BEPPO, THE CONSCRIPT.
BY T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
CHAPTER III.—DOMESTIC POLITICS.
Paolo Vanni, to tell the plain truth at once, was not a happy man, very far from it. And the real cause of his discomfort was in fact that “warmness” which has been spoken of. Yet old Paolo was continually laying up treasure where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. The carefully kept account of the amounts that he had from time to time invested in this way, all duly paid over to heaven’s appointed stewards here below, and regularly acknowledged, showed really very considerable investments in that absolutely safe stock. Yet somehow or other the promised satisfaction of mind did not follow from the operation. Perhaps it was that he laid up still larger treasures in the storehouses where moth and rust do corrupt, and where thieves do break in and steal. But neither the moth nor the rust could much damage old Paolo Vanni’s treasure, for it consisted in hard silver dollars; and no thief had ever broken in or stolen from him as yet. It is true, however, that he did strive very pertinaciously to serve two masters. His spiritual guide assured him that this was not only possible, but very easy to be done; easy at least for him, who had the means to do it. For curiously enough, according to the teaching of Don Evandro Baluffi, the curato of Santa Lucia, the more successfully you served Mammon, the more satisfactorily you were enabled thereby to serve God. How was a man to found a perpetual mass, with music and tapers of the larger size—or even without these luxuries, for that matter,—if he had not paid sufficient court to Mammon to secure the means of paying for it?
Perhaps, however, it is all a matter of proportion. Perhaps Paolo Vanni did not insure highly enough, for he looked on the treasure laid up in purchasing masses and such like, in the light of money paid for insurance; not exactly against the moth, and the rust, or against thieves, but against certain other contingencies that he had somehow or other learned—assuredly not from Don Evandro!—to fancy might attend the possession of wealth.
Notwithstanding, however, the kind and constant encouragement of that judicious spiritual guide, philosopher, and friend, and the undeviating payment of this insurance money in many forms, poor old Paolo Vanni, despite his wealth, despite his thriving and prosperous farm, despite his hale and vigorous old age, was not contented or happy. I take it there must have been some importunate voice, though no one of those about him ever overheard it, which must have been constantly earwigging him with doubts and disagreeable suggestions, of a kind quite opposed to the consolatory assurances of the good Don Evandro. But surely this “voice,” whatever it was, could not have incarnated itself, or rather investmented itself, in a triangular beaver, snuffy black waistcoat, long-tailed surtout coat, shiny black camlet shorts, black worsted stockings, and thick, low-cut shoes, with big plated buckles on them! Surely it did not come out of any tonsured head on which the Episcopal hand had ever rested in ordination? Surely it was not the voice of any teacher duly appointed, authorised, and guaranteed by the Church; and therefore ought not to have been listened to for a moment in opposition to Don Evandro, who spoke with all the authority that these things could impart? Nevertheless so it was, that old Paolo Vanni, though his sixty odd years sate as lightly on him as sixty years could well sit, though his six feet of height was still a good six feet, undiminished by droop or stoop; and though he could not be said to have been what is usually phrased “unhappy in his family,” was a discontented and querulous old man.
There were, however, other causes besides the presence of that importunate voice which I have conjectured might have annoyed him, causes connected with the Bella Luce family politics, which no doubt contributed to this result.
With Assunta Vanni, his old wife, he certainly had no cause to be discontented. Assunta, the sister of a farmer holding a much poorer farm than that of Bella Luce, higher up and further back among the hills, had been a beauty, very tall like her husband, who had also been a remarkably handsome man. This, however, is of less account in a country where beauty, especially of figure and person, is the rule rather than the exception, than it might be considered elsewhere. Santa had been a good wife, an excellent helpmeet, a thrifty housewife, and had borne her husband two children, both boys. What could a wife do more to merit the admiration of a Romagnole farmer husband? Moreover, Sunta had the highest possible reverence for her lord and master, and looked on his will as law beyond appeal. If ever they had any difference of opinion, it was that whereas Paolo always wished to retain the savings of the year in the shape of hard cash—scudi sonanti,[1] as the expressive popular Italian phrase has it,—Sunta would fain have hoarded them in the shape of additions to her already uselessly abundant store of house-linen. The difference had years ago been arranged on the understanding that all that could be made or saved by the assiduous labour of the females of the family in turning flax into yarn, should go to increase the store in Signora Vanni’s presses; always on the understanding—a point which had given rise to a slight contest, in which Paolo had been easily- ↑ Sounding crowns.
