As he speaks the sindaco gazes in wonder at the muffled figure in the corner. Can this be she? Why does she not move forward and answer?—and show her pretty face, and approve the people's greeting?
"My niece has a headache; leave her alone," answers the marchesa, curtly. "Do not speak to her, Mr. Sindaco. She will visit Corellia another day; meanwhile, adieu."
The marchesa waves her hand majestically, and signs for him to retire. This the sindaco does with an inward groan at the thought of what is coming on him.
Poor Enrica, feeling as if a curse were on her, cutting her off from all her former life, shrinks back deeper into the corner of the carriage, draws the black veil closer about her face, and sobs aloud. The marchesa turns her head away. The driver cracks his long whip over the steaming horses, which move feebly forward with a jerk. Thus the coach slowly traverses the whole length of the piazza, the wheels rumbling themselves into silence out in a long street leading to another gate on the farther side of the town.
Not another word more is said that night among the townsfolk; but there is not a man at Corellia who does not curse the marchesa in his heart. Ser Giacomo, the notary, folds up his newspaper in dead silence, puts it into his pocket, and departs. The lights in the dark café, which burn sometimes all day when it is cloudy, are extinguished. The domino-players disappear. Oreste and Pilade shut up their shop despondingly. The baker Pietro comes out no more to cool at the door. Anyway, there must be bakers, he reflects, to bake the bread; so Pietro retreats, comforted, to his oven, and works frantically all night. He is safe, Pietro hopes, though he has paid no rent for two whole years, and has sold some of the corn which ought to have gone to the marchesa.
Meanwhile the heavy carriage, with its huge leather hood and double rumble, swaying dangerously to and fro, descends a steep and rugged road embowered in forest, leading to a narrow ledge upon the summit of a line of cliffs. On the very edge of these cliffs, formed of a dark-red basaltic stone, the marchesa's villa stands. A deep, dark precipice drops down beneath. Opposite is a range of mountains, fair and forest-spread on the lower flanks, rising above into wild crags, and broken, blackened peaks, that mock the soft blue radiance of the evening sky.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT SILVESTRO SAYS.
Silvestro, the steward, is a man "full of conscience," as people say, deeply sensible of his responsibilities, and more in dread of the marchesa than of the Church. It is this dread that makes him so emaciated—hesitate when he speaks, and bend his back and shoulders into a constant cringe. But for this dread, Silvestro would forgive the poor people more. He sees such pinching misery every day—lives in it—suffers from it; how can he ask those for money who have none? It is like forcing blood out of a stone. He is not the man to do it. Silvestro lives at hand; he hears the rattle of the hail that burns the grapes up to a cinder—the terrible din of the thunder before the forked lightning strikes the cattle; he sees with his own eyes the griping want of bread in the savage winter-time; his own eyes behold the little lambs, dead of hunger, lying by the road-side. Worse still, he sees other lambs—human lambs with Christian souls—fade and pine and shrink into a little grave, from failing of mother's milk, dried up for want of proper food. He sees, too, the aged die before God calls them, failing through lack of nourishment—a little wine, perhaps, or a mouthful of soup; the young and strong grow old with ceaseless striving. Poor Silvestro! he sees too much. He cannot be severe. He is born merciful. Silvestro is honest as the day, but he hides things from the marchesa; he is honest, but he cannot—no, he cannot—grind and vex the poor, as she would have him do. Yet she has no one to take his place in that God-forgotten town—so they pull on, man and mistress—a truly ill-matched pair—pull on, year after year. It is a weary life for him when the great lady comes up for her villeggiatura—Silvestro, divided, cleft in twain, so to say, as he is, between his awe and respect for the marchesa and her will, and his terrible sympathy for all suffering creatures, man or beast.
As to the marchesa, she despises Silvestro too profoundly to notice his changing moods. It is not her habit to look for any thing but obedience—absolute obedience—from those beneath her. A thousand times she has told herself such a fool would ruin her; but, up to this present time, she has borne with him, partly from convenience, and partly because she fears to get a rogue in his place. She does not guess how carefully Silvestro has hid the truth from her; she would not give him credit for the power of concealing any thing.