was Don Lertora!—every priest is a Don!—should call for me at daybreak on the following morning.
Nothing could be humbler than my fellow-traveller, except his pony; indeed, until I saw the quadruped, I believed the man to have reached the climax of all humility, but the beast beat him hollow. He was a skinny, starved, cow-hocked little creature, with a low shoulder, a heavy head, and a back-bone like a bow. As for the carriage, it was, I suspect, constructed by the priest’s own hands, and was something like a three-sided box on wheels; the feet of the travellers being supported by a matting, so very frail and worn withal, as to exclude all notion of resting any weight on it. My heart failed me as I beheld the equipage; but there was a gentle humility about the poor priest, as he apologised for all its shortcomings, which I could not bring myself to offend, and so, I gulped down all my forebodings, and took my place beside him.
It was a glorious morning of early autumn, and the sun had just gained the crest of the hills, the last spurs of the Apennines as they descend to the sea, when we set forth. The scene before us was a very fine one; for, although, the Magra is only a full river when swollen by rain and mountain torrents, the high grounds on either side, are eminently graceful in outline, and clad with all the wealth of vine and olive. The summit is invariably crowned with villages, picturesque in tower, or campanile, and the whole clothed in richest colouring, from the ensanguined brown of the copper beech to the mellow green of the chestnut, or the more sombre depth of the olive.
We had ample time, too, to enjoy it: our pace, I am sure I flatter when I call it four miles an hour; and, even this, accomplished by a continuous stream of coaxings, suggestings, and small flatteries, which so occupied the Don, as to make my conversation with him only possible in the intervals between his exhortations.
“Ha! Basilio, foot it lightly, fleet son of the mountains, show his Excellency,” meaning me, “the true blood of the Lusignano; shake your bells gaily, my son. Let the illustrissimo,” me again, “see that your father came from Aleppo.”
Such phrases as these were occasionally blended with little compliments on the beast’s discretion when he would come to a dead halt in front of some rural effigy of the Virgin, or some wayside shrine, not one of which the priest would pass without a prayer. These practices, I need scarcely observe, were sad impediments to anything like continuous conversation, since an appeal to his pony, or an entreaty to a saint, constantly interrupted some reply as to the name of a village or the age of a church.
If at moments I was angry with myself for selecting such a companion and such a mode of travel, I was quickly recalled to better thoughts by observing the submissive patience of the poor Padre under every difficulty, his untiring good temper, and his desire to please. In the little he said about himself, and his way of life, all bespoke contentment. His parishioners were such good folk; his village was so healthful; the figs that grew there were often sent to Parma; and the wine—it had no distinctive name, to be sure, but it only needed to be known to be sent to the cafés of Milan and Turin. Then they had a fruit fair and a cattle fair; at the latter he had bought Basilio—the name was enough to call forth a flood of endearing epithets, and make him utterly forgetful of all but the perfections he was recording.
I asked him about the late war in Lombardy, and its results; but he gave me to believe that he never followed the course of such events; none of his flock had fallen in battle, nor had the sound of a bugle startled one of the dwellers in his secluded village. He believed there had been hard fighting, though, and a neighbour—Jean Baptiste Somebody—had actually seen some wounded men, lying in a cart with straw in it, on the road to Modena. In like manner he professed not to know, nor speculate on, what might be the future fate of his country. “Speriamo!” (let us hope!) he’d say quietly to my sanguine anticipations—if wise men thought that all these troubles and convulsions were necessary, of course, it was right they should have them. He wasn’t wise; thank God for it! he was only a poor parish priest not called on to know such high themes, and he took the world as it was given to him. “Non è vero, Basilio mio?” Is it not true, Basil, my son? Basil, my first-born? Basil, my idol?
I felt half provoked at this apathy, and told him roundly that it was a sorry proof of a man’s patriotism not to take a deeper interest in his country’s fortunes, and that Basil, for aught I saw, was as worthy a citizen as himself; and he agreed with me; and, so far from feeling angry, continued to repeat to Basil for the next mile or so all the civil things his Excellency had been saying of him.
I questioned him on religion, education, agriculture, the taxes that he paid, the books he read, the people he lived with, but throughout all I could get nothing beyond a general trustfulness that everything was for the best, so far as he understood it; and where he did not, that he was sure it was the same there also, if he had only ingenuity enough to comprehend it—till at last I came to a stand-still, fairly worn out in my search for the subject he cared for, and almost as sick of myself as of him. Could all this fatalism—for it was fatalism—be one phase of that infidelity which I had so often heard imputed to the lower walks of the Romish priesthood?
Many had asserted that, as a class, they were men remarkable for erudition and attainments, eminently alive to the great changes going on around them, and shrewd observers of the stupendous convulsions which shook the old world of Europe. Was this man, then, one of them, and was all his assumed indifference only a crafty reserve in presence of the stranger? He had seen how I passed the various saintly effigies and images on the wayside without any reverential recognition—he knew, therefore, that I was a heretic—might not this fact have impressed him with caution? And was it not almost certain that his whole manner was a mask and a disguise? I looked at him steadfastly, and that sad pale face and drooping eyelid gave no corroboration to my suspicion.
