Colomba, Prosper Mérimée [essential reading txt] 📗

Orso felt ashamed of his own vehemence. “What are you carrying there, little one?” said he, with all the gentleness he could muster. And as Chilina hesitated, he lifted up the linen that was wrapped round the bundle, and saw it contained a loaf of bread and other food.

“To whom are you bringing the loaf, my dear?” he asked again.

“You know quite well, Ors’ Anton’: to my uncle.”

“And isn’t your uncle a bandit?”

“At your service, Ors’ Anton’.”

“If you met the gendarmes, they would ask you where you were going. . . .”

“I should tell them,” the child replied, at once, “that I was taking food to the men from Lucca who were cutting down the maquis.”

“And if you came across some hungry hunter who insisted on dining at your expense, and took your provisions away from you?”

“Nobody would dare! I would say they are for my uncle!”

“Well! he’s not the sort of man to let himself be cheated of his dinner! . . . Is your uncle very fond of you?”

“Oh, yes, Ors’ Anton’. Ever since my father died, he has taken care of my whole family—my mother and my little sister, and me. Before mother was ill, he used to recommend her to rich people, who gave her employment. The mayor gives me a frock every year, and the priest has taught me my catechism, and how to read, ever since my uncle spoke to them about us. But your sister is kindest of all to us!”

Just at this moment a dog ran out on the pathway. The little girl put two of her fingers into her mouth and gave a shrill whistle, the dog came to her at once, fawned upon her, and then plunged swiftly into the thicket. Soon two men, ill-dressed, but very well armed, rose up out of a clump of young wood a few paces from where Orso stood. It was as though they had crawled up like snakes through the tangle of cytisus and myrtle that covered the ground.

“Oh, Ors’ Anton’, you’re welcome!” said the elder of the two men. “Why, don’t you remember me?”

“No!” said Orso, looking hard at him.

“Queer how a beard and a peaked cap alter a man! Come, monsieur, look at me well! Have you forgotten your old Waterloo men? Don’t you remember Brando Savelli, who bit open more than one cartridge alongside of you on that unlucky day?”

“What! Is it you?” said Orso. “And you deserted in 1816!”

“Even so, sir. Faith! soldiering grows tiresome, and besides, I had a job to settle over in this country. Aha, Chili! You’re a good girl! Give us our dinner at once, we’re hungry. You’ve no notion what an appetite one gets in the maquis. Who sent us this—was it Signorina Colomba or the mayor?”

“No, uncle, it was the miller’s wife. She gave me this for you, and a blanket for my mother.”

“What does she want of me?”

“She says the Lucchesi she hired to clear the maquis are asking her five-and-thirty sous, and chestnuts as well—because of the fever in the lower parts of Pietranera.”

“The lazy scamps! . . . I’ll see to them! . . . Will you share our dinner, monsieur, without any ceremony? We’ve eaten worse meals together, in the days of that poor compatriot of ours, whom they have discharged from the army.”

“No, I thank you heartily. They have discharged me, too!”

“Yes, so I heard. But I’ll wager you weren’t sorry for it. You have your own account to settle too. . . . Come along, cure,” said the bandit to his comrade. “Let’s dine! Signor Orso, let me introduce the cure. I’m not quite sure he is a cure. But he knows as much as any priest, at all events!”

“A poor student of theology, monsieur,” quoth the second bandit, “who has been prevented from following his vocation. Who knows, Brandolaccio, I might have been Pope!”

“What was it that deprived the Church of your learning?” inquired Orso.

“A mere nothing—a bill that had to be settled, as my friend Brandolaccio puts it. One of my sisters had been making a fool of herself, while I was devouring book-lore at Pisa University. I had to come home, to get her married. But her future husband was in too great a hurry; he died of fever three days before I arrived. Then I called, as you would have done in my place, on the dead man’s brother. I was told he was married. What was I to do?”

“It really was puzzling! What did you do?”

“It was one of those cases in which one has to resort to the gunflint.”

“In other words?”

“I put a bullet in his head,” said the bandit coolly.

Orso made a horrified gesture. Nevertheless, curiosity, and, it may be, his desire to put off the moment when he must return home, induced him to remain where he was, and continue his conversation with the two men, each of whom had at least one murder on his conscience.

