I

Luca Minella, born in the year 1789 at Ortona in one of the houses of Porta Caldara, was a seaman. In early youth he sailed for some time on the brigantine Santa Liberata, from the bay of Ortona to the ports of Dalmatia, loaded with varieties of wood, fresh and dried fruit. Later, because of a whim to change masters, he entered the service of Don Rocco Panzavacante, and upon a new skiff made many voyages for the purpose of trading in lemons, to the promontory of Roto, which is a large and agreeable elevation on the Italian coast, wholly covered with orchards of oranges and lemons.

In his twenty-seventh year he kindled with love for Francesca Nobile, and after several months they were married. Luca, a man of short and very strong build, had a soft blond beard upon his flushed visage, and, like a woman, wore two circles of gold in his ears. He loved wine and tobacco; professed an ardent devotion for the holy Apostle Saint Thomas; and, in that he was of a superstitious nature and given to trances, he recounted singular and marvellous adventures of those foreign countries and told stories of the Dalmatian people and the islands of the Adriatic as if they were tribes and countries in the proximity of the poles. Francesca, a woman whose youth was on the wane, had the florid complexion and mobile features of the Ortonesian girl. She loved the church, the religious functions, the sacred pomp, the music of the organ; she lived in great simplicity; and, since she was somewhat stunted in intelligence, believed the most incredible things and praised her Lord in His every deed.

Of this union Anna was born in the month of June of the year 1817. Inasmuch as the confinement was severe, and they feared some misfortune, the sacrament of baptism was administered before the birth of the child. After much travail the birth took place. The little creature drank nourishment from its mother and grew in health and happiness. Toward evening Francesca went down to the seacoast, with the nursing baby in her arms, whenever she expected the skiff to return loaded from Roto, and Luca on coming ashore wore a shirt all scented with the southern fruits. When mounting together to their home above, they always stopped a moment at the church and knelt in prayer. In the chapels the votive lamps were burning, and in the background, behind the seven bronzes, the statue of the Apostle sparkled like a treasure. Their prayers asked for celestial benediction to fall upon their daughter. On going out, when the mother bathed Anna’s forehead in holy water, her infantile screams echoed the length of the naves.

The infancy of Anna passed smoothly, without any noteworthy event. In May of 1823 she was dressed as a cherub, with a crown of roses and a white veil; and, in the midst of an angelical company, confusedly followed a procession, holding in her hand a thin taper. In the church her mother wished to lift her in her arms and have her kiss her protecting Saint. But, as other mothers lifting other cherubs pushed through the crowd, the flame of one of the tapers caught Anna’s veil and suddenly a flame enveloped her tender body. A contagion of fear spread among the people and each one strove to be the first to escape. Francesca, for all that her hands were almost rendered useless by terror, succeeded in tearing off the burning garments, strained the nude and unconscious child to her heart, threw herself down behind the fugitives, and invoked her Lord with loud cries.

From the burns Anna was ill and in peril for a long time. She lay upon her bed with thin, bloodless face and without speech as if she had become mute, while her eyes, open and fixed, held an expression of forgetful stupor rather than of pain. In the autumn she recovered and went to take her vow.

When the weather was mild the family descended to the boat for their evening meal. Under the awning Francesca lit the fire and placed the fish upon it; the hospitable odour of the food spread the length of the harbour, blending with the perfume from the foliage of the Villa Onofria. The sea lay so tranquilly that one scarcely heard between the rocks the rustling of the water, and the air was so limpid that one saw the steeple of San Vito emerge in the distance amid the surrounding houses. Luca and the other men fell to singing, while Anna tried to help her mother. After the meal, as the moon mounted in the sky, the sailors prepared the skiff for weighing anchor. Meanwhile Luca, under the stimulation of the wine and food, seized with his habitual avidity for miraculous stories, commenced to tell of distant shores. “There was, further up than Roto, a mountain all inhabited by monkeys and men from India; it was very high, with plants that produced precious stones.” His wife and daughter listened in silent astonishment. Then, the sails unfolded along the masts, sails all covered with black figures and Catholic symbols, like the ancient flags of a country. Thus Luca departed.

In February of 1826 Francesca gave birth to a dead child. In the spring of 1830 Luca wished to take Anna to the promontory. Anna was then on the threshold of girlhood. The voyage was a happy one. On the high seas they encountered a merchant vessel, a large ship borne along by means of its enormous white sails. The dolphins swam in the foam; the water moved gently around, scintillating, and seeming to carry upon its surface a covering of peacock feathers. Anna gazed from the ship into the distance with eyes never satiated. Then a kind of blue cloud rose from the line of horizon; it was the fruit covered mountain.

The coast of Puglia came into view little by little under the sunlight. The perfume of the lemons permeated the morning air. When Anna descended to the shore, she was overcome by a sense of gladness as she examined curiously the plantations and the men native to the place. Her father took her to the house of a woman no longer young, who spoke with a slight stutter.

They remained with her two days. Once Anna saw her father kiss this woman upon the mouth, but she did not understand. On their return the skiff was loaded with oranges, and the sea was still gentle. Anna preserved the remembrance of that voyage as if it were a dream; and, since she was by nature taciturn, she did not recount many stories of it to her comrades, who pursued her with questions.

II

In the following May, to the festival of the Apostle, came the Archbishop of Orsogna. The church was entirely decorated with red draperies and leaves of gold, while before the bronze rails burned eleven silver lamps fashioned by silversmiths for religious purposes, and every evening the orchestra sang a solemn oratorio with a splendid chorus of childish voices. On Saturday the statue of the Apostle was to be shown. Devotees made pilgrimages from all the maritime and inland countries; they came up the coast, singing and bearing in their hands votive offerings, with the sea in full sight.

Anna on Friday had her first communion. The Archbishop was an old man, reverent and gentle, and when he lifted his hand to bless her, the jewel in his ring shone like a divine eye. Anna, when she felt on her tongue the wafer of the Eucharist, became blinded with a sudden wave of joy that seemed to moisten her hair, like a soft and tepid scented bath. Behind her a murmur ran through the multitude; near by other virgins were taking the Sacrament and bowing their faces upon the rail in great contrition.

That evening Francesca wished to sleep, as was the custom among the worshippers, upon the pavement of the church, while awaiting the early morning revelation of the saint. She was seven months with child and the weight of it wearied her greatly. On the pavement, the pilgrims lay crowded together, while heat emanating from their bodies filled the air. Diverse confused cries issued at times from some of those unconscious with sleep; the flames of the burning oil in the cups trembled and were reflected as they hung suspended between the arches, while through the openings of the large doors the stars glittered in the early spring night.

Francesca lay awake for two hours in pain, since the exhalations from the sleepers gave her nausea. But, having determined to resist and to endure for the welfare of her soul, she was overcome at last by weariness and bent her head in sleep. At dawn she awoke. Expectation increased in the souls of the watchers and more people arrived. In each one burned the desire to be the first to see the Apostle. At length the first grating was opened, the noise of its hinges resounding clearly through the silence, and echoing in all hearts. The second grating was opened, then the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, and finally the last. It seemed now as if a cyclone had struck the crowd. The mass of men hurled themselves toward the tabernacle, sharp cries rang in the air; ten, fifteen persons were wounded and suffocated while a tumultuous prayer arose. The dead were dragged to the open air. The body of Francesca, all bruised and livid, was carried to her family. Many curious ones crowded around it, and her relatives lamented piteously. Anna, when she saw her mother stretched on the bed, purple in the face and stained with blood, fell to the earth unconscious. Afterwards, for many months she was tormented by epilepsy.

