“In an hour or two he’ll be all right—heart complaint. The attacks come on when he has over-eaten himself a little....”
“But why does he not try to moderate himself?”
Sor Cosimo shrugged his shoulders.
“Does it often happen?” I inquired.
“Every day, poor uncle!” replied Signorina Olimpia. “Ah! it is indeed a great inconvenience!”
“And what does the doctor say?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Sor Cosimo. “Precisely!—you know him, that—that——” He had no epithet wherewith to qualify the doctor. “The doctor laughs.... I’ll tell you what he says—he laughs; and when I sent for him the second time, after one of these attacks, ... and when it was I who had got him his appointment, you understand? I got it for him! Well, he had the audacity to say to that poor fellow, ‘Chaplain, if I were you, I’d put a little water in it next time!’ There, do you understand now what the doctor says? But he has never set foot in my house since, and I hope.... Where are you going to give us coffee, Flavia, here, or in the garden?”
The matter being referred to me, I voted at once for the garden, eager to get a mouthful of fresh air, and all the more as it was a lovely day.... There was a ring at the gate bell, and Gostino having opened, I saw five persons advancing up the avenue—three priests and two laymen, all red in the face as turkey-cocks, and talking at the very top of their voices. Sor Cosimo took me by the arm, and drawing me forward, introduced me to the Provost of Siepole and his chaplain, then to the parish priest of the village, and lastly to the assessor Stelloni and the communal secretary.
The talk went on, chiefly on personal and local topics, beginning with the small-pox, which, according to Stelloni, was being “promulgated” in the neighbouring villages, and ending with Sor Cosimo’s fountain, which he regretted he could not turn on for our edification, as Don Paolo kept the key of the mechanism in his own chest of drawers.