emigration, and angry groups began to collect around the police-office, and the ugly commissioner was hissed and hustled “when he took his walks abroad,” and grew uneasy in his small mind. So the next morning he re-appeared in a very conciliatory and deferential mood, saying he had merely called as a friend to request C to go quietly to Turin, so as not to create a scandalo. C, however, replied that the scandalo was not of his making, and repeated, that unless he were dragged to Turin by force, he would not stir a step. An hour after there came a polite message from the Questore, who would be obliged if C would “favour” him with a call. The Questore was meek and amiable this time, and asked where we wanted to go. C replied, “wherever we liked;” and on his adding that we intended to start that night for the Val, the Questore politely handed him a carta di permanenza buona per la Val, and we departed with flying colours, having triumphe dover these bullies. I should tell you, however, that the Governor of Brescia sent a Segrettissima circular to the Sindaco of the first town we stayed at, desiring him to watch over all our doings, and contrive to find out, through our correspondence, what we did, and with whom we were in communication, as we were “personal friends of Mazzini.” The Sindaco, being an honest man, was disgusted: he sent a message to the governor that he was not accustomed to play the spy, and then despatched the Segrettissima circular to us, to warn us what we might expect in other places with less conscientious officials than himself.
But enough of the paltry doings of these paltry souls. We left them behind that night, and after visiting the lovely Lago d’Idro, we came here, to this queer village of B, on the Lake of Garda. As we arrived in our friend’s open carriage with two horses, we produced a prodigious excitement in the place. The population did their very best to immolate themselves before the Juggernaut in which we travelled; and even the most aged women and smallest babies followed in the wondering procession that accompanied us to the door of a friend of C’s, by whom we were “to be taken in and done for” while we looked about for a local habitation. Our friend, Signor Cu, told us that this would be a very difficult thing to find, unless indeed we could persuade the proprietor of a dilapidated palace formerly belonging to the great G family, to allow us to fit up two or three rooms therein. This palace was, they told us, uninhabited—that is to say, non v’era che il Sordo (there was no one in it but the deaf man), who appeared to be considered of no more importance than if he had been one of the numerous bats we disturbed on our first entry. Having obtained the proprietor’s permission to inhabit any of the rooms we chose, I confess to a moment of blank despair when first the shutters were opened and the blinding sunlight produced a rush among whole armies of bats, scorpions, beetles, and spiders. After seeing the whole palace, the only three rooms in which it appeared to me possible, even by dint of scrubbing and whitewashing, ever to encamp, were precisely those inhabited by il Sordo. Oh! that was of no consequence: the Sordo should be told to turn out, and fix himself in another wing. In spite of my protestations at this singular and somewhat unjust proposal, Madame Cu, who alone in all B appears to have the privilege of making the Sordo hear, descended at once into a gloomy kitchen where he was supposed to be cooking his humble dinner of polenta, and while she was gone her husband explained to us the mystery of the poor Sordo’s presence here.
It appears that this Casa G passed from the possession of the G family into the hands of a rich family named B, to whom it had belonged for upwards of a hundred years; and, indeed, there is a plate in the wall commemorating the restoration of the house by one F. B., in the year 1736.
The B family were very rich and very pious, and there is still a chapel in the house wherein mass was said every day when the Sordo, who is the last of the Bs, was a boy. But the family fell into trouble, and, like Dogberry, “had losses;” yet, though they sank lower and lower, the last relic of their grandeur, the daily mass in their own chapel, was still celebrated, even when they had to dine on bare polenta, like the peasants round them, in order to pay the priests. Finally, the Sordo’s mother was compelled to sell the house and its lemon-garden to a wealthy parvenu relation, as fat and vulgar as a parvenu relation, under such circumstances, is bound, for the credit of the story, to be. And what did that foolish mother do with the money thus obtained but leave it all, except mille zwanzigers (about £35), to a daughter who had married a rich man and did not want it? The mother even seems, like everyone else, to have considered that her son was “only il Sordo;” and so mille zwanzigers were his portion, and on the interest of that noble sum he contrives to exist. No wonder he cooks his own wretched dinner alone in the dark kitchen of the mansion where he was born, and where, on sufferance, he is allowed to remain until his rich relation, who is now pulling down and improving the out-buildings, shall want to do the same with the house itself. It cannot be a cheerful sight to him to see F, the fat proprietor, lording it over the masons and workmen who are knocking the place about his deaf ears, poor soul!
We had scarcely heard this mournful little story when Madame Cu reappeared, accompanied by the very leanest specimen of a Sordo I ever beheld, dressed in a suit of such very threadbare black, and of so very antique a cut, with so short a waist to his coat, and such very tight trousers over his long thin legs, that he looked as if one of a larger species than usual of the spider tribe had been brushed down from the walls. Nevertheless, he took off his hat with the air of a gentleman, and stood bending down his grey head in a polite manner, while Madame Cu screamed forth the agreeable information that he was to take up his bed and walk into a still more decayed wing of the house. I could not help declaring that I would not consent to this, and on my protest being screamed into his ear, he made me a grateful bow, but declared that all the