III

In the summer of 1835 Luca set sail for a Grecian port upon the skiff “Trinita” belonging to Don Giovanni Camaccione. Moreover, as he held a secret thought in his mind, before leaving, he sold his furniture and asked some relatives to keep Anna in their house until he should return. Some time after that the skiff returned loaded with dried figs and eggs from Corinth, after having touched at the coast of Roto. Luca was not among the crew, and it became known later that he had remained in the “country of the oranges” with a lady-love.

Anna remembered their former stuttering hostess. A deep sadness settled down upon her life at this recollection. The house of her relatives was on the eastern road, in the vicinity of Molo. The sailors came there to drink wine in a low room, where almost all day their songs resounded amid the smoke of their pipes. Anna passed in and out among the drinkers, carrying full pitchers, and her first instinct of modesty awoke from that continuous contact, that continuous association with bestial men. Every moment she had to endure their impudent jokes, cruel laughter and suggestive gestures, the wickedness of men worn out by the fatigues of a sailor’s life. She dared not complain, because she ate her bread in the house of another. But that continuous ordeal weakened her and a serious mental derangement arose little by little from her weakened condition.

Naturally affectionate, she had a great love for animals. An aged ass was housed under a shed of straw and clay behind the house. The gentle beast daily bore burdens of wine from Saint Apollinare to the tavern; and for all that his teeth had commenced to grow yellow, and his hoofs to decay, for all that his skin was already parched and had scarcely a hair upon it, still, at the sight of a flowering thistle he put up his ears and began to bray vivaciously in his former youthful way.

Anna filled his manger with fodder and his trough with water. When the heat was severe, she came to rest in the shadow of the shed. The ass ground up wisps of straw laboriously between his jaws and she with a leafy branch performed a work of kindness by keeping his back free from the molestation of insects. From time to time the ass turned its long-eared head with a curling of the flaccid lips which revealed the gums as if performing a reddish animal smile of gratitude, and with an oblique movement of his eye in its orbit showed the yellowish ball veined with purple like a gall bladder. The insects circled with a continuous buzzing around the dung-heap; neither from earth nor sea came a sound, and an infinite sense of peace filled the soul of the woman.

In April of 1842 Pantaleo, the man who guided the beast of burden on his daily journeys, died from a knife-wound. From that time on the duty fell to Anna. Either she left at dawn and returned by noon, or she left at noon and returned by night. The road wound over a sunny hill planted with olives, descended through a moist country used for pasture, and on rising again through vineyards, arrived at the factories of Saint Apollinare. The ass walked wearily in front with lowered ears, a green fringe all worn and discoloured beat against his ribs and haunches and in the pack-saddle glittered several fragments of brass plate.

When the animal stopped to regain his breath, Anna gave him a little caressing blow on the neck and urged him with her voice, because she had pity for his infirmities. Every so often she tore from the hedges a handful of leaves and offered them to him for refreshment; she was moved on feeling in her palm the soft movement of his lips as they nibbled her offering. The hedges were in bloom and the blossoms of the white thorn had a flavour of bitter almonds.

On the confines of the olive grove was a large cistern, and near this cistern a long, stone canal where the animals came to drink. Every day Anna paused at this spot and here she and the ass quenched their thirst before continuing the journey. Once she encountered the keeper of a herd of cattle, who was a native of Tollo and whose expression was a little cross and who had a hare-lip. The man returned her greeting and they began to converse on the pasturage and the water, then on sanctuaries and miracles. Anna listened graciously and with frequent smiles. She was lean and pale with very clear eyes and uncommonly large mouth, and her auburn hair was smoothed back without a part. On her neck one saw the red scars of her burns and her veins stood out and palpitated incessantly.

From that time on their conversations were repeated at intervals. Through the grass the cattle dispersed, either lying down and pondering or standing and eating. Their peaceful moving forms added to the tranquillity of the pastoral solitude. Anna, seated on the edge of the cistern, talked simply and the man with his split lip seemed overcome with love. One day with a sudden, spontaneous blossoming of her memory, she told of her sailing to the mountain of Roto; and, since the remoteness of the time had blurred her memory, she told marvellous things with a strong appearance of truth. The man, astonished, listened without winking an eye. When Anna stopped speaking, to both the surrounding silence and solitude seemed deeper and both remained in thought. Then the cattle, driven by habit, came to the trough and between their legs dangled the bags of milk supplied anew from the pasture. As they thrust their noses into the stream, the water diminished with their slow, regular gulps.

IV

During the last days of June the ass fell sick. It took neither food nor drink for almost a week. The daily journeys were interrupted. One morning Anna, descending to the shed, found the beast all cramped upon the straw in a pitiable condition. A kind of hoarse, tenacious cough shook from time to time his huge frame thinly covered with skin, while above the eyes two deep cavities had formed like two hollow orbits, and the eyes themselves resembled two great bladders filled with whey. When the ass heard Anna’s voice he tried to get up; his body reeled upon his legs, his neck sank beneath the sharp shoulder-blades, and his ears dangled, with involuntary and ungainly motions, like those of a big toy broken at the hinges. A mucous liquid dropped from his nose, sometimes flowing in little sluggish rivulets down to his knees. The raw spots in the skin turned the colour of azure, and the sores here and there bled.

Anna, at this sight, was inwardly torn by a pitying anguish; and, since by nature and by habit she never experienced any physical repugnance on coming in contact with things commonly regarded as repellant, she drew near to touch the animal. With one hand she held up his lower jaw and with the other a shoulder and thus sought to help him walk, hoping that exercise might do him good. At first the animal hesitated, shaken by new outbreaks of coughing, but at length he began to walk down the gentle incline that led to the shore. The water before them shone white in the birth of the morning and the Calafatti near La Penna were smearing a keel with pitch. As Anna sustained her burden with her hands, and held the halter rope, the ass through a misstep of a hind leg fell suddenly. The great structure of bones gave a rattle within as if ruptured, the skin over the stomach and flanks resounded dully and palpitated. The legs made a motion as if to run, while blood issued from the gums and spread among the teeth.

The woman began to call and run toward the house. But the Calafatti, having arrived, laughed and joked at the reclining ass. One of them struck the dying beast in the stomach with his foot. Another grabbed his ears and raised his head, which sank heavily again to earth. The eyes at length closed, a chill ran over the white skin of the stomach, parting the tufts of hair as a wind would do, while one of his hind legs beat two or three times in the air. Then all was still, except that in the shoulder, where there was an ulcer, a slight quivering took place, like that caused by some insect a moment before in the living flesh. When Anna returned to the spot she found the Calafatti dragging the carcass by the tail, and singing a Requiem with imitation brays.

