The Italians | Page 8

central entrance--looking down upon them encouragingly. These beggars clink their metal boxes languidly, or sleep, lying flat on the stones. A group of women have jammed themselves into a corner between the cathedral and the hospital adjoining it on that side. They are waiting to see the company pass out. Two of them standing close together are talking eagerly.
"My gracious! who would have thought that old witch, the Guinigi," whispers Carlotta--Carlotta owned a little mercery-shop in a side-street running by the palace, right under the tower--to her gossip Brigitta, an occasional customer for cotton and buttons, "who would have thought that she--gracious! who would have thought she dared to shut up her palace the day of the festival? Did you see?"
"Yes, I did," answers Brigitta.
"Curses on her!" hisses out Carlotta, showing her black teeth. "Listen to me, she will have a great misfortune--mark my words--a great misfortune soon--the stingy old devil!"
Hearing the organ at that instant, Brigitta kneels on the stones, and crosses herself; then rises and looks at Carlotta. "St. Nicodemus will have his revenge, never fear."
Carlotta is still speaking. Brigitta shakes her head prophetically, again looking at Carlotta, whose deep-sunk eyes are fixed upon her.
"Checco says--Checco is a shoemaker, and he knows the daughter of the man who helps the butler in Casa Guinigi--Checco says she laughs at the Holy Countenance. Domine Dio! what an infamy!" cries Carlotta, in a cracked voice, raising her skinny hands and shaking them in the air. "I hate the Guinigi! I hate her! I spit on her, I curse her!"
There is such venom in Carlotta's looks and in Carlotta's words that Brigitta suddenly takes her eyes off a man with a red waistcoat whom she is ogling, but who by no means reciprocates her attention, and asks Carlotta sharply, "Why she hates the marchesa?"
"Listen," answers Carlotta, holding up her finger. "One day, as I came out of my little shop, _she_"--and Carlotta points with her thumb over her shoulder toward the street of San Simone and the Guinigi Palace--"she was driving along the street in her old Noah's Ark of a carriage. Alas! I am old and feeble, and the horses came along quickly. I had no time to get into the little square of San Barnabo, out of the way; the wheel struck me on the shoulder, I fell down. Yes, I fell down on the hard pavement, Brigitta." And Carlotta sways her grizzly head from side to side, and grasps the other's arm so tightly that Brigitta screams. "Brigitta, the marchesa saw me. She saw me lying there, but she never stopped nor turned her head. I lay on the stones, sick and very sore, till a neighbor, Antonio the carpenter, who works in the little square, a good lad, picked me up and carried me home."
As she speaks, Carlotta's eyes glitter like a serpent's. She shakes all over.
"Lord have mercy!" exclaims Brigitta, looking hard at her; "that was bad!" Carlotta was over eighty; her face was like tanned leather, her skin loose and shriveled; a handful of gray hair grew on the top of her head, and was twisted up with a silver pin. Brigitta was also of a goodly age, but younger than Carlotta, fat and portly, and round as a barrel. She was pitted by the small-pox, and had but one eye; but, being a widow, and well-to-do in the world, is not without certain pretensions. She wears a yellow petticoat and a jacket trimmed with black lace. In her hair, black and frizzly as a negro's, a rose is stuck on one side.--The hair had been dressed that morning by a barber, to whom she paid five francs a month for this adornment.--Some rows of dirty seed-pearl are fastened round her fat throat; long gold ear-rings bob in her ears, and in her hand is a bright paper fan, with which she never ceases fanning herself.
"She's never spent so much as a penny at my shop," Carlotta goes on to say. "Not a penny. She'd not spare a flask of wine to a beggar dying at her door. Stuck-up old devil! But she's ruined, ruined with lawsuits. Ruined, I say. Ha! ha! Her time will come."
Finding Carlotta wearisome, Brigitta's one eye has again wandered off to the man with the red waistcoat. Carlotta sees this, watching her out of her deep-set, glassy eyes. Speak Carlotta will, and Brigitta shall listen, she was determined.
"I could tell you things"--she lowers her voice and speaks into the other's ear--"things--horrors--about Casa Guinigi!"
Brigitta starts. "Gracious! You frighten me! What things?"
"Ah, things that would make your hair stand on end. It is I who say it," and Carlotta snaps her fingers and nods.
"You know things, Carlotta? You pretend to know what happens in Casa Guinigi? Nonsense! You are mad!"
"Am I?" retorts the