Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/519

 . 31, 1863.] She is a Vanni, after all!” remonstrated the padrona, no little startled by the abruptness of the proposed measure, though her surprise did not avail to arrest the habitual plying of the spindle.

“The only question is, whether the time between the telling her and the sending her off is not too long, as it is,” said the priest. “I should have preferred letting her know nothing about it till Vanni called her to start with him for Fano!”

“But her things!” exclaimed the mistress of the house, whose housewifely notions of propriety were painfully shocked by the idea of having only forty-eight hours allowed her for preparation in that exclusively female department.

“Anything that is not ready can be sent after her. Do you not perceive,” continued the spiritual adviser, “that it is by no means desirable that there should be much opportunity for leave-taking and exchanging of promises, and vows, and tears, and all that sort of thing?”

“Oh, dear! I don’t think that Giulia would give in to anything of the kind. I don’t, indeed, your reverence! Bless your heart, if we had seen anything of that sort, we should have made short work of it before now, you may depend on it! Oh, no! Giulia is a sensible girl, and knows her place; though she does go off into a fit of tantrums now and again. Though I am his mother, I must say that the foolery has all been on Beppo’s part. But, there! we know what young men are! It was so in my time! And, though they do talk so much about the world being changed, I suppose it’s much as it was, in that matter.”

“Well! if you will take my advice, you will just keep an eye on them, as much as you can, for these two days, and don’t let them be together a bit more than you can possibly help.”

“I’ll take care, your reverence!”

“And, look here!” said the priest, as he rose from his seat on the chestnut log beside her, and turned to leave the loggia, you“you [sic] can send her up to the cura to lend Nunyiata a helping-hand. I’ll tell la Nunyiata to detain her all day; and that will help to keep her out of his way one day, at all events.”

“Yes, your reverence.”

“Good afternoon, Signora Vanni.”

“Good afternoon, and many thanks, your reverence.”

Breakfast, as a meal, is not known to Italian peasants, and is not a matter of much moment to the inhabitants of Italian cities. In the farm-houses, the usual practice is to eat at mid-day, and again when the day’s work is over in the evening. And there is very little difference, if any, between the two meals. La zuppa is the standing dish, generally the most important; and, in the poorer families, often the only dish at either meal. There is far less difference, however, between the more easily circumstanced and the poorer families of the contadino class, than is the case among our own rural population. The poorer are less hard pushed than are our own very poor; and the richer are more thrifty,—more niggardly, if the reader please,—and more given to saving, than our own people when in easy circumstances. A rich Italian countryman likes to make a show of his wealth; but it is only done on special and rare occasions and solemnities. The general staple of his life is fashioned on very much the same plan as that of his poorer neighbours.

The whole of the feast spread before the unexpected visitor at Bella Luce, the menu of which had been rehearsed by the mistress of the house with almost as much ostentation as that which struts in the written cartes of more aristocratic houses, had been, with the exception of the minestra, and probably the rashers, an improvised addition to the family repast. And at supper-time, the remnant of the frittata, and a fragment of the fowl, furnished an unusually luxurious second course after the never-failing zuppa or minestra; the difference between the two being, that the first is made with bread sopped (inzuppato) in broth, and the second always with some form of what is known in England as maccaroni, but which is more commonly called in all parts of Italy, save Naples, pasta. The latter is often, especially in the north of Italy, eaten with so large a proportion of the solid material, to so small a quantity of the liquid, as no longer to correspond with our idea of soup at all.

Giulia did not make her appearance again in the kitchen, till she came out from her hiding-place to prepare the evening meal. On any other occasion la Signora Vanni would probably have been after her before that time, to see that the spindle was duly twirling, and the ball of yarn on it duly swelling; though, to tell the truth, Giulia was not an idle girl, and generally got through the hank of flax on her distaff in as short a time as la sposa herself. But upon the present occasion, the mistress was not anxious for a meeting with Giulia; and the latter attributed the unusual prolongation of the privacy permitted to her to the dish of chat with the priest, which she knew Sunta was enjoying, and which she supposed was being prolonged during the whole afternoon.

When she came into the kitchen to perform her evening duty, la sposa was not there; and Giulia prepared the supper by herself.

The usual hour came; the sun was dipping his red disk behind exactly that bit of the crest of the Apennine, which he always touched every evening at the time when the vines were being pruned, and was flinging a great glowing patch on just that section of the far-off Adriatic, which was visible from the mouth of the Bella Luce valley; and Giulia, having completed her preparations for the evening meal, was standing at the door dreamily looking out at the slowly fading glory, when the farmer and his two sons came strolling slowly up from their light day’s work.

Reverie is generally accompanied by a graceful position and arrangement of the body and limbs. It is not advisable to practise reverie with a view to attaining this result, inasmuch as the intention would suffice to prevent the desired effect;—the cause of the fact being simply this, that reverie presupposes an absence of self-consciousness, and, therefore, ministers to grace exactly as an excess of self-consciousness mars it and insures awkwardness and affectation.