Thus Anna was left alone. Still for a long time she lived on in the house of her relatives and gradually faded, while she fulfilled her humble duties and endured with much Christian patience her vexations. In 1845 her epilepsy returned to her with violence, but disappeared again after some months. Her religious faith became at the same time more deep and living. She went up to the church every morning and every evening, and knelt habitually in an obscure corner protected by a great pillar of marble where was pictured in rough bas-relief the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. Did she not at first choose that corner because she was attracted by the gentle ass bearing the child Jesus and His mother from the land of idolatry? A great peace as of love descended upon her soul when she bent her knees in the shadow, and prayers rose unpolluted from her breast as from a natural spring, because she prayed only through a blind passion to adore, and not through any hope to obtain the grace of happiness in her own life. She prayed with her head lowered on a chair, and as Christians, in coming and going, touched the holy water with their fingers and crossed themselves, she from time to time shivered on feeling on her hair some welcome drops of the holy water.

V

When in the year 1851 Anna came for the first time to the country of Pescara, the feast of Rosario was approaching, which is celebrated on the first Sunday of October.

The woman came from Ortona on foot, for the purpose of fulfilling a vow; and bearing with her, hidden in a handkerchief of silk, a little heart of silver, she walked religiously along the seacoast; since at that time the province road was not yet constructed, and a wood of pines almost covered the virgin soil. The day was calm, save that the waves of the sea were ever increasing and at the farthest point of the horizon the clouds continued to rise in the shape of large funnels. Anna walked on entirely absorbed in holy thoughts. Towards evening, as she was approaching Salini, suddenly the rain began to fall, at first gently, but later in a great downpour; so much so that, not finding any shelter, she was wet through and through. Further on, the gorge of the Alento was flooded, and she had to remove her shoes and ford the river. In the vicinity of Vallelonga the rain ceased, and the forest of pines serenely revived gave forth an odour almost of incense. Anna, rendering thanks in her soul to her Lord, followed the shore path with steps more rapid, since she felt the unwholesome dampness penetrate her bones, and her teeth began to chatter from a chill.

At Pescara she was suddenly stricken with a swamp-fever, and cared for through pity in the house of Donna Cristina Basile. From her bed on hearing the sacred chants, and seeing the tops of the standards wave to the height of her window, she set herself to praying and invoking her recovery. When the Virgin passed she could see only the jewelled crown, and she endeavoured to kneel upon the pillows in order to worship.

After three weeks she recovered and Donna Cristina having asked her to remain, she stayed on in the capacity of a servant. She had a little room looking out upon a court. The walls were whitened with plaster, an old screen covered with curious figures blocked a corner, and among the beams of the roof many spiders stretched in peace their intricate webs. Under the window projected a short roof, and further down opened the court full of tame birds. On the roof grew from a pile of earth enclosed with five tiles a tobacco plant. The sun lingered there from early in the morning until the evening. Every summer the plant bloomed. Anna, in this new life, in this new house, little by little felt herself revive and her natural inclination for order reasserted itself.

She attended tranquilly and without speaking to all her duties. Meanwhile her belief in things supernatural increased. Two or three legends had in the distant past established themselves with regard to certain spots in the Basile house, and from generation to generation they had been handed down. In the yellow room on the second floor (now unoccupied) lived the soul of Donna Isabella. In a dark room with a winding staircase descending to a door that had not been opened for a long time, lived the soul of Don Samuele. Those two names exercised a singular power over the present occupants, and diffused through the entire ancient building a kind of conventional solemnity. Further, as the inside court was surrounded by many roofs, the cats on the loggia gathered in counsel and mewed with a mysterious sweetness, while begging Anna for bits from her meals.

In March of the year 1853 the husband of Donna Cristina after many weeks of convulsions died of a urinary disease. He was a God fearing man, domestic and charitable, at the head of a congregation of landowners, read theological works, and knew how to play on the piano several simple airs of the ancient Neapolitan masters. When the viaticum arrived, magnificent with its quantity of servers and richness of equipage, Anna knelt on the doorsill and prayed in a loud voice. The room filled with the vapour of incense, in the midst of which glittered the cyborium and the censers flickering like burning lamps. One heard weeping, and then arose the voices of the priests recommending the soul to the Most High. Anna, carried away by the solemnity of that sacrament, lost all horror of death, and from that time on the death of a Christian seemed to her a journey sweet and joyful.

Donna Cristina kept the windows of her house closed for an entire month. She mourned for her husband at the hours of dinner and supper, gave in his name alms to beggars; and many times a day, with the tail of a fox swished the dust from his piano, as if from a relic, while emitting sighs. She was a woman of forty years, tending toward fleshiness, although still youthful in her form which sterility had preserved. And since she inherited from the deceased a considerable sum, the five oldest bachelors of the country began to lay ambushes for her and to allure her with flattering wiles to new nuptials. The competitors were: Don Ignazio Cespa, an effeminate person, of ambiguous sex, with the face of an old gossip marked from the small-pox, and a head of hair filled with cosmetics, with fingers heavy from rings and ears pierced with two minute circles of gold; Don Paolo Nervegna, doctor of law, a man talkative and keen, who had his lips always curled as if he were chewing on some bitter herb, and a kind of red, unconcealable wart on his forehead; Don Fileno d’Amelio, a new leader of the congregation, slightly bald, with a forehead sloping backward, and deep-set lamb-like eyes; Don Pompeo Pepe, a jocular man and a lover of wine, women and leisure, luxuriantly corpulent, especially in his face and sonorous in laughter and speech; Don Fiore Ussorio, a man of pugnacious disposition, a great reader of political works, and a triumphant quoter of historical examples in every dispute, pallid with an unearthly pallor, with a thin circle of beard around his cheeks and a mouth peculiarly leaning toward an oblique line. To these were added, as a help to Donna Cristina’s power of resistance, the Abbot Egidio Cennamele who, wishing to draw the heritage to the benefit of the church, with well covered cleverness antagonised the wooers by means of flattery. This great contest, which some day should be narrated in more detail, lasted a long time and held great variety of incident.

The principal theatre of the first act was the dining-room—a rectangular room where on the French paper of the walls were graphically represented the facts of Ulysses’ sail to the island of Calypso. Almost every evening the combatants assembled around the besieged’s window and played the game of briscola and of love alternately.

VI

Anna was a constant witness. She introduced the visitors, spread the cloth upon the table, and, in the midst of the siege, brought in glasses full of a greenish cordial mixed by the nuns with special drugs. Once at the top of the stairs she heard Don Fiore Ussorio, in the heat of a dispute, insult the Abbot Cennamele who spoke submissively; and since this irreverence seemed monstrous to her, from that time on she judged Don Fiore to be a diabolical man and at his appearance rapidly made the sign of the cross and murmured a Pater.

One day in the spring of 1856 while on the bank of the Pescara, she saw a fleet of boats pass the mouth of the river and sail slowly up the current of the stream. The sun was serene, the two shores were mirrored in the depths facing one another, some green branches and several baskets of reeds floated in the midst of the current toward the sea like placid symbols, and the barks, with the mitre of Saint Thomas painted for an ensign in a corner of their sails, proceeded thus on the beautiful river sanctified by the legend of Saint Cetteo Liberatore. Recollections of her birthplace awoke in the soul of the woman with a sudden start, at that sight; and on thinking of her father, she was overcome with a deep tenderness.

