."
The sick, too, are sitting at the doorways as the marchesa passes by. The mark of fever is on many an ashy cheek. These sick have been carried from their beds to breathe such air as evening brings. Air! There is no air from heaven in these foul streets. No sweet breath circulates; no summer scents of grasses and flowers reach the lonely town hung up so high. The summer sun scorches. The icy winds of winter, sweeping down from Alpine ridges, whistle round the walls. Within are chilly, desolate hearths, on which no fire is kindled. These sick, as the carriage passes, turn their weary eyes, and lift up their wasted hands in mute salutations to that dreaded mistress who is lord of all—the great marchesa. Will they not lie in the marchesa's ground when their hour comes? Alas! how soon—their weakness tells them very soon! Will they not be carried in an open bier up those long flights of steps—all hers—cut in the rocky sides of overlapping rocks, to the cemetery, darkly shaded by waving cypresses? The ground is hers, the rocks, the steps, the stones, the very flowers that brown, skinny hands will sprinkle on their bier—all hers. From birth to bridal, and the marriage-bed (so fruitful to the poor), from bridal to death, all hers. The land they live on, and the graves they fill, all—but a shadow of her greatness!
At the corner of the squalid, ill-smelling street through which she is now passing, is the town fountain. This fountain, once a willful mountain-torrent, now cruelly captured and borne hither by municipal force, splashes downward through a sculptured circle cut in a marble slab, into a covered trough below. Here bold-eyed maidens are gathered, who poise copper vessels on their dark heads—maidens who can chat, and laugh, and romp, on holidays, and with flushed faces dance wild tarantellas (fingers for castanets), where the old tale of love is told in many a subtile step, and shuffle, rush, escape, and feint, ending in certain capture! Beside the maidens linger some mountain lads. Now their work is over, they loll against the wall, pipe in mouth, or lie stretched on a plot of grass that grows green under the spray of the fountain. In a dark angle, a little behind from these, there is a shrine hollowed out of the city wall. Within the shrine an image of the Holy Mother of the Seven Sorrows stands, her arms outstretched, her bosom pierced by seven gilded arrows. The shrine is protected by an iron grating. Bunches of pale hill-side blossoms, ferns, and a few blades of corn, are thrust in between the bars. Some lie at the Virgin's feet—offerings from those who have nothing else to give. A little group (but these are old, and bowed by grief and want) kneel beside the shrine in the quiet evening-tide.
The rumble of a carriage, so strange a sound in lonely Corellia, rouses all. From year to year, no wheels pass through the town save the marchesa's. Ere she appears, all know who it must be. The kneelers at the shrine start up and hobble forward to stare and wonder at that strange world whence she comes, so far away at Lucca. The maidens courtesy and smile; the lads jump up, and range themselves respectfully against the wall; yet in their hearts neither care for her—neither the maidens nor the lads—no one cares for the marchesa. They are all looking out for Enrica. Why does the signorina lie back in the carriage a mass of clothes? The maidens would like to see how those clothes are made, to cut their poor garments something like them. The lads would like to let their eyes rest on her golden hair. Why does the Signorina Enrica not nod and smile to those she knows, as is her wont? Has that old tyrant, her aunt—these young ones are bold, and dare to whisper what others think; they have no care, and, like the lilies of the field, live in the wild, free air—has that old tyrant, her aunt, bewitched her?
Now the carriage has emerged from the dark alley, and entered the dirty but somewhat less dark piazza—the market-place of Corellia. The old Lombard church of Santa Barbara, with its big bells in the arched tower, hanging plainly to be seen, opens into the piazza by a flight of steps and a sculptured doorway. The Municipio, too, calling itself a palace (heaven save the mark!), with its list of births, deaths, and marriages, posted on a black-board outside the door, to be seen of all, adorns it. The Café of the Tricolor, and such shops as Corellia boasts of, are there opposite. Men, smoking, and drinking native wine, are lounging about. Ser Giacomo, the notary, spectacles on nose, sits at a table in a corner, reading aloud to a select audience a weekly broad-sheet published at Lucca, news of men and things not of the mountain-tops. Every soul starts up as they hear wheels approaching. If a bomb had burst in the piazza the panic could not be greater. They know it is the marchesa. They know that now the marchesa is come she will grind and harry them, and seize her share of grapes, and corn, and olives, to the uttermost farthing. Silvestro, her steward, a timid, pitiful man, can be got over by soft words, and the sight of want and misery. Not so the marchesa. They know that now she is come she will call the Town Council, fine them, pursue them for rent, cite them to the High Court of Barga, imprison them if they cannot pay. They know her, and they curse her. The ill-news of her arrival runs from lip to lip. Checco, the butcher, who sells his meat cut into dark, indescribably-shaped scraps, more fit for dogs than men, first sees the carriage turn into the piazza. He passes the word on to Oreste, the barber round the corner. Oreste, who, with his brother Pilade, both wearing snow-white aprons, are squaring themselves at their open doorway, over which hangs a copper basin, shaped like Manbrino's helmet, looking for customers—Oreste and Pilade turn pale. Then Oreste tells the baker, Pietro, who, naked as Nature made him, has run out from his oven to the open door, for a breath of air. The bewildered clerk at the Municipio, who sits and writes, and sleeps by turns, all day, in a low room beside a desk, taking notes for the sindaco (mayor) from all who come (he is so tired, that clerk, he would hear the last trumpet sound unmoved), even he hears the news, and starts up.
Now the carriage stops. It has drawn up in the centre of the piazza. It is the marchesa's custom. She puts her head out of the window, and takes a long, grave look all round. These are her vassals. They fear her. She knows it, and she glories in it. Every head is uncovered, every eye turned upon her. It is obviously some one's duty to salute her and to welcome her to her domain. She has stopped for this purpose. It is always done. No one, however, stirs. Ser Giacomo, the notary, bows low beside the table where he has been caught reading the Lucca broad-sheet; but Ser Giacomo does not stir. How he wishes he had staid at home!
He has not the courage to move one step toward her. Something must be done, so Ser Giacomo he runs and fetches the sindaco from inside the recesses of the café, where he is playing dominoes under a lighted lamp. The sindaco must give the marchesa a formal welcome. The sindaco, a saddler by trade—a snuffy little man, with a face drawn and yellow as parchment, wearing his working-clothes—advances to the carriage with a step as cautious as a cat.
"I trust the illustrious lady is well," he says timidly, bowing low and trying to smile. Mr. Sindaco is frightened, but he can be proud enough to his fellow-townsfolk, and he is downright cruel to that poor lad his clerk, at the Municipal Palace.
The marchesa, with a cold, distant air, that would instantly check any approach to familiarity—if any one were bold enough to be familiar—answers gravely, "That she is thankful to say she is in her usual health."
The sindaco—although better off than many, painfully conscious of long arrears of unpaid rent—waxing a little bolder at the sound of his own voice and his well-chosen phrases, continues: