Little Novels of Italy | Page 4

poor pedlar, by his faith! At this he
spread out his arms and dropped them with a flop upon his knees. The
priest sat back in his chair and cast appealing looks at the rafters; the
company chuckled, nudged each other, guffawed. Baldassare was made
to feel that he had over-coloured his case. True, he admitted, he had a
roof over his head, shared fortune with the rats in that. But look at the
thing reasonably, comrades. Vanna would make another to keep; a girl
of her inches must be an eater, body of a dog! Had his reverence
thought of that? His reverence made a supreme effort, held up one
pudgy forefinger, and with the other marked off two joints of it. "Of
mortadella so much," he said; "of polenta so much"--and he shut one

fist; "of pasta so much"--and he coupled the two fists; "and of wine, by
the soul of the world, not enough to drown a flea! I tell you,
Baldassare," he said finally, emboldened by the merchant's growing
doubt--"I tell you that you ask of me a treasure which I would not part
with for a cardinal's hat. No indeed! Not to be Bishop of Verona,
throned and purfled on Can Grande's right hand, will I consent to traffic
my Vanna. Eh, sangue di Sangue, because I am a man of the Church
must I cease to be a man of bowels, to have a yearning, a tender spot
here?" He prodded his cushioned ribs. "Go you, Ser Baldassare
Dardicozzo," he cried, rising grandly in his chair--"go you; you have
mistaken your man. The father stands up superb in the curate's cassock,
and points the door to the chafferer of virgins!"
The tavern-room, on Don Urbano's side to a man, beat the tables with
their glasses; Baldassare had to surrender at discretion. The bargain,
finally struck, was written out by an obliging notary on the
scoring-slate. In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity it was
declared to all men living and to be born, that Baldassare Dardicozzo,
merchant of Verona, was obliged to pay to the reverend father in God,
Urbano, curate of Santa Toscana in the Borgo San Giorgio, the sum of
sixty florins Veronese and two barrels of wine of Val Pulicella, under
condition that if within thirty days from those presents he did not lead
in marriage Giovanna, daughter of the said reverend, he should be
bound to pay the sum of one hundred and twenty florins Veronese, and
four barrels of wine of Val Pulicella.
The notary executed a monstrous flourish at the bottom--a foliated
cross rising out of steps. On the last step he wrote his own name,
Bartolo de Thomasinis; and then Baldassare, smiling as he should, but
feeling as he should not, stuck his seal upon the swimming wax, and
made a cross with the stile like the foundations of a spider's web.
The affair was thus concluded; before the thirty days were up Vanna
was taken to church by her father, and taken from it by her new master.
Within a week she appeared at the doorway of Baldassare's little shop,
very pretty, very sedate, quite the housewife--to sit there sewing and
singing to herself from grey dawn to grey dusk.

II
TERTIUM QUID
A year passed, two years passed. Vanna was three and twenty, no more
round but no less blooming in face and figure; still a reedy,
golden-haired girl. But Baldassare was fifty-seven, and there was no
sign of issue. The neighbours, who had nudged each other at one
season, whose heads had wagged as their winks flew about, now
accepted the sterile mating as of the order of things. Pretty Vanna,
mother as she had been to her brothers and sisters, was to be a mother
no more. There was talk of May and December. Baldassare was
advised to lock up other treasure beside his florins; some, indeed, of the
opposite camp gave hints none too honest to the forlorn young wife.
The Piazza Sant' Anastasia at the falling-in of the day, for instance.
Thus they put it. All girls--and what else was Vanna, a wife in
name?--walked there arm in arm. Others walked there also, she must
know. By-and-by some pretty lad, an archer, perhaps, from the palace,
some roistering blade of a gentleman's lackey, a friar or twinkling
monk out for a frolic, came along with an "Eh, la bellina!" and then
there was another arm at work. So, for one, whispered La Testolina,
dipping a head full of confidence and mystery close to Vanna's as the
girl sat working out the summer twilight. The Via Stella was narrow
and gloomy. The tall houses nearly met in that close way. Looking up
you saw the two jagged edges of the eaves, like