The barks were Ortonesian skiffs and came from the promontory of Roto with a cargo of lemons. Anna, when the anchors were cast, approached the sailors and gazed at them in silence with a curiosity yearning and fearful. One of them, struck by her expression, recognised her and questioned her familiarly: “Whom was she seeking? What did she want?” Then Anna drew the man aside and asked him if by chance he had seen in the “country of the oranges” Luca Minella, her father. “He had not seen him? He no longer lived with that woman?” The man answered that Luca had been dead for some time. “He was old, and could not live very long?” Then Anna restrained her tears and wished to know many things. “Luca had married that woman and they had had two children. The elder of the two sailed upon a skiff and came sometimes to Pescara for trade.” Anna started.

A perplexing confusion, a kind of troubled dismay seized her mind. She could not regain her equilibrium in the face of these complicated facts. She had two brothers then? She must love them? She must endeavour to see them? Now what ought she to do? Thus, wavering, she returned home. Afterwards, for many evenings, when the barks entered the river, she descended the long dock to watch the sailors. One skiff brought from Dalmatia a load of asses and ponies. The beasts on reaching land stamped and the air rang with their brays and neighs. Anna, in passing, stroked the large heads of the asses.

VII

At about that time she received as a gift from a squire a turtle. This new pet, heavy and taciturn, was her delight and care in her leisure hours. It walked from one end of the room to the other, lifting with difficulty from the ground the great weight of its body. It had claws, like olive-coloured stumps, and was young; the sections of its dorsal shield, spotted yellow and black, glittered often in the sunlight with a shade of amber. The head covered with scales, tapering to the nose and yellowish, projected and nodded with timorous benignity, and it seemed sometimes like the head of an old worn-out serpent that had issued from the husk of its own skin. Anna was much delighted with the traits of the animal; its silence, its frugality, its modesty, its love of home. She fed it with leaves, roots and worms, while watching ecstatically the movement of its little horned and ragged jaws. She experienced almost a feeling of maternity as she gently called the animal and chose for it the tenderest and sweetest herbs. Then the turtle became the presager of an idyl. The squire, on coming many times a day to the house, lingered on the loggia to chat with Anna. Since he was a man of humble spirit, devout, prudent, and just, he enjoyed seeing the reflections of his pious virtues in the soul of the woman. Hence, from habit there arose between the two, little by little, a friendly familiarity. Anna already had several white hairs on her temples, and a placid sincerity suffused her face. Zacchiele exceeded her in age by several years; he had a large head with bulging forehead and two gentle, round, rabbit-like eyes. During their soliloquies they sat for the most part on the loggia. Above them, between the roofs, the sky seemed a transparent cupola, while at intervals the pet doves in their soarings traversed this patch of the heavens. Their conversations turned upon the harvests, the fruitfulness of the earth and simple rules for cultivation, and they were both full of experience and self-denial. Since Zacchiele loved at times, because of a natural diffident vanity, to make show of his knowledge before the ignorant and credulous woman, she conceived for him an unlimited esteem and admiration. She learned from him that the earth was divided into five races of men: the white, the yellow, the red, the black, and the brown. She learned that in form the earth was round, that Romulus and Remus were nourished by a wolf, and that in autumn the swallows flew over the sea to Egypt where the Pharaohs reigned in ancient times. But did not men all have one colour, in the image and semblance of God? How could we walk upon a ball? Who were the Pharaohs? She did not succeed in understanding and thus remained completely confused. However, after that she regarded the swallows with reverence and judged them to be birds gifted with human foresight.

One day Zacchiele showed her a copy of the Old Testament, illustrated with drawings. Anna examined it slowly, listening to his explanations. She saw Adam and Eve among the hares and fawns, Noah half nude kneeling before an altar, the three angels of Abraham, Moses rescued from the water; she saw with joy finally a Pharaoh, in the presence of the rod of Moses, changed into a serpent; the queen of Sheba, the feast of the Tabernacle, and the martyrdom of the Maccabees. The affair of Balaam’s ass filled her with wonder and tenderness. The story of the cup of Joseph in the sack of Benjamin caused her to burst into tears. Now she imagined the Israelites walking through a desert all covered with scales, under a dew that was called manna and which was white like snow and sweeter than bread. After the Sacred History, seized with a strange ambition, Zacchiele began to read to her of the enterprises of the kings of France with the Emperor Constantine up to the time of Orlando, Count of Anglante. A great tumult then upset the woman’s mind, the battles of the Philistines and Syrians she confused with the battles of the Saracens, Holofernes with Rizieri, King Saul with King Mambrino, Eleazar with Balante, Naomi with Galeana.

Worn out she no longer followed the thread of the narrative, but shivered only at intervals when she heard fall from the lips of Zacchiele the sound of some beloved name. And she had a strong liking for Dusolina and the Duke of Bovetto, who seized all of England while becoming enamoured of the daughter of the Frisian King.

The first day of September came. In the air, tempered with recent rain, was a placid autumnal clarity. Anna’s room became the spot for their readings. One day Zacchiele, seated, read “how Galeana, daughter of the King Galafro, became enamoured of Mainetto and wished to make him a garland of green.”

Anna, because the fable seemed simple and rustic, and because the voice of the reader seemed to sweeten with new inflections, listened with evident eagerness. The turtle gently dragged itself over several leaves of lettuce, the sun illumined a great spider’s web upon the window, and one saw the last red flowers of the tobacco plant through the subtle threads of gold.

When the chapter was finished Zacchiele laid aside the book, and, gazing at the woman, smiled with one of those simple smiles of his, which had a way of wrinkling his temples and the corners of his mouth. Then he began to speak to her vaguely, with the timidity of one who does not quite know how to arrive at the desired point. Finally he was filled with ardour. Had she never thought of matrimony? Anna did not reply to this question. Both remained silent and both felt in their souls a confused sweetness, almost an astonished reawakening of buried youth and a reclaiming of love. They were excited by it as if the fumes of a very strong wine had mounted to their weakened brains.

VIII

But a tacit promise of marriage was given many days later, in October, at the first birth of the oil in the olive, and at the last migration of the swallows. With Donna Cristina’s permission, one Monday Zacchiele took Anna to the factory on the hills where his mill was located. They left by the Portasale, on foot, took the Salaria road, turning their backs on the river. From the day of the fable of Galeana and Mainetto, they had experienced, the one toward the other, a kind of trepidation, a mixture of bashful timidity and respect. They had lost that beautiful familiarity of previous times; now they spoke seldom together and always with a hesitating reserve, avoiding each other’s face, with uncertain smiles, becoming confused at times through a sudden blush, dallying thus with timid, childish acts of innocence.

They walked in silence, at first, each following the dry and narrow path which the footsteps of travellers had marked on both sides of the road, and between them ran the road, muddy and indented with deep ruts from the wheels of vehicles. The unrestrained joy of the vintage filled the country; the songs at the crushing of the wine resounded over the plain. Zacchiele kept slightly in the rear, breaking the silence from time to time with some remark on the weather, the vines, the harvest of olives, while Anna examined curiously all of the bushes flaming with berries, the tilled fields, the water in the ditches; and, little by little, a vague joy was born in her soul, like one who, after a long period of fasting, is rejoiced by pleasant sensations experienced long ago. As the road took a turn up the declivity through the rich olive orchards of Cardirusso, clearly arose to her mind the remembrance of Saint Apollinare and the ass and the keeper of the herds. She felt her blood suddenly surge toward her heart. That episode, buried with her youth, now revived in her memory with a marvellous clearness; a picture of the place formed itself before her mind’s eye and she saw again the man with the hare-lip and again heard his voice, while experiencing a new confusion without knowing why.

