Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/302

294 to his aged arm, so I carried in a tumbler of a nameless acid they called wine in these parts, and poked vigorously at the ancient Muratore till I made him understand that the said tumbler of acid was for his private and particular drinking. He descended with unusual alacrity, and his eye brightened so much after quaffing the noble beverage, that I returned to my room delighted with my success. I am sorry to say that, on going back in about an hour to see how the charm had worked, I found my old friend curled up in a corner, slumbering peacefully, and with such an expression of beatitude on his wrinkled face that I had not the heart to disturb him.

Barelegs and I have since been occupied in cleaning the scanty furniture, mercilessly bespattered with whitewash during the Muratore’s labours, and while so employed, Barelegs made me this painful confidence:

“I don’t know what ails that old man down there” (meaning the unfortunate Sordo in the dark kitchen), “but, when I go in the kitchen, I continually find him crying, and when I ask him what is the matter, he says he has a cold!”

She appeared exceedingly outraged at the pity I evinced, and concluded, in a hard tone of voice:

“Ma Signora!—a man to cry! He may have his troubles; but anyhow it is a great weakness!”

Poor old Sordo! if this be the measure of sympathy he generally meets, no wonder he says he has a cold. No doubt it is “a great weakness” to cry by himself in the dark, but it is a dreary weakness to think of, and it casts a very considerable shadow over the sun-light of my terrace above him, when I do so.

When we first came, the Sordo had two companions who used to sit with him by the side of the huge fireplace in the dark kitchen, taking a languid interest in the boiling of his little pot of polenta. These two companions were a very limp and exhausted kitten, and an exceedingly dejected fowl, guiltless of eggs. By dint of carrying him up on to our sunny terrace, and giving him first milk, and then stronger food, we have transformed the exhausted kitten into an excessively vulgar and forward cat; and, I grieve to say, the very first use he made of his increase of vigour was to make a savage onslaught on his former ally, the dejected fowl, whom he deprived entirely of a flabby tail he had, before Barelegs came to the rescue. Only yesterday he was guilty of a worse crime still. Some one had presented the Sordo with a piece of liver, which he had stowed away on a high shelf, to be eaten this day. Alas! this morning early, while the Sordo was at mass, the vulgar cat not only climbed up and demolished the liver, but added insult to injury by going to sleep in the dish.

Thus have we, by the rash introduction of the luxuries of city life, demoralised the primitive innocence of at least one of the natives of the village of B, in the district of G, in the province of Brescia, Lombardy, Italy.

When the Emperor lay a-dying

And an unresisted spell,

Like a cloud across his eyelids

From the land of darkness fell;

“Ave, Cæsar!”

Sounded o’er him like a knell—

“Ave, Cæsar!”

From the borderland of hell.

For a vision rose upon him,

In the dimness of the night,

Dark at first, but clear and clearer

Ere he died at morning light—

Musing, musing,

All too late, on Wrong and Right;

(“Ave, Cæsar!”)

Twas a vision of affright.

Lo! the storied Coliseum,

All a-blaze with green and red;

Lo! the elephant and panther

On the canopy overhead;

Sand is strewing

Where the fighting-men have bled;

(“Ave, Cæsar!”)

Men are dragging off the dead.

Now a myriad ranks are silent,

Watching what may next befall;

And another troop advances,

Buckler’d Thracian, sinewy Gaul;

Them the trainer—

Loud, uncaring, daring, all—

Unto Cæsar

Brings, to greet him ere they fall,

Ave, Cæsar Imperator!”

Thus they used to shout of old;

Dying men salute thee, Caesar!”

Thus the horrid greeting rolled

In the vision,

Round and round his bed of gold,

(“Ave, Cæsar!”)

While his limbs were growing cold.

And they waved their arms before him;

Touched the purple one by one;

Said, “The dying greet thee, Cæsar,

From another world begun,

(Ave, Cæsar!),

Where our servitude is done;

(Ave, Cæsar!)

Emperor and slave are one.”