Zenobia departed and returned later with the balance of the linen, nicely packed on the back of a tiny donkey. This plan worked admirably until the day of reckoning came, and Zenobia’s neighbor, Sor Pietro, a poor old half-crazed peasant, who had not recovered his wits since the earthquake, presented a bill for the use of the donkey. Zenobia, a queenly creature,—she looked her name,—had commandeered the beast and refused to pay for the use of it.
“She assured us, illustrious Comandante,” said Sor Pietro, weeping pitifully, “that the Government required the animal—I myself dug him out of the ruin a week after the earthquake—for the use of the Americans. I said I will go myself and hear the truth!”
Meanwhile Zenobia and the donkey arrived on the field of battle.
“Would the Sor Comandante know the truth?” Zenobia shot a basilisk glance at Pietro. “The animal was not being used. Sor Pietro himself said it was too miserably weak to draw the plough. He had no use for him, nor will have till it is time to gather his lemons and take them to the Marina. Should he deny this poor miserable brute when my officers, the magnanimous, the Heaven-sent, demand such an animal? He deserves to die of an apoplexy!”
At this moment an orderly brought a letter to Brofferio. As he turned to read it, Zenobia sprang like a panther at Pietro, caught him by the shoulder, shook him like a sack, and hissed in his deaf ear:
“Ingrate, cabbage head, hangman!”
“You have received a very large sum of money this morning,” said Brofferio, folding up his letter, “fully fifteen francs. Do me the favor to pay this man five sous. How many times hath she borrowed the asino? Five sous for each trip. Now then!”
Zenobia produced a soiled and knotted handkerchief from her stocking and counted the money unwillingly into Pietro’s seamy brown palm.
“Now I wonder,” said Brofferio, as the pair walked amicably away together, “if that comedy was all arranged beforehand?”
The early days at Mosella recall the description of the building of Carthage. The busy master-carpenters, each with his foot-rule in his pocket, his blue pencil behind his ear, move about among the gangs of Sicilian laborers. One measures out on the bare ground the place where the timbers that form the sills of the next house shall be laid; another directs the driver of a heavy ox-team, drawn by a pair of sturdy red steers, where to discharge a load of fragrant new cut pine boards.