As they approached the factory the wind among the trees caused the mature olives to fall and a patch of serene sea was revealed from the heights. Zacchiele had moved to the side of the woman and was looking at her from time to time with a pious supplicating tenderness. “What was she thinking of now?” Anna turned with an air almost of fright, as if she had been caught in a sin. “She was thinking of nothing.” They arrived at the mill where the farmers were crushing the first harvest of olives fallen prematurely from the trees. The room for the crushing was low and dimly lighted; from the ceiling sparkling with saltpetre hung lanterns of brass which smoked; a cart-horse, blindfolded, turned with even steps an immense mill-stone; and the farmers, clothed in a kind of long tunic similar to a sack, with legs and arms bare, muscular and oily, were pouring the liquid into jugs, jars and vats.

Anna watched the work attentively, and as Zacchiele gave orders to the workers and wound in and out among the machines, observing the quality of the olives with great decision of judgment, she felt her admiration for him increase. Later, as Zacchiele standing before her took up a great brimful pitcher and on pouring the oil, so pure and luminous, into a vat, spoke of God’s abundance, she made the sign of the cross, quite overwhelmed with veneration for the richness of the soil.

There came at length to the door two women of the factory, and each held at her breast a nursing child and dragged at her skirts a luxuriant group of children. They fell to conversing placidly, and, while Anna tried to caress the children, each talked of her own fertility, and with an honest frankness of speech told of her various deliverances. The first had had seven children; the second eleven. It was the will of Jesus Christ, for working people were needed. Then the conversation turned upon familiar matters. Albarosa, one of the mothers, asked Anna many questions. Had she never had any children? Anna, in answering that she was not married, experienced for the first time a kind of humiliation and grief, before that chaste and powerful maternity. Then, changing the subject of their discourse, she rested her hand on the nearest child. The others looked on with wide-open eyes that seemed to have acquired a limpid, vegetable colour from the continuous sight of green things. The odour of the crushed olives floated in the air, penetrating the throat and exciting the palate. The groups of workers appeared and disappeared under the red light of the lamps.

Zacchiele, who up to that moment had been watching carefully the measuring of the oil, approached the women. Albarosa welcomed him with a merry expression. “How long were they to wait for Don Zacchiele to take a wife?” Zacchiele smiled, slightly confused by this question, and gave a stealthy glance at Anna who was still caressing the rustic child and feigning not to have heard. Albarosa, through a kindly pleasantry, characteristic of the peasant, embracing Anna and Zacchiele significantly with a wink of her bovine eyes, pursued her comment. They were a couple blessed by God. Why were they delaying? The farmers, having suspended their work to attend to their meal, made a circle around them. The couple, even more confused by these witnesses, remained silent in an attitude bordering between tremulous smiles and shame-faced modesty. One of the youths among the onlookers, inspired by the affectionate compunctions in the face of Don Zacchiele, nudged his companions with his elbows. The hungry horse neighed.

The meal was prepared. A strenuous activity invaded the large rustic family. In the yard, in the open air, among the peaceful olives and within sight of the sea beneath, the men sat at their meal. The plates of vegetables, seasoned with fresh oil, smoked; the wine scintillated in the simple vases of liturgical shape, while the frugal food disappeared rapidly into the stomachs of the workers.

Anna now felt herself filled by a tumult of joy, and she seemed suddenly almost united by a kind of friendly domesticity with the two women. They took her into their houses where the rooms were large and light, although very old. On the walls sacred images alternated with pasqual palms; joints of pork hung from the rafters; the posts, ample and very high, rose from the pavement with cradles beside them; from all emanated the serenity of family concord. Anna, beholding these arrangements, smiled timidly at some inward sweetness, and at a certain point was seized by a strange emotion, almost as if all of her latent virtues of the domestic mother and her instincts to succour had escaped and suddenly risen up.

When the women descended again to the yard, the men still remained around the table and Zacchiele was talking to them. Albarosa took a small loaf of corn-bread, divided it in the middle, spread it with oil and salt, and offered it to Anna. The fresh oil, just pressed from the fruit, diffused in the mouth a savoury, sharp aroma, and Anna, allured, ate all of the bread. She even drank the wine. Then as the evening was falling, she and Zacchiele began the descent of the hill on their return. Behind them the farmers were singing. Many other songs arose from the fields and pervaded the evening air with the soft fullness of a Gregorian chant. The wind blew moistly through the olive trees, a dying splendour between rose and violet suffused the sky. Anna walked in front with swift steps, grazing the tree-trunks. Zacchiele called the woman by name; she turned to him humbly and palpitatingly. “What did he wish?” Zacchiele said no more; he took two steps and arrived at her side. Thus they continued their walk, in silence, until the Salaria road no longer divided them. As in going, each had taken the marginal road, on the right and left. At length they re-entered the Portasale.

IX

Through a native irresolution Anna continually deferred her matrimony. Religious doubts tormented her. She had heard it said that only virgins would be admitted to the circle around the mother of God in Paradise. What then? Must she renounce that celestial sweetness for an earthly blessing? An ardour for devotion even more compelling seized her. In all of her unoccupied hours she went to the church of the Rosario; knelt before the great confessional of oak and remained motionless in the attitude of prayer. The church was simple and poor; the pavement was covered with mortuary stones and a single shabby metal lamp burned before the altar. The woman mourned inwardly for the pomp of her basilica, the solemnity of the ceremonies, the eleven lamps of silver, the three altars of precious marbles.

But in Holy Week of the year 1857 a great event happened. Between the Confraternity commanded by Don Fileno d’Amelio and the Abbot Cennamele, who was aided by the parochial satellites, broke out a war; and the cause of it was a dispute about the procession of the dead Jesus. Don Fileno wished this ostentation, furnished by the congregation, to issue from the parochial church. The war attracted and enveloped all of the citizens as well as the militia of the King of Naples, residing in the fortress. Popular tumult arose, the roads were occupied by assemblies of fanatical people, armed platoons went around to suppress disorders, the Archbishop of Chieti was besieged by innumerable messages from both parties; much money for corruption was spent everywhere and a murmur of mysterious plots spread throughout the city. The house of Donna Cristina Basile was the hearth of all the dissensions. Don Fiore Ussorio shone for his wonderful stratagems and his boldness in these days of struggle. Don Paolo Nervegna had a great effusion of bile. Don Ignazio Cespa exercised, to no purpose, all of his conciliative blandishments and mellifluous smiles. The victory was fought for with an implacable violence up to the ritualistic hour for the funeral ostentation. The people fermented with expectation; the captain of the militia, a partisan of the abbey, threatened punishment to the instigators of the Confraternity. Revolt was on the point of breaking forth. When, lo, there arrived at the square a mounted soldier, bearer of an episcopal message, that gave the victory to the congregation.

The ostentation then passed with rare magnificence through the streets scattered with flowers. A chorus of fifty child voices sang the hymn of the Passion and ten censers filled the entire city with the smell of incense. The canopies, the standards, the tapers, which made up this new display, filled the bystanders with wonder. The Abbot, although discomfited, did not intervene, and in his place Don Pasquale Carabba, the Great Coadjutor, clothed in ample vestments, followed with much solemnity the bier of Jesus.

