"Dio mio," wailed the old woman, "the girl is right, the fever has gone to his head." Then, forcing herself to be calm for the sick man's sake, she said in soothing tones, "Padroncino mio bello, you are agitating yourself again. You must not talk any more. Go to sleep—and when you are better you shall say all that is in your mind. There, are you comfortable?" She smoothed the pillows, drew up the coverings, and left him in the darkened room.
Outside in the passage she leaned back against the wall, faint with fear and remorse. It was all her fault. Who could say how this dreadful visitation would end? In a fatal illness, or in permanent derangement of that illustrious understanding? She would fetch a doctor at once—God send she should not have to go for the priest!
There was an anxious consultation between the two women over the kitchen table that night. The doctor, put in possession of the facts, had diagnosed the distemper as "rabbia rientrata" (unvented anger), one of the most dangerous known to the faculty. How many regrettable losses to society had it not caused! And how unfortunate that the aid of science should not have been invoked at once. What could one do after well-intentioned but ignorant persons had taken it upon themselves to treat it for forty-eight hours?
Mariuccia and Giannella collapsed under this bitter reproach, and it was only when the afflicted Professor had been finally lured to slumber by innocent opiates of orange-flower water that Giannella recovered sufficiently to remark to her companion, "I do not think we really made so many mistakes, after all. What did the doctor order but just what you had done? Leeches, quinine, a sedative—I wonder if he knows so very much more than you do?"
"Tell me, Giannella?" Mariuccia asked, lifting her head and looking at the girl curiously, "I had not time to ask you before—what did the padrone say to you? What was it that first showed you he was delirious?"
Giannella thought for a moment, then she replied, while the lamplight showed a gleam of rebellious amusement in her eyes, "He told me that he had a piece of beautiful good news for me, and I sat down to hear it—and then he said he—he intended to marry me. I could not help laughing. He looked so funny, and the thought was such craziness. But I am sorry—I should have had more heart."
Mariuccia reflected; then she shook her head sagely. "This craziness has been coming on for a long time, I believe," she said, "it is not all the result of our little argument the other day. I must tell you now—though I did not mean to—that we were talking about you then, Giannella. He said he wished to pay for your board—he, who counts his coins as if they were beads of a rosary. 'Santo Baiocco, ora pro nobis!' Proverino, it is his only fault. I ought not to speak of it now that he is in such danger. And then I was angry—and he said to me what he said to you this morning, that he intended to marry you. Now let us reason a little, figlia mia. You have been at home for over four years, and the padrone hardly seemed to see you till three months ago. He changed then, suddenly. Now have you no suspicion of what was the cause?"
"I cannot imagine," replied Giannella simply. "I thought at first that perhaps he was sorry for me because I should soon be growing old and ugly and my shoes were going to pieces—and since dear Signora Dati of good memory died—and the Princess is too busy to remember, there is no one to get me any work. But now he speaks of—marriage. What man in his right senses could wish to marry me, nearly twenty-one and without a penny?" She looked up in perplexed good faith as she asked the question, and the lamplight fell on the calm, lovely face which had so enchanted one man that he dreamed of it all night and crept down to the church morning after morning to catch another glimpse of it.
"There might be plenty," growled Mariuccia, "if they could only see you. You will be beautiful till you are a hundred, core of my heart. Now don't smother me!" for Giannella suddenly ran round the table and hugged her friend. "But the padrone is not like other men. The time has come when I must tell you what I have discovered. You are young, you saw nothing, but I saw, I understood. This bewitchment had a beginning. It came with the first visit of that stout gentleman who asked you such strange questions. Do you remember? Ah, they could not deceive me. I wish I had thought of it when he was last here. If he comes again I will ask him some questions, I can tell you. What did he want here, putting folly into my poor boy's head and disturbing the tranquillity of a Christian family? I have lived twenty-three years with that poor afflicted angel in there, and never have we had a disagreement till that fat demon, whoever he was, came to upset us all, and may his best dead suffer for it. There, it is late, go to bed, Giannella, I am going to sit up in here—the padrone may want something."