An Englishman may be a mass of prejudices, but I confess I did not like the idea of hob-nobbing with a would-be parricide and determined that Rosario should not drive me any more; if I wanted a carriage, Carmelo should get leave of his padrone and take me.
Next morning, while I was having my coffee, there was a sound of passing music; I recognized it as belonging to a funeral, and asked Peppino if he knew who was dead. Several people were dead and he did not know which this was, unless it was old Baldassare; it must be either a married woman or a grown-up man. I asked how he knew that. He replied that when apprenticed to his father, who had been sagrestano before
taking the hotel, he had learnt all about the ceremonies of the Church.
“They do this,” he said, “when it is a married lady dead or a grown man. If it shall be the woman dead unmarried or a boy dead, then shall it be a different song, a different ring of bell and the dead shall go very directly in the paradiso; it is like the—please, what is fuochi artificiali? Excuse me, it is the rocket; prestissimo and St. Peter he don’t be asking no question. Did you understand?”
He then diverged to ceremonies connected with last illnesses—
“When the doctor is coming it is telling always that you would be good of the malady, but when the priest is coming it is telling that you are finished. This is not a good thing. It is difficult to hope when the doctor is shaking the head and is telling ‘Please, you; go, catch the priest quickly, quickly.’ And sometimes the notary, the man of law, if the malade is having money; if no money, it is the notary not at all. When the doctor is coming out, the priest is coming in, and generally after would be the death. But you must pay. If to pay less would come only one priest and not well
dressed, if to pay more, very well dressed and too many priests. If to pay plenty, plenty, then to ring all the bells and enter by the great door; but if to pay few, then not many bells and to enter by the second door. Did you understand?
“When they die the parents always, and also the man that is to die, they fear the—please, what is not the paradiso? Excuse me, it is the inferno: and they tell to the priest ‘Please come.’ Then they pay him to tell all that is good, and sometimes the priest arrive that you will be dead. If you shall suicide, very likely you are dead before. Then shall the parents pay him to tell that the man to die has taken all the functions of religion and the holy oil to put in the foot to prevent him the death. But it is prevent not at all.
“Did you know what is sacramento? All right, I shall tell you. The priest is going with the sacramento on the hand and the umbrella on the head and you must pay—always must pay, it is the interesting thing. And the old women are going and are praying because the man is dead: and the soldiers are going and are taking the arms before the risorgimento, but now the
law it is redeemed. Then they arrive into the room of the malade and take the sacramento and up and down and put the holy oil in the foot and pray and went away, and the malade who is not dead would very soonly die.”