Anna, during the contest, had made offerings for the victory of the Abbot. But the sumptuousness of this ceremony blinded her; a kind of rapture overcame her at the spectacle, and she felt gratitude even toward Don Fiore Ussorio, who passed bearing in his hand an immense taper. Then as the last band of celebrators arrived before her, she mingled with the fanatical crowd of men, women and children and thus moved along as if scarcely touching the earth, while always holding her eyes fixed on the surmounting wreath of the Mater Dolorosa. On high, from one balcony to another, were stretched, consecutively, illustrious flags; from the houses of the stewards hung rude figures of lambs fashioned from corn, while at intervals, where three or four streets met, lighted brasiers spread fumes of aromatics.

The procession did not pass under the windows of the Abbot. From time to time a kind of irregular fluctuation ran the length of the line, as if the band of standard-bearers had encountered an obstacle. The cause of it was a struggle between the bearer of the Crucifix of the Confraternity and the lieutenant of the militia, both having received the command to follow a different route. Since the lieutenant could not use violence without committing sacrilege, the Crucifix conquered. The Congregation exulted, the Commanding General burned with wrath, and the people were filled with curiosity. When the ostentation, in the vicinity of the Arsenale, turned again to enter the church of Saint John, Anna took an oblique path and in a few steps reached the main door. She kneeled. First there arrived before her a man bearing the enormous cross, while the standard-bearers followed him, balancing very tall banners on their foreheads or chins, and gesticulating with a clever play of muscles. Then, almost in the centre of a cloud of incense, came the other bands, the angelic choruses, men in cassocks, the virgins, the gentlemen, the clerics, the militias. The sight was grand. A kind of mystic terror seized the soul of the woman.

There advanced in the vestibule, according to custom, an acolyte carrying a large silver plate for receiving tapers. Anna watched. Then it was that the Commander, crunching between his teeth bitter words for the Confraternity, threw his taper violently upon the plate and turned his back with a threatening shrug. All remained dumbfounded. And in the sudden silence one heard the clash of the sword of the officer as he left the church. Don Fiore Ussorio only had the temerity to smile.

X

For a long time these deeds aroused the vocal activity of the citizens and were a cause for quarrels. As Anna had been a witness of the last scene, several came to her to get the facts. She recounted her story with patience, and always in the same way. Her life from now on was entirely expended in religious practices, domestic duties, and in loving ministrations for her turtle. At the first signs of spring, it awoke from its condition of lethargy. One day, unexpectedly, it unsheathed from its shield the serpentine head and swung it weakly, while its feet remained in torpor. The little eyes were half covered with the eyelids. The animal, perhaps no longer conscious of being a captive, pushed by the need to find food, as in the sand of its native wood, moved at length with a lazy and uncertain effort, while feeling the ground with its feet.

Anna, in the presence of this reawakening, was filled with an ineffable tenderness, and looked on with eyes wet with tears. Then she took the turtle, laid it upon her bed, and offered it some green leaves. The turtle hesitated to touch the leaves, and in opening its jaws showed its fleshy tongue, like that of a parrot. The covering of the neck and claws seemed to be the flaccid and yellowish membrane of a dead body. The woman, at this sight, felt herself overcome with a great tenderness; and to restore her beloved she caressed it as would a mother a convalescent child. She greased with sweet oil the bony shield, and as the sun beat down upon it the polished sections shone with beauty.

Among such cares passed the months of spring. But Zacchiele, counselled by the spring season to greater pursuit of love, beset the woman with such tender supplications that he had at last from her a solemn promise. The nuptials should be celebrated the day preceding the nativity of Christ.

Then the idyl reblossomed. While Anna attended to her needlework for her trousseau, Zacchiele read in a loud voice the story of the New Testament. The marriage at Cana, the miracles of the Redeemer, the dead of Nain, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the liberation of the daughter of Cainan, the ten lepers, the blind-born, the resurrection of the Nazarene, all of those miraculous narrations ravished the soul of the woman. And she pondered long on Jesus who entered into Jerusalem riding on an ass, while the people spread in His path their garments and waved palms.

In the room, the herb of thyme shed odour from an earthen vase. The turtle came sometimes to the seamstress and caught in its mouth the hem of the cloth, or chewed the leather of her shoe. One day Zacchiele, while reading the parable of the Prodigal Son, feeling suddenly something soft under his feet, through an involuntary motion of fright, gave a kick, and the turtle, struck against the wall, fell back upside down. Its dorsal shell burst in many places, while a little blood appeared on one of its claws, which the animal waved fruitlessly in an effort to regain its correct position.

In spite of the fact that the unhappy lover showed himself contrite and even inconsolable, Anna, after that day, locked herself in a kind of diffident severity, scarcely spoke, and no longer wished to hear his reading. And thus the Prodigal Son was left forever under the trees with the acorns to watch his master’s pigs.

XI

Zacchiele lost his life in the great flood of October, 1857. The dairy farm where he lived, in the neighbourhood of the Cappuccini Convent, beyond the Porta-Giulia, was inundated by the flood. The waters covered the entire country, from the hill of Orlando to the hill of Castellammare; and, since it had flown over vast deposits of clay, it looked bloody as in the ancient fable. The tops of the trees emerged here and there from this blood, so miry and extensive. At intervals passed enormous trunks of trees with all of their roots, furniture, unrecognisable materials, groups of beasts not yet dead who bellowed and disappeared and then reappeared and were lost sight of in the distance. The droves of oxen, especially, presented a wonderful sight; their great white bodies pursued one another, their heads reared desperately from out the water, furious interlacings of horns occurred in their rushes of terror. As the sea was to the east, the waves at the mouth of the river overflowed into it. The salt lake of Palata and its estuaries also joined with the river. The fort became a lost island. Inland the roads were submerged, and in the house of Donna Cristina the water-line reached almost half way up the stairs. The tumult increased continuously, while the bells sounded clamorously. The prisoners, within their prisons, howled.

Anna, believing in some supreme chastisement from the Most High, took recourse in prayers for salvation. The second day, as she mounted to the top of the pigeon-house, she saw nothing but water, water everywhere under the clouds, and later observed, terrified, horses galloping madly on the ridge of San Vitale. She descended, dulled, with her mind in a turmoil, and the persistency of the noise and the mists of the air blurred in her every sense of place and time.

When the flood began to subside, the country people entered the city by means of scows. Men, women and children carried in their faces and eyes a grievous stupefaction. All narrated sad stories. And a ploughman of the Cappuccini came to the Basile house to announce that Don Zacchiele had been washed out to sea. The ploughman spoke simply in telling of the death. He said that in the vicinity of the Cappuccini certain women had bound their nursing children to the top of an enormous tree to rescue them from the waters and that the whirlpools had uprooted the tree, dragging down the five little creatures. Don Zacchiele was upon a roof with other Christians in a compact group, and as the roof was about to be submerged the corpses of animals and broken branches beat against these desperate ones. When at length the tree with the babies passed over them, the impact was so terrible that after its passage there was no longer a trace of roof or Christians.

Anna listened without weeping, and in her mind, shaken by the account of that death, by that tree with its five infants, and those men all crouched upon the roof while the corpses of beasts beat against it, sprang up a kind of superstitious wonder like the excitement she had felt in hearing certain stories of the Old Testament. She mounted slowly to her room, and tried to compose herself. The sun shone upon her window, and the turtle slept in a corner, covered with his shield, while the chattering of swallows came from the tiles. All of these natural things, this customary tranquillity of her daily life, little by little comforted her. From the depths of that momentary calm at length her grief arose clearly, and she bent her head upon her breast in deep depression.

