"He doesn't want to send it!" cried one.
"Whether he doesn't want to, or whether he forgets it, that I don't know--I am not at liberty to discuss the question since you credit me with an evil-disposed jealousy toward the good old St. Pancras. Well, then, never mind that; I know what I know. But what was I going to say? Oh, yes, if you, being injured in your property through your patron saint's--let us say, carelessness--if you show him in your way--which--well--your way is--I don't know exactly what to call it."
"It's the way to deal with him," they shouted from every side. "We know him. Praying is no good unless we discipline him too. This isn't the first time. Fifty years ago our fathers had to do the same thing, and he had not been three days under water before it rained. It's his old heathenish obstinacy that must be broken now and then."
Father Atanasio turned right and left, behind, before, defending himself from the pelting of angry words, with hands and feet, his head wagging from side to side, hands and shoulders raised protestingly; after a while, when they let him speak once more, he was quite breathless, as if it were he who had been raging and shouting.
"Be peaceable, I beg," he gasped. "I know well that you understand this matter better than I. It is nothing to me. I only have to read mass in church before the blessed Madonna, and your Saint Pancras and his chapel do not belong to my parish. But this is not what I wanted to talk about. What I would say is: Don Cesare owns neither a tree nor a blade of grass. It is all one to him if it rains or shines. He is a ship-trader. What has he to do with rain? And yet it was Don Cesare who took the saint from his pedestal and carried him down to the rocks. He it was who slung the rope over the olive tree, and let Evolino down into the water. And Don Cesare is a wise man, the wisest of us--of you all. He knows what he does, and why he does it; and therefore I, Father Atanasio, say something is wrong--something is hidden that must be revealed."
In vain did the bystanders, charmed by Don Censure's heroic deed, seek to make the father understand that the little ship-trader had simply shared the feelings of his fellow tradesmen; that he had not acted from personal motives, and it was exactly this unselfishness which deserved to be admired and respected. All these explanations and assurances rebounded from the father's sceptical smile without effect.
"My dear friends," said the stout, smiling father, "I know you and all your kin. You were all hatched out of the same shell. Unselfishness? We will seek that elsewhere. When it comes into your heads to praise a fellow creature for his unselfishness it is because you somehow find it to your own advantage. And Don Cesare, above all others, is far too wise to be unselfish. He had his sufficient reasons for letting himself be compromised with Saint Pancras, like the rest of you. Yes, Don Ciccio, compromised you are, thoroughly, and if I were the Evolino, Santo Diav--that is, I would say. Holy Madonna--I know what I would do. However, that is not the question. I was talking of Don Cesare. He knows on which side his bread is buttered, and how to squeeze in time out of a tight place. He will set himself right with Saint Pancras, take care of his own interests, and leave you all sitting in the mire, never doubt it. Cesare Agresta, the clever trader, will look after his own advantage."
The padre was not far wrong, for Don Cesare was a stirring, driving, scheming little man; and as to the present question, it was certainly true that, in the morning, when he took the saint down from his pedestal and carried him, like a baby, out of the chapel, he had whispered lightly, quite lightly, so that no one else could hear: "Don't be angry, dear Pancrazio. What I do I must do. I will make it up to you." Certainly no one heard this, not even Father Atanasio, although he was standing close by, and looking on with silent, malicious delight, while they made life so hard for the Holy Madonna's hated rival; and still less was it observed by the bystanders, for the face which Don Cesare made didn't match his words at all, and whoever had seen him at that moment must have said to himself: "Poor St. Pancras! it's lucky you are made of wood; for if alive you were, alive you would never come out of the hands of this raving maniac, with the glaring eyes and bristling hair."
Quite another face, the most unconcerned face in the world, was that with which, toward evening of the same day, Don Cesare, in the gathering twilight, walked into the room where his sister sat sewing by the flickering, smoking tallow candle; and, with the most indifferent tone in the world, he said to the girl looking up at him with the most unconcerned as well as the handsomest and brightest of black eyes: "Close up the house with care, Carmela. I am going to Salvatore's, and shall not return till late."
At the door he turned and added: "And, Carmela, I may as well say, take care of your eyes, little Mouse; they are remarkably bright these days. And, you know, I would be well pleased with Nino, but he must take you before the altar. If he will not do that--tell him from me--then let him keep away from you, or it may be the worse for him. Good-night, little Mouse!"