CHAPTER V
AS he spoke there came up from the town the roar of a brawling mob. Some were killed that night. . . . All night the sound came to me. The men of Mazzaleone herded home the fighting factions as day broke. By the next day the fire of revenge I had seen start in a ballroom had spread itself through the smallest quarters of the town. Each man saw how he might be revenged upon his enemy. There were few in Moglio who might not profit by the death of some one.
Changed was the temper of the town. They had been wallowing in life. Now from one day to another they were wallowing in the thought of death. Eye met eye questioningly, for each man hugged to his bosom the thought of old scores long due. In this temper they continued their rejoicing, and that pallid specter, assassination, rejoiced with them; and with assassination and revenge smirked along the love of gain, asking:
"If you must kill your man, why not kill him whose death will be most to your advantage?"
And in this day and the days which followed I had heard enough of such rumors to sicken me, until revenge for injuries to wipe off old hate seemed to me a clean passion. Then whisperings in corners began, while the braggadocio fellows openly showed their black ballots and talked of what they would do with them.
The people became quiet, but there was a tenseness to the whole town, like the drawing of a bow across strings taut to the breaking-point. As the fury of a crowd is worse than the fury of one man, so much more was San Moglio terrible, the whole of it aquiver with its desirous revenge, men and women locking within themselves some secret hate, until the sum of their hates made a whole so dark and sinister that it seemed to me my fair city had become a hell, and I cried out to Mazzaleone:
"What have you done to us?"
"I only set the men's feet keeping step to the time of Death," said he; "the tramping of many feet to one rhythm, or the beating of many hearts to one love or one hate, is more terrible or more beautiful than any other thing, Matteo."