"Well, it's just this; they've cheated us. That is not good linen, and the ribbon is spotted. Oh! it is too much."

"Upon my soul!" said the maid, mimicking Aunt Bachissia's voice and accent, and grating away vigorously on the cheese.

Aunt Porredda thereupon let out upon her all the vials of wrath she would fain have emptied upon her guests, calling her by all the names which, in her secret heart, she was applying to Giovanna--"shameless,"

"vile," "ungrateful," "despicable," and so on, and threatening to strike her over the head with the ladle. In her terror, the girl grated the skin off one finger, and she was in the act of displaying it with the blood streaming down when the lawyer-son limped briskly into the room.

He was enveloped in a long, black overcoat, so full that it looked like a cloak with sleeves. His smooth, fresh-coloured little face beamed with the self-satisfied expression of a nursing child. Asking immediately what there was to eat, he dropped into a seat beside Aunt Bachissia, and sat there chatting until supper was ready. After him the little Minnia came running in, rosy, breathless, and dishevelled, and threw herself down by the servant-maid. The boy had died three years earlier. The little girl's dress, of black and red flannel, was pretty enough, but her shoes were torn and her hands dirty. She had spent the entire day tearing around in a neighbouring truck-garden, and began to pour out confidences to the servant in an eager undertone.

"Upon my soul!" repeated the servant, in the same tone as before.

Next Uncle Efes Maria's big face, with its thick, wide-open lips, appeared in the door, wanting to know why they could not have supper right away.

The dining-room was now furnished with two tall, shining cupboards of varnished wood, and the whole apartment had quite an air of elegance--strips of carpet on the stone floor, a stove, and so on. Poor Aunt Porredda, with her big feet and hobnailed shoes, never felt really at home there; while Uncle Efes Maria had not yet cured himself of the habit of staring proudly around him. Grazia, tall and elegant, always withdrew into herself when her relations came into this room, where she pa.s.sed most of her time eagerly devouring the _Unique Mode_, the _Pet.i.te Parisienne_, and the fashion articles of a family journal,--sufficiently immoral in its tone, since it fomented such unhealthy dreams in her foolish head. Ah, those low-cut gowns, covered with embroidery; those scarfs worked in gold; those bodices with their great wings of silver lace, the rainbow hues, the spangles glittering like frost! Ah, those hats covered with artificial fruits, and the long flower boas, and petticoats trimmed with lace at thirty lire a yard, and the painted gloves, and fans made of human skin! How beautiful it all was,--horribly, terrifyingly beautiful! Merely to read about these things gave her a sort of spasm, they were so beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful. And afterwards, how ugly and common and flat everything seemed,--the simple old grandmother, with her fat, wrinkled face; and the dull grandfather, gazing about him with such ignorant satisfaction and pride! It was all simply stultifying.

Just as on that other, far-away evening, Aunt Porredda came in, bearing triumphantly the steaming dish of macaroni, and all the members of the party seated themselves around the table. Aunt Bachissia, finding herself in the shadow, so to speak, of Grazia's wings, forthwith broke anew into loud exclamations of wonder and admiration, this time _a propos_ of those glorious objects:

"No, we have never seen anything like that in our neighbourhood, but then, we have no ladies there. Here they all look like angels, the ladies."

"Or bats," said Uncle Efes Maria. "Eh, it's the fashion, my dears. Why, I remember when I was a child the ladies were all big and round; they looked like cupolas. There hardly were any ladies in those days,--the Superintendent's wife, the family----"

"And then that thing behind," interrupted Aunt Porredda. "Oh! I remember that, it looked like a saddle. Well, if you'll believe me, upon my word and honour, I remember one time some one sat down on one of them."

"The last time we were here," said Aunt Bachissia, "those wings were little things; now they are growing, growing."

Grazia sat eating her supper as though she did not hear a word of what the others were saying. The "Doctor" eat his too--like a gristmill--staring at his niece all the while with the look of a pleased child. "Growing, growing," said he. "The next thing we know they'll all take flight."

Grazia shrugged her shoulders, or rather her wings, and neither spoke nor looked up. She frequently found her uncle,--that hero of her first, young dream,--very trying, and worse than trying--foolish! It was the common talk of the town that the uncle and niece were going to marry, and he, when interrogated on the subject, would answer neither yes nor no.

The conversation continued for some time on impersonal topics. Every now and then Aunt Porredda would get up and pa.s.s in and out of the room, and occasionally the talk would die away, and long pauses ensue that were almost embarra.s.sing. Like that _other time_ every one instinctively avoided the subject uppermost in the minds of the guests; who, on the whole, were just as well pleased to have it so. But, just as before, it was Aunt Bachissia, this time without intending to, who introduced the unwelcome topic. She asked if the report that the "Doctor" was to marry his niece were true or no.

The Porrus looked at one another, and Grazia, bending her head still lower over her plate, laughed softly to herself.

Paolo glanced at the girl, and, with an irony that seemed a little forced, replied:

"Eh, no! She is going to marry the Very Right Honourable Sub-Prefect!"

Grazia raised her head with a sudden movement and opened her lips, then as quickly lowered it, the blood meanwhile rushing up to her forehead.

"Oh! he's old," said Minnia. "I know him; he's always walking about the station. Ugh! he has a long, red beard, and a high hat."

