I RESUME MY BAD HABITS.
I had but little religion in me, which alone could have comforted my soul with constancy and faith in these first ebullitions of life; so it is not to be wondered at if, in this state of languor and discontent, I again turned to the amusements of my friends, losing not a few hours in the public billiard-rooms. I returned to one of the worst of habits, for him who has a home—that of going to the osteria; and I remember to have felt humiliated on finding myself in the midst of that noisy, vulgar merriment, and hearing the coarse words uttered in those taverns, where the air was heavy with wine, food, and cigar-smoke. The chaste image and simple gentle words of my good Marina came back to me, and I felt troubled, and, shaking myself, I used to rise abruptly and go away.
QUARREL AND FIGHT.
Yes, truly the image of that gentle being aroused me, and made me return to myself with a feeling of shame, and a determination to put an end to all this. It was providential, however, that not only her image but she herself appeared to arrest me on the brink where I had allowed myself to be dragged, and my meeting with her deserves to be narrated.
Months had passed since I had been sent away from my Marina's house. It happened one day, it being a festa, that I had promised to go out of the Porta San Miniato to meet some friends and eat a fresh plate of salad; and when I was near the Church of San Niccolo, I could not cross the street on account of the procession that was just coming out of the church. I think it was during the Octave of Corpus Domini: there were many people, and I waited until the procession had passed; then, perhaps because I was in such a hurry to overtake my friends, in passing by I inadvertently knocked against two women who were in the company of a young man. They took it in ill part, and the young man, thinking perhaps that I had knocked against them on purpose, said—
"Has the boor passed by?"
"You are a boor yourself," I answered.
"Pass on, if you want to." And he gave me a push. I turned around on him and hit him a blow in the face, and from that instant I had all three, the youth and the girls, down on me. But they got little good out of it: the young fellow, who was rather slight than otherwise, was put at once out of fighting condition by two blows of my fist in the face; and I freed myself from the girls, who seemed like infuriated harpies. In an instant lace, ribbon, and feathers flew in the air like dry leaves scattered by the wind.
ESCAPE FROM THE POLICE.
A space was cleared around me, and some said, "Oh, what a scandal!" others, "Bravo!" Some ran away, some laughed, and the soldiers came to clear the place and quell the tumult, and the sbirri (for there were sbirri then) to make arrests.