The young doctor shrugged his shoulders; the marchesa took up the gauntlet.
“If we had not this! Per Bacco, you are right, we should have worse. If the Austrians go on in this way, who will reap the harvest of the odium they have plentifully sown? Why, the priests, of course, whom they are now supporting with their bayonets and the stick! They are safe from popular vengeance. What has an army like theirs to fear? But let their backs be once turned—let the last sail of the fleet which will bear them from our shores have sunk beneath the horizon, and who can estimate the violence with which the torrent, so long forcibly restrained, will break forth? Who can assign any limits to popular fury under provocation, such as daily, weekly, yearly, is crying to Heaven for redress? And who will be the sufferers along with the priests? Why, we nobles, of course, whom the people, right or wrong, identify with them, and hate with equal hatred.”
“Per carità, marchesa,” interposed a very timorous-looking little man, turning pale, and wiping his forehead, “let us not speak of such things. Those who have outlived the Reign of Terror of '49, have reasonable grounds for not expecting to see anything so horrible again. Besides, we are all friends here; but still, walls have ears.”
“It cannot be denied, however, that we are in a cruel position,” said a quiet, benevolent-looking man, with a stoop of the shoulders, and a great weakness of sight—the latter an appanage of old descent in many of the noble families in the Marche. “It is quite true that the people place us in the same category with the priests, while the priests drain us like a sponge! We shall have soon to choose between the excesses of Mazzinianism or beggary. This additional claim for the land-tax from us poor possidenti—coming after the long-standing prohibition to sell our grain for foreign exportation, and the losses consequent upon the low price at which we have been compelled to dispose of it—is really almost too much for mortal patience to endure.”
“Come, come? What do you mean?” cried old Testaferrata, one of the largest landed proprietors in the country. “I pay the bi-monthly tax upon the produce of my estates every two months in anticipation. It is heavy enough already, in all conscience; but I remember an army of occupation cannot be maintained for nothing, and they who necessitated the Austrians being here are those we have to thank for it. Ma, ma, I think we bear our part sufficiently. You surely do not mean to say anything more is expected from us?”
“Caro mio,” answered the lady of the house, “in this extremity, miraculous powers have developed themselves to aid the suffering Church. The calendar year, without disturbing the order of nature, will henceforth consist of fourteen months! No new measure is in contemplation; tranquillize yourself on this point; simply, we are to pay seven bimestri, instead of six, as heretofore, to supply the exhausted coffers of the treasury—or, in more straightforward terms, to line the pockets of a certain eminentissimo and his amiable relations.”
“Impossible! impossible!” groaned the poor codino, “it is too hard. Surely some distinction should be made.”
“Without arguing upon differences of opinion,” mildly remarked the good Alessandro, whose office it was to spread oil upon the troubled waters of political discussion, “I am sorry to assure you, marchese, that what Gentilina tells you is too true. You may always trust to her sources of information.”
“Yes, he is right,” said the marchesa, looking at her husband with a pleased expression. “Alessandro knows I have never misled him yet in any news of this kind; and you will see that, at the end of this month, although you paid punctually at the beginning of last, you will be again summoned to do so; and then, just as if it was in the proper course of things, your usual bimestre will, a few days afterwards, be called for!”
By way of parenthesis, I must state that the correctness of the marchesa's information, in the course of a few days, was fully demonstrated, while this singular arrangement is still continued yearly.