"A high hat too?"

"Yes, a high hat--a widower."

"The high hat is a widower?"

"You shut up!" said the child sharply, turning on her sister.

"No, I'm not going to shut up. He's a Freemason; he won't have his children baptised, or be married in church. That's the way of it; he'll not marry in church."

"The young lady is well informed," said Uncle Efes Maria, polished as usual.

Thereupon Aunt Porredda, who had almost shrieked aloud at the word "Freemason," waved both arms in the air, and burst out:

"Yes, a Freemason! One of those people who pray to the devil. Upon my word, I believe my granddaughter there would just as leave have him! We are all on the road to perdition here, and why not? There's Grazia, forever reading bad books, and those infernal papers, till now she doesn't want to go to confession any more! Ah, those prohibited books! I lie awake all night thinking of them. But now, this is what I want to say: Grazia reads bad books; Paolo,--you see him, that one over there, Doctor Pededdu,--well, he studied on the Continent where they don't believe in G.o.d any more; now that's all right, at least, it isn't, it's all wrong, but you can understand a little why those two poor creatures have stopped believing in G.o.d. But the rest of us, who don't know anything about books and who have never in our lives ridden on a rail-road,--that devil's horse,--why should _we_ cease to believe in G.o.d, in our kind Saviour, who died for us on the cross? Why? why? tell me why. You there, Giovanna Era, tell me why you should be willing to marry a man by civil ceremony when you already have a husband living?"

The final clause of Aunt Porredda's oration fell with startling effect upon her audience. Grazia, who, with a smile upon her lips, had been busily engaged in rolling pieces of bread into little pellets, raised her head quickly, and the smile died away; Paolo, who, likewise smiling, had been fitting the blade of a knife in and out of the p.r.o.ngs of his fork, straightened himself with a brusque movement; and Uncle Efes Maria turned his dull, round face towards Giovanna, and fixed her with an impa.s.sive stare.

Giovanna herself, the object of this wholly unlooked-for attack, though she flushed crimson, replied with cynical indifference:

"I haven't any husband, my dear Aunt Porredda. Ask your son over there."

"My son!" exclaimed the other angrily. "I have no son. He's a child of the devil!"

It almost seemed as though Giovanna had succeeded in throwing the responsibility of her act upon Paolo, because he had won her case for her!

Every one laughed at Aunt Porredda's outbreak, even Minnia, and the servant who entered the room at that moment, carrying the cheese.

Notwithstanding her wrath, Aunt Porredda took the dish and handed it politely to her guests.

"Upon my soul," said Aunt Bachissia, carefully cutting herself a slice, and speaking in a tone of gentle melancholy, "you are as good as gold, there is no doubt about that, but--you live at your ease, you have a house like a church, and a husband like a strong tower [Uncle Efes Maria coughed], and you have a circle of stars about you--motioning towards them--so it is easy enough to talk like that. Ah! if you knew once what it meant to be in want, and to look forward to having to beg your bread in your old age! Do you understand? In your old age!"

"Bravo!" cried Paolo. "But I would like to have a clean knife."

"What difference does that make, Bachissia Era?" answered Aunt Porredda.

"You are afraid to trust in Divine Providence, and that means that you have lost your faith in G.o.d! How do you know whether you will be poor or rich when you are old? Is not Costantino Ledda coming back some day?"

"Yes, to be a beggar too," said Aunt Bachissia coldly.

"And G.o.d alone knows whether he ever will come back," observed the young lawyer brutally, taking the knife which the servant held out to him, blade foremost.

They had all heard that Costantino was ill, and there was a report that his lungs were affected.

In order to appear agitated,--and possibly she really was so to some extent,--Giovanna now hid her face in her hands and said brokenly:

"Besides--if it is only to be a civil ceremony--it is--it is because----" Then she stopped.

"Well, why don't you go on?" cried Paolo. "You are to be married by civil ceremony because the priests won't give you any other! They don't understand, and they never will understand; just as you will never understand, Mamma Porredda. What is marriage, after all? It is a contract made between men, and binding only in the sight of men. The religious ceremony really means nothing at all----"

"It is a sacrament!" cried Aunt Porredda, beside herself.

"Means nothing at all," continued Paolo. "Just as some day the civil ceremony will mean nothing at all. Men and women should be at liberty to enter spontaneously into unions with one another and to dissolve them when they cease to be in harmony. The man----"

"Ah, you are no better than a beast!" exclaimed Aunt Porredda, though it was, in fact, not the first time that she had heard her son express these views. "It is the end of the world. G.o.d has grown weary; and who can wonder? He is punishing us; this is the deluge. I have heard that there have been terrible earthquakes already!"

"There have always been earthquakes," observed Uncle Efes Maria, who did not know whether to side with his wife or his son. Probably, in the bottom of his heart his sympathies were with the former, but he did not want to say so openly for fear of being looked down upon by the gifted Paolo.

The latter made no reply. Already he regretted having said so much, being too truly attached to his mother to wish to give her needless pain. Giovanna now took her hands from her face, and spoke in a tone of gentle humility:

"Listen," said she. "When I was married before--_to that unfortunate_--I had only the civil ceremony, and if he had not been arrested, who knows when we ever would have had the religious marriage! And yet, were we not just as much man and wife? No one ever said a word, and G.o.d, who knows all, was not offended----"