Little Novels of Italy

Novels of Italy, by Maurice
Henry Hewlett

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Title: Little Novels of Italy Madonna Of The Peach-Tree, Ippolita In
The Hills, The Duchess Of Nona, Messer Cino And The Live Coal,
The Judgment Of Borso
Author: Maurice Henry Hewlett
Release Date: March 29, 2007 [EBook #20929]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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NOVELS OF ITALY ***

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LITTLE NOVELS OF ITALY

BY
MAURICE HEWLETT
AUTHOR OF "THE FOREST LOVERS," "PAN AND THE YOUNG
SHEPHERD," "EARTHWORK OUT OF TUSCANY," ETC.
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON:
MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1899
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT, 1899, By MAURICE HEWLETT.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass.
U.S.A.
TO
HIS FRIEND
AND
ITALY'S
MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH BONUS, R.E.
THE AUTHOR DEDICATES HIS BOOK

CONTENTS
PAGE MADONNA OF THE PEACH-TREE 1
IPPOLITA IN THE HILLS 67
THE DUCHESS OF NONA 137
MESSER CINO AND THE LIVE COAL 225

THE JUDGMENT OF BORSO 254

LITTLE NOVELS OF ITALY

MADONNA OF THE PEACH-TREE

I
VANNA IS BID FOR
Not easily would you have found a girl more winning in a tender sort
than Giovanna Scarpa of Verona at one and twenty, fair-haired and
flushed, delicately shaped, tall and pliant, as she then was. She had to
suffer her hours of ill report, but passes for near a saint now, in
consequence of certain miracles and theophanies done on her account,
which it is my business to declare; before those she was considered (if
at all) as a girl who would certainly have been married three years ago
if dowries had not been of moment in the matter. In a city of maids as
pretty as they are modest--which no one will deny Verona to be--there
may have been some whose charms in either kind were equal to hers,
while their estate was better in accord; but the speculation is idle.
Giovanna, flower in the face as she was, fit to be nosegay on any hearth,
posy for any man's breast, sprang in a very lowly soil. Like a
blossoming reed she shot up to her inches by Adige, and one forgot the
muddy bed wondering at the slim grace of the shaft with its crown of
yellow atop. Her hair waved about her like a flag; she should have been
planted in a castle; instead, Giovanna the stately calm, with her
billowing line, staid lips, and candid grey eyes, was to be seen on her
knees by the green water most days of the week. Bare-armed, splashed
to the neck, bare-headed, out-at-heels, she rinsed and pommelled,
wrung and dipped again, laughed, chattered, flung her hair to the wind,
her sweat to the water, in line with a dozen other women below the
Ponte Navi; and if no one thought any the worse of her, none,
unhappily, thought any the better--at least in the way of marriage. It is

probable that no one thought of her at all. Giovanna was a beauty and a
very good girl; but she was a washerwoman for all that, whose toil fed
seven mouths.
Her father was Don Urbano, curate of Santa Toscana across the water.
This may very easily sound worse than it is. In Don Urbano's day,
though a priest might not marry, he might have a wife--a faithful,
diligent companion, that is--to seethe his polenta, air his linen, and rear
his children. The Church winked at her, and so continued until the
Jesuits came to teach that winking was unbecoming. But when Can
Grande II. lorded in Verona the Jesuits did not, and Don Urbano, good,
easy man, cared not who winked at his wife. She gave him six children
before she died of the seventh, of whom the eldest was Giovanna, and
the others, in an orderly chain diminishing punctually by a year, ran
down to Ferrantino, a tattered, shock-headed rascal of more inches than
grace. Last of all the good drudge, who had borne these and many other
burdens for her master, died also. Don Urbano was never tired of
saying how providential it was that she had held off her demise until
Giovanna was old enough to take her place. The curate was fat and lazy,
very much interested in himself; his stipend barely paid his shot at the
"Fiore del Marinajo," under whose green bush he was mostly to be