Her heart was stung with remorse for having preserved against Zacchiele that strange, silent rancour for so long a time; recollections one after another came to mind, and the virtues of her lost lover shone more brightly than ever in her memory. As the scourgings of her grief increased, she got up, went to her bed, and there stretched herself out upon her face. Her weeping mingled with the chattering of the birds.

Afterwards, when her tears were dried, the peace of resignation began to descend upon her soul, and she came to feel that everything of this earth was frail and that we ought to bend ourselves to the will of God. The unction of this simple act of consecration spread in her heart a fulness of sweetness. She felt herself freed from all inquietude, and found repose in her humble but firm faith. From now on in her law there was but this one clause: The sovereign will of God, always just, always adorable, established in all things praised and exalted through all eternity.

XII

Thus to the daughter of Luca was opened the true road to Paradise. The passing of time was not marked by her except in ecclesiastical occurrences. When the river re-entered its channel, there issued in consecutive order for many days processions throughout the cities and country. She followed all of them, together with the people, singing the Te Deum. The vineyards everywhere had been devastated; the earth was soft and the air pregnant with white vapours, singularly luminous, like those rising from the swamps in spring.

Then came the feast of All Saints; then the solemnity for the dead. A great number of masses were celebrated for the assistance of the victims of the flood. At Christmas Anna wished to make a manger; she bought a Christ-child, Mary, Saint Joseph, an ox and an ass, wise men, and shepherds, all made of wax. Accompanied by the daughter of the sacristan she went to the ditches of the Salaria road to search for moss. Under the glassy serenity of the fields, the lands were covered with lime, the factory of Albarosa appeared on the hill among the olives, and no voice disturbed the silence. Anna, as she discovered the moss, bent and with a knife cut the clod. On contact with the cold verdure her hands became violet coloured. From time to time, at the sight of a clod greener than the others, there escaped from her an exclamation of contentment. When her basket was full, she sat down upon the edge of the ditch with the girl. She raised her eyes thoughtfully and slowly to the olive-orchard, and they rested upon the white wall of the factory that resembled a cloisteral edifice. Then she bowed her head, tormented by her thoughts. Later she turned suddenly to her companion—”Had she never seen the olives crushed!” She began to picture the work of the crushing with voluble speech; and, as she spoke, little by little arose in her mind other recollections than those she was describing, and they showed themselves in her voice by a slight trembling.

That was the last weakness. In April of 1858, shortly after Ascension Day, she fell sick. She remained in bed almost a month, tormented by a pulmonary inflammation. Donna Cristina came morning and evening to her room to visit her. An aged maid servant who made public profession of assisting the sick gave her medicines to her. Then the turtle cheered the days of her convalescence. And as the animal was emaciated from fasting, and was nothing but skin, Anna, seeing him so lean, and perceiving herself so debilitated, felt that secret satisfaction that we experience when we suffer the same pain as a beloved one. A mild tepidity arose from the tiles covered with lichens, in the court the cocks crew, and one morning two swallows entered suddenly, flapped their wings about the room, and fled away again.

When Anna returned for the first time to the church, after her recovery, it was the festival of roses. On entering she breathed in greedily the perfume of incense. She walked softly along the nave, in order to find the spot where she had been accustomed to kneel, and she felt herself seized with a sudden joy when finally she discovered between the mortuary stories that one which bore in its centre an almost effaced bas-relief. She knelt upon it, and fell to praying. The people multiplied. At a certain point in the ceremony two acolytes descended from the choir with two silver basins full of roses, and commenced to scatter the flowers upon the heads of the prostrate ones, while the organ played a joyful hymn. Anna remained bent in a kind of ecstasy that gave her the blessedness of the mystic celebration and a vaguely voluptuous feeling of recovery. When several roses happened to fall upon her, she gave a long sigh. The poor woman had never before in her life experienced anything more sweet than that sigh of mystic delight and its subsequent languor.

The Rose Easter remained therefore Anna’s favourite festival and it returned periodically without any noteworthy episode. In 1860 the city was disturbed with serious agitations. One heard often in the night the roll of drums, the alarms of sentinels, the reports of muskets. In the house of Donna Cristina a more lively fervour for action manifested itself among the five suitors. Anna was not frightened, but lived in profound meditation, having neither a realisation of public events nor of domestic wants, fulfilling her duties with machine-like exactness.

In the month of September the fortress of Pescara was evacuated, the Bourbon militia dispersed, their arms and baggage thrown into the water of the river, while bands of citizens flocked through the streets with liberal acclamations of joy. Anna, when she heard that the Abbot Cennamele had fled precipitately, thought that the enemies of the Church of God had triumphed, and was greatly grieved at this.

After this her life unfolded in peace for a long time. The shell of the turtle increased in breadth and became more opaque; the tobacco plant sprang up annually, blossomed and fell; the wise swallows every autumn departed for the land of the Pharaohs. In 1865 the great contest of the suitors at length culminated in the victory of Don Fileno D’Amelio. The nuptials were celebrated in the month of March with banquets of solemn gaiety. There came to prepare the valuable dishes two Capuchin fathers, Fra Vittorio and Fra Mansueto.

They were the two who after the suppression of the order remained to guard the convent. Fra Vittorio was a sexagenary, reddened, strengthened and made happy by the juice of the grape. A little green band covered an infirmity of his right eye, while the left scintillated, full of a penetrating liveliness. He had exercised from his youth the art of drugs, and, as he had much skill in the kitchen, gentlemen were accustomed to summon him on occasions of festivity. At work he used rough gestures that revealed in the ample sleeves his hairy arms, his whole beard moved with every motion of his mouth and his voice broke into shrill cries. Fra Mansueto, on the contrary, was a lean old man with a great head and on his chin a goatee. He had two yellowish eyes full of submission. He cultivated the soil and going from door to door carried eatable herbs to the houses. In serving a company he took a modest position, limped on one foot, spoke in the soft idiomatic patois of Ortona, and, perhaps in memory of the legend of Saint Thomas, exclaimed, “For the Turks!” every little while stroking his polished head with his hand.

Anna attended to the placing of the plates, the kitchen ware and the coppers. It seemed to her now that the kitchen had assumed a kind of secret solemnity through the presence of the brothers. She remained to watch attentively all of the acts of Fra Vittorio, seized with that trepidation that all simple people feel in the presence of men gifted with some superior virtue. She admired especially the infallible gesture with which the great Capuchin scattered upon the dishes certain secret drugs of his, certain particular aromas known only to him. But the humility, the mildness, the modest jokes of Fra Mansueto little by little made a conquest of her. And the bonds of a common country and the still stronger ones of a common dialect cemented their friendship.

As they conversed, recollections of the past germinated in their speech. Fra Mansueto had known Luca Minella and he was in the basilica when the death of Francesca Nobile had happened among the pilgrims. “For the Turks!” He had even helped to carry the corpse up to the house at the Porta-Caldara, and he remembered that the dead woman wore a waist of yellow silk and many chains of gold....

