Little Novels of Italy | Page 6

he had been heard of. The superior at Verona did his best to spoil him by endearment, flattery, and indulgence; but this was difficult, since he had been spoilt already.
He passed down the Via Stella morning and evening for a week. Morning and evening his eyes encountered Vanna's. The third evening he smiled at her, the fourth morning he saluted her; the fifth evening he stopped and slipped in a gentle word; the first evening of the second week he stopped again, and that night, La Testolina being by, there was quite a little conversation.
La Testolina had black eyes, a trim figure, and a way of wriggling which showed these to advantage. Fra Battista's fame and the possibility of mischief set her flashing; she led the talk and found him apt: it was not difficult to aim every word that it should go through and leave a dart in Vanna's timid breast. The girl was so artless, you could see her quiver, or feel her, at every shot. For instance, was his sanctity very much fatigued by yesterday's sermon? Eh, la bella predica! What invocations of the saints, what heart-groping, what reachings after the better parts of women! It was some comfort to know that a woman had a better part at all--by the Saviour! for their handling by men gave no hint of it. Let Fra Beato--ah, pardon, Fra Battista she should have said--send some such arrows into men's hides! See them, for the gross-feeding, surly, spend-all, take-all knaves that they were! One or two she might name if she had a mind--ah! one or two in this very city of Verona, in this very Street of the Star, who--But there! Vanna must go and hear the Frate's next sermon, she must indeed. And if she could take her old curm-- Pshutt! What was she saying? How she ran on! She did indeed. Fra Battista, leaning against the lintel, kept his eyelids on the droop, seemed to find his toes of interest. But now and again he would look delicately up, and so sure as he did the brown eyes and the grey seemed to swim towards each other, to melt in a point, swirl in an eddy of the feelings, in which Vanna found herself drowning and found such death sweet. La Testolina still ran on, but now in a monologue. Fra Battista looked and longed, and Vanna looked again and thrilled. It grew quite dark; nothing of each other could they see and little know, until the friar put out his foot and found Vanna's. A tremor, beginning at her heart, ran down to her toes; Battista felt the flutter of it and was assured.
When he left her that night he kissed her cold hand, then La Testolina's, which he found by no means cold, and moved off leisurely towards the Piazza dell' Erbe. Neither woman spoke for a while: La Testolina was picking at her apron, Vanna sat quietly in the dark holding her heart. She was still in a tremble, so ridiculously moved that when her friend kissed her she burst out crying. La Testolina went nodding away; and the end of the episode may be predicted. Not at one but at many sermons of the tall Carmelite did Vanna sit rapt; not for one but for every dusk did he stoop to kiss her hand. All Verona saw her devotion,--all Verona, that is, but one old Veronese. The essence of comedy being that the spectators shall chuckle at actors in a fog, here was a comedy indeed.

III
THE SEED OF DISCORD
When Vanna announced her condition the neighbours looked slyly at each other; when her condition announced Vanna, they chattered; the gossip sank to whispering behind the hand as time went on, and ceased altogether when the baby was born. That was a signal for heads to shake. Some pitied the father, many defended the mother: it did not depend upon your sex; sides were taken freely and voices were shrill when neither was by. Down by the river especially, upon that bleached board below the bridge, ci and si whistled like the wind in the chimneys, and the hands of testimony were as the aspen leaves when storms are in. Some took one side, some another; but when, in due season, it was seen what inordinate pride Baldassare had in the black-eyed bambino there was no question of sides. He had ranked himself with the unforgivable party: the old man was an old fool, a gull whose power of swallow stirred disgust. Vanna had the rights of it, they said; such men were made to be tricked. As for Fra Battista's pulpit, it was thronged about with upturned faces; for those who had not been before went now to judge what they would have done