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 12, 1863.]

little passed that day between Beppo and his father and brother. Had they been townsmen instead of peasants, and, specially, had they been Tuscan townsmen, the tidings which Beppo brought home would have formed subject for endless talk at every spare minute during the day;—(the tidings respecting the conscription, that is to say; of course the other load at his heart had to lie there, and be borne in silence as best it might;)—but PaoliPaolo [sic] Vanni and his sons were contadini and Romagnoles; and but few words were said. Beppo briefly told them, as they went to their work, that the worst fears of the country were to be realised; that the conscription was certainly to take place that year, and that a day for the drawing would be named shortly after the completion of the communal lists.

At dinner-time the same information was given in similarly concise words to the poor mother, who manifested but little more emotion outwardly than the male members of the family had done; but she rose early next morning, and privately taking from the secret hoard of the produce of her yarn, the price of two fair wax tapers of half-a-pound each, she stole off to the village, and, having bought what she needed, set them up alight before the altar of the Blessed Virgin of the Seven Sorrows, with an earnestly breathed prayer that the holy Mother would deign, in consideration of that humble offering, to preserve a mother’s son to her. True, all the other mothers in the parish would, in all probability, do the like. But it was not probable that any one of them would go to the expense of tapers of half-a-pound each. It was to be presumed, therefore, that the prayer so backed would be effectual. Nevertheless, poor Sunta, in her anxiety, turned back when she had gone a few steps from the church, and again kneeling before the figure with the seven daggers, stuck in artistic grouping through the satin of her stiffly brocaded, pyramidal-shaped robe, she promised two more tapers of equal size in case of a favourable result.

Poor mother! If earnestness could avail to make her prayer heard, it must have had its effect.

And so the day passed sombrely enough among the inhabitants of Bella Luce. The days had passed more sombrely there, even to old Paolo himself, since Giulia had left the farm. But that black Monday, after Beppo’s return from the city, was more so than ordinary.

In the evening, a little before supper-time, came Don Evandro. The priest was always a welcome guest at Bella Luce, for he knew how to make himself agreeable, with the tact so specially the gift of the Roman Catholic clergy, both to the farmer and to his wife. And the frequent presence of the priest at their table conferred a tone and style in the estimation of the Santa Lucia beau-monde that nothing else could have compensated for. Many of the parish clergy in the poorer and remoter districts of Italy are glad enough to give the consideration bestowed by their presence in return for the hospitality afforded them. But this was not Don Evandro’s object. He was too well off, though far from being a rich man, to need a meal; and he had always some ulterior object in view. Power was what he wanted, and the means of leading his parish whithersoever he chose that it should go.

He was perfectly aware of Beppo’s journey to Fano,—had in some degree prepared for it beforehand; and the object of his present visit to Bella Luce was to shape and confirm the impressions which he pretty shrewdly guessed the young man had brought back with him.

“I suppose, Signor Beppo, you brought home with you full information respecting this detestable and abominable conscription.”

“Yes, your reverence. It seems that it is all determined on,” said Beppo, in a weary and dispirited manner.

“And that is what the godless, usurping government and the infidel revolutionists call liberty! Liberty!—the forcible tearing of the flower of the population from their homes and their families! Man-stealers! My heart bleeds for the unfortunates who are thus sent off to destruction, temporal and eternal. Ay, eternal! For what are they when they come back to their native soil,—if ever they do come back? Reprobates! They leave their paternal roofs well-disposed, God-fearing youths; and the few who ever return are lost reprobates, fearing neither God nor devil, filled with false notions and heresies, perverted in heart and in mind alike! Were I a father, I would rather see my son in his coffin than see him taken by the accursed conscription.”

The father and mother and the two sons listened to this outburst with awe and terror. And the old farmer began to fear that he should certainly be expected to turn out his hoards, in order to buy his son off destruction, temporal and eternal.

“It is a very bad business,” said the old man, scratching his head; “I don’t see what is to be done in it—not I! Suppose our Beppo should be drawn, your reverence; what can a poor man like me do?”

“But there is good hope he may not be drawn; surely there is good hope,” said Signora Sunta, clasping her hands. “The Holy Virgin is very good. We have always done our best both at Nativity and Conception, besides a candle at the Annunciation—and always the best wax. Your reverence well knows we have never failed,” said