Hardly two days before, all Roccastretta had assembled in his chapel, and words of the most passionate devotion had risen like a cloud of grateful incense to the niche in whose depths he had made his dwelling for more years than any one there could count.
"Holy Pancrazio of Evolo, dear good Saint Pancras," prayed this pious people, "you love us like children and we love you like a father. Every Sunday we bring you fragrant nosegays, and when, as at present, the burning drought kills our flowers, then we bring bunches of gold and silver tinsel, and thick yellow wax candles to light before your image. Father Atanasio, who never honored you as he ought, and always calls you a half-converted heathen, he is of opinion that we give his Madonna nothing but miserable tallow dips, and keep the best of everything for you. So, you see, best, dearest Evolino, that we don't grudge you anything, and our children shall be just like us; for you are our own, only honored patron saint. Only, now, bethink you of your office, dearest, kindest Evolino. For three months not a drop of rain has fallen on our fields, trees, vines. Look around you! The figs are drying up, the olives will not swell, the wheat fields look like a desert. If you don't send rain, Evolino, it is all over with our harvest, and nothing will be left for your people but to save themselves from starvation by catching fishes and crabs. Be good, then, holy Saint Pancras, and send rain. You know very well it is not a tempest we want, but a good, long, mild, soaking rain, such as you know how to send when you will. To-morrow, or next day, at the latest. Do this for us, dear Saint Pancras, and you know how we will deck your image beautifully, and honor you above all the other saints; yes, even before the blessed Madonna herself, who is such a busy Queen of Heaven and Earth that she has no time to think about our little place. But you, Evolino, belong to us alone, and have no one else to look after! Care for us then, dearest Evolino, and we will bless you to all eternity."
Thus they prayed and besought him, and the ancient Evolino in his niche listened without stirring an eye or a hand, as became a saint that was cut out of wood, and plastered over with paint; and presently they all trooped out and locked the door, leaving the honest old fellow to his dreams in the cool, cozy chapel. Long and many were the Christian years that he had stood up here in the sanctuary of Evolo; but his dim confused remembrance looked wistfully back into the twilight of a still older time. There was a shrine here then, too--not a chapel, but a temple; other priests came and went before his image, other songs were sung and other gods were honored. The ancient sculpture had hewn him out of stout knotty wood, and beneath the various crusts deposited by the lapse of centuries, the old image was still hidden, as it came from that hand, now long moldering in dust; defaced, however, by strange gaudy daubs of color, with a red mantle, over a blue tunic, silver-white beard and hair, cherry-red lips, black brows in two even arches above the neatly painted eyes, and a round saintly nimbus, behind his head, that glistened as if he had a pure gold sailor's hat on the nape of his neck. Truly he didn't look like that in the old times, yet they honored him then much as he was honored now, not like one of the high mighty ones, who are only to be addressed with fear and trembling; like a dear old friend rather, with whom a man can exchange the familiar "thee and thou"--older, certainly, and doubtless of higher degree, but who has dwelled so long in our midst that he seems like one of our own people. This feeling increased with the lapse of years, and a most confidential relation had sprung up between the patron saint and his flock--a relation of mutual service and mutual indulgence, as of friendly neighbors who like to do each other a brotherly good turn when they can.
It was Saint Pancras' duty to take care of the little town, and its surrounding country; but the honest patron was so old and brittle, that no one could blame him if his head was not always in the right place, and his thoughts sometimes went wool gathering, so the weakness of age was helped for Evolino by various friendly hints; if that had no effect, the duties of a patron saint were set before him seriously but kindly; if this did not serve, then the standpoint was made clear in coarse but unmistakable fashion,--and thus it happened that on this fine spring morning, after he had failed to supply the longed-for rain, in spite of prayers and entreaties, he was lowered at the end of a rope into the sea, like a common malefactor, for his punishment and his reformation.
And so he lay down there at the end of his rope, and saw how the crowd, when their work was accomplished, took the way to the town, and saw how Padre Atanasio, who hated him for a dangerous rival, in the bottom of his heart, wept crocodile tears over him, and then he saw how his chapel stood above among the olive trees, lonely and forsaken, and how the open door swung to and fro in the wind,--and he may have turned back in his dim memory to that fair, long past time when the warm sea-winds blew through the breezy colonnades, when the bright sunbeams played over his youthful godlike figure, when he looked down from his pedestal upon the coast, the purple sea, and the high-beaked ships with their great oars. Then, when he was a young god, when they brought grapes and figs, and pomegranates to lay at his feet! Gayer than now sounded the songs of the priests, and lustily streamed up the clouds of incense from the golden vessels. He was not Saint Pancras of Evolo then, yet it was under a very similar sounding name that he was honored by the believing crowd, and none then would have dared to snatch from his pedestal the beautiful God of the Winds, and throw him down among the fibrous polyps, a mock for women and children.
In dull, humming tones sang these ancient, half-smothered memories through his drowsy thoughts, and duller, and still further off, were the voices of the noisy folk, who had just left him, and in crisp softly-splashing wavelets the eternal sea, like a tender mother with her sleeping child, rocked holy Saint Pancras of Evolo.
II
Father Atanasio could not explain satisfactorily to his own mind why Don Cesare had been able to work himself into such a violent rage against the poor Saint Pancras, and with every one whom he came across on the way home, and with every one whom he encountered during the day on the street, or in the wine-shop, he began the subject over again.
"I can understand very well," said the father, to his devoutly-attentive listeners--"I understand perfectly--that you, Don Ciccio, and you, Don Pasquale, and you, Don Geronimo, and many others, are angry in your hearts with our patron saint. You need rain, you need it as mankind needs air, and fishes water. That is to say, your fields need it, your lemon trees, figs, pomegranates, olives, and almond plantations. You are landed people, you cultivate your acres, and wet them with the sweat of your brows. But the sweat of your brows, ha-ha-ha! That is only a dewdrop or two, and won't answer instead of rain." Here the father laughed, and all the others laughed at their priest's joke.
"Well, then, if your patron forgets his duty, and neglects to send the rain"--