While his comrade was talking, Brandolaccio was laying bread and meat in front of him. He helped himself—then he gave some food to this dog, whom he introduced to Orso under the name of Brusco, as an animal possessing a wonderful instinct for recognising a soldier, whatever might be the disguise he had assumed. Lastly, he cut off a hunch of bread and a slice of raw ham, and gave them to his niece. “Oh, the merry life a bandit lives!” cried the student of theology, after he had swallowed a few mouthfuls. “You’ll try it some day, perhaps, Signor della Rebbia, and you’ll find out how delightful it is to acknowledge no master save one’s own fancy!”

Hitherto the bandit had talked Italian. He now proceeded in French.

“Corsica is not a very amusing country for a young man to live in—but for a bandit, there’s the difference! The women are all wild about us. I, as you see me now, have three mistresses in three different villages. I am at home in every one of them, and one of the ladies is married to a gendarme!”

“You know many languages, monsieur!” said Orso gravely.

“If I talk French, ‘tis because, look you, maxima debetur pueris reverentia! We have made up our minds, Brandolaccio and I, that the little girl shall turn out well, and go straight.”

“When she is turned fifteen,” remarked Chilina’s uncle, “I’ll find a good husband for her. I have one in my eye already.”

“Shall you make the proposal yourself?” said Orso.

“Of course! Do you suppose that any well-to-do man in this neighbourhood, to whom I said, ‘I should be glad to see a marriage between your son and Michilina Savelli,’ would require any pressing?”

“I wouldn’t advise him to!” quoth the other bandit. “Friend Brandolaccio has rather a heavy hand!”

“If I were a rogue,” continued Brandolaccio, “a blackguard, a forger, I should only have to hold my wallet open, and the five-franc pieces would rain into it.”

“Then is there something inside your wallet that attracts them?” said Orso.

“Nothing. But if I were to write to a rich man, as some people have written, ‘I want a hundred francs,’ he would lose no time about sending them to me. But I’m a man of honour, monsieur.”

“Do you know, Signor della Rebbia,” said the bandit whom his comrade called the cure, “do you know that in this country, with all its simple habits, there are some wretches who make use of the esteem our passports” (and he touched his gun) “insure us, to draw forged bills in our handwriting?”

“I know it,” said Orso, in a gruff tone; “but what bills?”

“Six months ago,” said the bandit, “I was taking my walks abroad near Orezza, when a sort of lunatic came up to me, pulling off his cap to me even in the distance, and said: ‘Oh, M. le Cure’ (they always call me that), ‘please excuse me—give me time. I have only been able to get fifty-five francs together! Honour bright, that’s all I’ve been able to scrape up.’ I, in my astonishment, said, ‘Fifty-five francs! What do you mean, you rascal!’ ‘I mean sixty-five,’ he replied; ‘but as for the hundred francs you asked me to give you, it’s not possible.’ ‘What! you villain! I ask you for a hundred francs? I don’t know who you are.’ Then he showed me a letter, or rather a dirty rag of paper, whereby he was summoned to deposit a hundred francs on a certain spot, on pain of having his house burned and his cows killed by Giocanto Castriconi—that’s my name. And they had been vile enough to forge my signature! What annoyed me most was that the letter was written in patois, and was full of mistakes in spelling—I who won every prize at the university! I began by giving my rascal a cuff that made him twist round and round. ‘Aha! You take me for a thief, blackguard that you are!’ I said, and I gave him a hearty kick, you know where. Then feeling rather better, I went on, ‘When are you to take the money to the spot mentioned in the letter?’ ‘This very day.’ ‘Very good, then take it there!’ It was at the foot of a pine-tree, and the place had been exactly described. He brought the money, buried it at the foot of the tree, and came and joined me. I had hidden myself close by. There I stayed, with my man, for six mortal hours, M. della Rebbia. I’d have staid three days, if it had been necessary. At the end of six hours a Bastiaccio, a vile money-lender, made his appearance. As he bent down to take up the money, I fired, and I had aimed so well that, as he fell, his head dropped upon the coins he was unearthing. ‘Now, rascal,’ said I to the peasant, ‘take your money, and never dare to suspect Giocanto Castriconi of a mean trick again!’

“The poor devil, all of a tremble, picked up his sixty-five francs without taking the trouble to wipe them. He thanked me, I gave him a good parting kick, and he may be running away still, for all I know.”

“Ah, cure!” said Brandolaccio, “I envy you that shot! How you must have laughed!”

“I had hit the money-lender in the temple,” the bandit went on, “and that reminded me of Virgil’s lines: