Rinaldo had been told the story and was frankly delighted. "Not for myself," he protested; "as for me, I am indifferentissimo about riches. I had satisfied myself that Giannella could never want for anything, not even for the drive on Sundays, the theater once a fortnight, and the three week's villeggiatura in September, all of which are a wife's due. All this I could have provided easily, and I give you my word as a galantuómo that neither my family nor my friends should ever have known that Giannella had no dowry. The linen we would have bought little by little, and she should have embroidered it all in her maiden name as is proper; so that when everything was ready, and we ask my good mamma and the girls to come and see us, they would have beheld that they must treat her with all respect. They are disinterested; yes, we have never disquieted ourselves about money in my family, but certain things are expected, as you know, and I should not have wished them to be wanting. Nevertheless, this good fortune will bring a great increase of happiness. Giannella can have many more pleasures, and there will never be any anxieties. I shall continue to work perseveringly—we will live in peace and much comfort; and all the money we do not spend we will put aside for the education of our sons and the doweries of our daughters. Mariuccia must live with us and grow fat—better late than never, Sora Mariuccia mia! And we shall be the happiest family in Rome!"
"And we will have the padrone—I mean the Signor Professore, to dinner every Sunday," said Giannella, who had been listening breathlessly to Rinaldo's description of the enchanting future; "poor man, he will be so lonely without us two women."
Rinaldo made a wry face. "I think I could do without the Signor Professore," he ventured to say. "Without rancor, I must confess that the part he has played in all this is most inexplicable, if he is at all an honest man, which (Mariuccia, you must forgive me) I sadly doubt. In fact I suspect—"
But Giannella laid her fingers on his lips. "You suspect nothing, Rinaldo mio. Are you rude enough to say that I am so ugly and so stupid that he could not fall in love with me—properly in love? Can you doubt that his affection prompted him to arrange a charming little surprise for me when I should come of age? Incredulous one, that is the evident truth, and to controvert known truth is mortal sin."
"It requires a robust act of faith to accept your definition, my angel," said Rinaldo, "but I suppose I must. Behold a new dogma! Signor Carlo Bianchi is a disinterested old fellow with a singularly susceptible heart. Fiat! Rome—that is to say, Giannella has spoken. Doubt becomes transgression. I doubt no more."
"Amen," came in Mariuccia's deepest tones from across the table, where she has paused in splitting a fresh fig to listen frowningly to Rinaldo's arraignment of the padrone's conduct. Now she smiled contentedly at her two light-hearted children, finished her fig to the last drop of honey, and dipped her fingers in the glass water bowl which is never wanting on the poorest Roman table. "Come, bambini," she said, "we will drink his health. May my poor little padroncino recover immediately and come back to his own home."
The three glasses were raised whole-heartedly; when they were set down, it was evident that Charity had once more closed her eyes to find her way.
* * * * * * *
As the day wore to its close, the half-drowned city seemed to raise its head and, turning from the muddy deposits at its feet, to look up at the clear new blue of the sky with deep thankfulness that the long, depressing scirocco was over; that, although September was still to come, the heat of the summer was broken and the ever-desired autumn near at hand. A fresh breeze, with a touch of tramontana in it, was blowing down over Soracte and the Cimmerian hills, and fretted with crisp wavelets the stretches of yellow water which still trespassed on Ripetta and the neighboring streets. On roof-garden and window-ledge little lemon-trees and verbena bushes spread green arms to the tempered sunshine, to the cool wind; swallows sailed joyously in ever-rising circles, their white breasts flashing like silver shields as they turned to the low sun, their shrill cries filling the air with sharp, clear sound. Far away, behind Saint Peter's, the sky was streaked into long level bars of gold and rose and crysophrase, bars where feathery cloudlets caught and hung like notes of floating flame—the score of some symphony played by the seraphs very far away.