for anything—a mere wisp! The mountain men said that she was as beautifully made as any lady of the cities. The town women said that her waist was thick and clumsy. The town men, when they saw her, thought slender waists a mistake. Phidias would have said that she was the incarnation of his beau ideal.
In short, no lovelier nut-brown maid ever stepped a hillside than Giulia Vanni, as she was at eighteen years of age! That warning nose might hang out what signals it pleased, and that host of laughing devils in her eyes might mockingly bid you take care, every time your glance met hers;—it was all in vain! The male creature under thirty that looked on Giulia Vanni fell in love with her! And how well she knew her power! And how she enjoyed her royalty! And what pleasant fun she found it to scatter her fire-darts around, herself scatheless and invulnerable the while, the cruel Diana that she was!
But if it was impossible to look on the brilliant, flashing, dangerous creature for an instant without receiving a wound from her eyes, what must have been the lot of poor Beppo Vanni, the eldest of Sunta’s two sons! Poor Beppo, who had to live in the same house with her, to grow up with her, to share his work with her, to play with her, and laugh with her, to have little household secrets with her, to be her slave and work for wages in smiles not unpunctually paid—what could become of him? What, but to worship the very ground she trod on, and look to the hope of winning her as the lode-star of his life!
Winning her, quotha!—a pretty winning, old Paolo and old Santa considered it! Winning a wife without so much as a pearl necklace to begin the world with! And he, Beppo Vanni, heir to the lease of Bella Luce and—nobody knew, not even dame Sunta—how many thousands of scudi besides. Not if they knew it! The sly puss might see what she could win for herself; but it would not be Beppo Vanni—no, nor even Carlo Vanni, his younger brother.
And thus it appears what else there was, besides those suspected small-voiced importunities which have been hinted at, to make old Paolo Vanni querulous and discontented. Besides, it was not only that his son and heir was bent on making a fool of himself by marrying a girl without a bajocco; but he would not make a match which his father was very anxious to secure for him. Don Evandro, like a true friend of the family, had proposed the thing in the first instance, and would doubtless have managed the whole affair with that tact and success which the Italian clergy are so remarkable for in such matters, if only Beppo would have been reasonable. But to his father’s intense annoyance, he would not; having been bewitched and rendered wholly unreasonable by the “laughing devils” in Giulia’s eyes. Don Evandro had tried to exorcise them once, summoning Giulia to an interview in the sacristy for that purpose. But it was clear from the result that he did not succeed; and he never tried a second time!
To Beppo himself it was really a question—could he win her? And a very dubious question too. It was not that he was not perfectly well aware of the advantages of his social position. He knew all that was due to the presumed future tenant of Bella Luce. He knew that his father was the richest man in the parish of Santa Lucia, and in the neighbouring parishes around it (putting the owners of the soil who lived in the cities, and of whom the cultivators of the soil saw little, out of the question; as of course they were out of the question); he knew that he was presumably his father’s heir; and he was quite as well aware as any Romagnole peasant, of the value of money and the social position it commands—which is equivalent to saying, he was as well aware as anybody in the world. But for all that, it was an anxious question with him—could he hope to win her? He knew that she had absolutely nothing; that she was maintained by his father’s charity; and for all that it was with him a very anxious question, whether he could win Giulia Vanni for his wife or no.
And Giulia herself? What was her view of the matter? Her public conduct in the little world of Bella Luce, and her private feeling? Well, the last perhaps is hardly a fair question. Perhaps Giulia would herself scarcely have been able to answer it consistently and entirely, even if her own heart were the asker. I suspect that her own heart never had categorically asked of her that question up to the time in question. Of course the writer has a means of forming some notion as to the real state of her feelings at that period—a clearer one perhaps than she could have formed herself—because he has the knowledge of her subsequent conduct to guide him to an appreciation of them. And it will probably be best to let the reader arrive at a knowledge of the secrets of her inmost heart in the same manner. As to her visible behaviour in the little Bella Luce world, little, it must be admitted, can be said in defence of it, beyond what Beppo always said, appearing to consider that it was an abundantly ample answer to all possible fault-finding.
“But she is so beautiful!” he would say; “she is so beautiful!”
So she was! But that did not justify her in wearing an honest man’s heart to fiddle-strings! spoiling his rest, destroying his appetite for supper, and keeping him awake o’ nights. And really if it had been the settled purpose of her life to do all these cruel things, she could not have set about it in a more workwoman-like manner. Did you ever observe a kitten rub its nose and cheek against a person’s hand, purring in the most insinuatingly flattering manner all the while, and then start away with a sudden bound, rush under a neighbouring chair, and then put up its little back and spit? Well, this was exactly the type of Giulia’s manner to Beppo! There was never anything of tenderness,—no symptom of love,—such love as Beppo wanted,—to be detected in her manner, in her looks, in the tone of her voice. But she would be so good, so kind, so frankly affectionate, that he would be tempted either by eye or voice to some manifestation of the passion that was consuming him. No sooner had he done so than she was off like a startled fawn, and either avoided him, or was cross to him for the rest of the day.
There was one sign only that might perhaps