The mother walked briskly on in front, poising the basket on her head. Presently they reached the great, round, white, desolate pile in which are the prisons. A sentry stood, mute and immovable, looking in the morning light like a statue carved out of stone. A single green shrub growing against the blank expanse of wall seemed the rather to accentuate the dreariness of the spot. A huge, green door, which from time to time opened and shut like the mouth of a dragon, now opened and swallowed up the two women. Every one in that dismal abode had come to know them; from the florid, important-looking head-keeper, who might have been a general at the very least, down to the junior custodian, with his pale face, his straight blond moustache, and his pretensions to elegance.
The visitors were not allowed to penetrate beyond the gloomy passageway, whose fetid atmosphere, however, gave some idea of the horrors that lay beyond. The pale and elegant guard, coming forward, took their basket, and Giovanna asked in a low voice if Costantino had slept.
Yes, he had slept, but he kept dreaming all the time. He did nothing but repeat over and over again the words—"The mortal sin!"
"Ah! may he go to the devil with his mortal sin!" exclaimed Aunt Bachissia angrily; "he ought to stop it!"
"Mamma, dear, why need you swear at him? Has not fate cursed him enough as it is?" murmured Giovanna.
The women now left the building and stood outside, waiting for the prisoner to be brought forth. When Giovanna's eyes fell upon the group of carbineers who were to escort him to court, she fell to trembling violently, although on all the preceding days she had seen precisely the same thing; and her big, black eyes, stretched to their widest extent, fastened upon the great doorway with the unseeing stare of a crazy woman. Slowly the minutes lagged by, then the dragon mouth opened, and once more, surrounded by stony-faced guards with fierce black moustaches, the figure of Costantino appeared.
He was tall and as lithe as a young poplar tree; a long lock of lustrous black hair hung down on either side of a face, beardless, pallid from prison confinement, and almost feminine in its beauty. The eyes were large, and chestnut-brown in colour; the mouth small, and as innocent as a child's, and there was a little cleft in the middle of the chin. He looked like a young Apollo.
The moment his eyes fell upon Giovanna, although he too had been waiting for that moment, he grew whiter than ever, and stopped short, resisting the guards. Giovanna rushed forward, sobbing, and seized hold of his manacled hands.
"Forward!" said one of the carbineers; then, gently, to her: "You know, my girl, it is not allowed."
Aunt Bachissia now stepped forward as well, darting rapid glances out of her little green eyes. The escort halted for an instant, and Costantino, smiling bravely, said in a voice that was almost cheerful: "Courage! Courage!"
"The lawyer is waiting for you," said Aunt Bachissia, and then the guards pushed the women gently aside.
"Stand back, good people! Out of the way!" said one, and they led the prisoner off, still smiling back at Giovanna, his gleaming white teeth showing between lips that were still round and full, albeit colourless. Thus he disappeared from view between his stony-faced conductors.
Aunt Bachissia now, in her turn, dragged off Giovanna, who wanted to follow her husband, and insisted that she should return first to the Porrus' for breakfast.
They found the courtyard bathed in sunlight. It played upon the shining leaves of the grape-vines, from which hung bunches of unripe grapes like pale-green marble; the swallows disporting in it were moved to pour forth floods of song; and it tricked out Uncle Efes Maria, preparing to set out for the country on his chestnut horse. How full of light and cheerfulness seemed that little, enclosed spot, with its low stone-wall, beyond which could be seen a broad expanse of open country, stretching away to the distant horizon! The children sat on the threshold of the kitchen door, devouring their breakfast of bread soaked in café-au-lait; Grazia had taken hers to a retired corner, possibly in order not to be seen engaged upon anything so prosaic by the student-uncle. He, meanwhile, stood in his shirt-sleeves in the middle of the enclosure, gulping down the contents of a great bowl.
"How large is St. Peter's?" asked Aunt Porredda, who was polishing the doctor's shoes, and marvelling the while to hear of the wonderful things he had seen.
"How large? Why, as large as a tanca.[3] You can't even pray there; no one could say his prayers in a tanca. The angels are as large as that gateway—the littlest ones—those that hold the holy-water basins."
"Ah! then you have to go upstairs to reach the water?"
"No; they are on their knees, I think. Give me a little more café-au-lait, mamma; is there any?"
"Of course there is. It seems to me you have come back very hungry, my little Paolo; you're a regular shark!"
"Do you know how much this breakfast would cost in Rome? One franc! not a centime less; and then the milk is all water!"
"The Lord preserve us! Why, that is frightful!" "What do you think? I saw some dolphins at sea; the strangest-looking creatures——Oh! here are our guests; good-morning; what have you been about?"
Giovanna described the meeting with her husband, and was beginning to cry again, when Aunt Porredda took her by the hand and led her into the kitchen.
"You have need of all your strength to-day, my soul," said she, setting before her a large cup of café-au-lait. A little later the two women started out again for the Court of Assize; Paolo promising to join them there.
"Courage!" said Aunt Porredda, as she took leave of Giovanna, and the latter heard her husband's sentence in the kind hostess's tone, and went off with the look of a whipped dog.
Paolo followed her with his eyes; then, limping across the courtyard to his mother, he said a singular thing:
"Listen to me, mamma; before two years have gone by that young woman will be married to some one else!"
"What do you mean by saying such a thing, Dr. Pededdu!" cried the mother, who always addressed her son by his nickname when she was angry with him. "Upon my word, you must be crazy!"
"Oh! mamma, I have crossed the sea," he replied. "Let us hope, at all events, that she will engage me as her lawyer."
"That young man devours his food like a dog," said Giovanna to her mother, as they descended the steep little street. "May the Lord have mercy on him!"
Aunt Bachissia, walking along plunged in thought, answered through her clenched teeth, "He will make a good lawyer; he will gnaw his clients to the bone and then swallow them whole!"
Then the two walked on in silence, but a moment later Aunt Bachissia stumbled, and as she did so, for some reason that she could not fathom, it flashed into her mind that, should it ever so fall out that Giovanna were to apply for a divorce, she would ask Paolo to be their lawyer.
It was eight o'clock when they reached the Cathedral Square, and the small windows of the Court House close by were sending back dazzling reflections of the early morning sun.
The little granite-paved square was already crowded with country friends and neighbours, witnesses in the trial. Some of these immediately approached the two women, and greeted them with the inevitable commonplace: "Courage! Courage!"
"Oh! courage; yes, we have plenty of it, thank you," said Aunt Bachissia. "Now leave us in peace." And she continued on her way, as proud and erect as a race-horse. The road was only too familiar already, and she followed it straight to the fateful hall. Behind her came Giovanna, and behind her, the others: heavily bearded, roughly clad men; a handful of idlers; last of all, a near-sighted old woman with no teeth.
The jury, most of them old and fat, were already in their places. One of them had an enormous hooked nose; two others, fierce-eyed, thickly bearded men, looked like bandits; three sat in a little group with their heads close together, laughing over something in a newspaper.