Anna grew sad. In her memory this matter up to that moment had remained confused, vague, almost uncertain, dimmed by the very long inert stupor that had followed her first paroxysms of epilepsy. But when Fra Mansueto said that her mother was in Paradise because those who die in the cause of religion dwell among the saints, Anna experienced an unspeakable sweetness and felt suddenly surge up in her soul an immense adoration for the sanctity of her mother.

Then, remembering the places of her native country, she began to discourse minutely on the Church of the Apostle, mentioning the shapes of the altars, the position of the Chapels, the number of the ornaments, the shape of the cupola, the positions of the images, the divisions of the pavement and the colours of the windows. Fra Mansueto followed her with benignity; and, since he had been in Ortona several months before, recounted the new things seen there. The Archbishop of Orsogna had given the Church a precious vase of gold with settings of precious stones. The Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament had renovated all the wood and leather of the stoles. Donna Blandina Onofrii had furnished an entire change of apparel, consisting in Dalmatian chasubles, stoles, sacerdotal cloaks and surplices.

Anna listened greedily, and the desire to see these new things and to see again the old ones began to torment her. When the Capuchin was silent she turned to him with an air half of pleasure, half of timidity. The May feast was drawing near. Should they go?

XIII

During the last days of May, Anna, having had permission from Donna Cristina, made her preparations. She felt anxious about the turtle. Ought she to leave it or carry it with her? She remained a long time in doubt but at length decided to carry it for security. She put it in a basket with her clothes and the boxes of confection which Donna Cristina was sending to Donna Veronica Monteferrante, Abbess of the monastery of Santa Caterina. At dawn Anna and Fra Mansueto set out. Anna had from the first a nimble step and a gay aspect; her hair, already almost entirely grey, lay in shining folds beneath her handkerchief. The brother limped, supporting himself with a stick, and an empty knapsack swung from his shoulders. When they reached the wood of pines, they made their first halt.

The trees in the May morning, immersed in their native perfume, swayed voluptuously between the serenity of the sky and that of the sea. The trunks wept resin. The blackbirds whistled. All the fountains of life seemed open for the transfiguration of the earth.

Anna sat down upon the grass, offered the monk bread and fruit, and began to talk about the festivity, eating at intervals. The turtle tried with its two foremost legs to reach the edge of the basket, and its timid serpent-like head projected and withdrew in its efforts. Then, when Anna took it out, the beast began to advance on the moss toward a bush of myrtle, with less slowness, perhaps feeling the joy of its primitive liberty arise confusedly in it. Its shell amongst the green looked more beautiful. Fra Mansueto made several moral reflections and praised Providence that gives to the turtle a house, and sleep during the winter season. Anna recounted several facts which demonstrated great frankness and rectitude in the turtle. Then she added, “What are the animals thinking of?”

The brother did not answer. Both remained perplexed. There descended from the bark of a pine a file of ants and they extended themselves across the ground, each ant dragged a fragment of food and the entire innumerable family fulfilled its work with diligent precision. Anna watched, and there awoke in her mind the ingenuous beliefs of her childhood. She spoke of wonderful dwellings that the ants excavated beneath the earth. The brother replied with an accent of intense faith, “God be praised!” And both remained pensive, beneath the greatness, while worshipping God in their hearts.

In the early hours of the evening they arrived in the country of Ortona. Anna knocked at the door of the monastery and asked to see the abbess. On entering they saw a little court paved with black and white stone with a cistern in the centre. The reception parlour was a low room, with a few chairs around it; two walls were occupied by a grating, the other two by a crucifix and images. Anna was immediately seized by a feeling of veneration for the solemn peace that reigned in this spot. When the Mother Veronica appeared unexpectedly behind the grating, tall and severe in her monastic habit, Anna experienced an unspeakable confusion as if in the presence of a supernatural apparition. Then, reassured by the kind smile of the abbess, she delivered her message briefly, placed her boxes in the cavity of the turnstile and waited. The Mother Veronica moved about her benignly, watching her with her beautiful lion-like eyes; she gave her an effigy of the Virgin, and in taking leave she extended her illustrious hand to be kissed through the grating, and disappeared.

Anna went out full of trepidation. As she passed the vestibule, there reached her ears a chorus of litanies, a song, very regular and sweet, which came perhaps from some subterranean chapel. When she passed through the court she saw on the left, at the top of the wall, a branch loaded with oranges. And, as she set foot again on the road, she seemed to have left behind her a garden of blessedness.

Then she turned toward the eastern road in order to search for her relations. At the door of the old house an unknown woman stood leaning against the door-post. Anna approached her timidly and asked news of the family of Francesca Nobile. The woman interrupted her: “Why? Why? What did she want?”—with a voice and an investigating expression. Then, when Anna recalled herself, she permitted her to enter.

The relations had almost all died or emigrated. There remained in the house an old, rich man, Uncle Mingo, who had taken for his second wife “the daughter of Sblendore” and lived with her almost in misery. The old man at first did not recognise Anna. He was seated upon an old ecclesiastical chair, whose red material hung in shreds; his hands rested on the arms, contorted and rendered enormous through the monstrosity of gout, his feet with rhythmic movements beat the earth, while a continuous paralytic trembling agitated the muscles of his neck, elbows and knees. As he gazed at Anna he held open with difficulty his inflamed eyelids. At length he remembered her.

As Anna proceeded to explain her own experiences, the daughter of Sblendore, sniffing money, began to conceive in her mind hopes of usurpation, and by virtue of these hopes became more benign in her expression. Anna’s tale was scarcely told when she offered her hospitality for the night, took her basket of clothes and laid it down, promised to take care of her turtle and then made several complaints, not without tears, about the infirmity of the old man and the misery of their house. Anna went out with her soul full of pity; she went up the coast toward the belfry of the church, feeling anxious on approaching it.

Around the Farnese palace the people surged like billows; and that great feudal relic ornamented with figures, magnificent in the sunlight, was most conspicuous. Anna passed through the crowd, alongside of the benches of the silversmiths who made sacred apparel and native objects. At all of that scintillating display of liturgical forms her heart dilated with joy and she made the sign of the cross before each bench as before an altar. When at night she reached the door of the church and heard the canticle of the ritual, she could no longer contain her joy as she advanced as far as the pulpit, with steps almost vacillating. Her knees bent beneath her and the tears welled up in her eyes. She remained there in contemplation of the candelabras, the ostensories, of all those objects on the altar, her mind dizzy from having eaten nothing since morning. An immense weakness seized her nerves and her soul shrank to the point of annihilation. Above her, along the central nave, the glass lamps formed a triple crown of fire. In the distance, four solid trunks of wax flamed at the sides of the tabernacle.

The five days of the festival Anna lived thus within the church from early morning until the hour at which the doors were closed—most faithfully she breathed in that warm air which implanted in her senses a blissful torpor, in her soul a joy, full of humility. The orations, the genuflections, the salutations, all of those formulas, all of those ritualistic gestures incessantly repeated, dulled her senses. The fumes of the incense hid the earth from her.

Rosaria, the daughter of Sblendore, meanwhile profited by moving her to pity with lying complaints and by the miserable spectacle of the paralytic old man. She was an unprincipled woman, expert in fraud and dedicated to debauchery; her entire face was covered with blisters, red and serpentine, her hair grey, her stomach obese. Bound to the paralytic by vices common to both and by marriage, she and he had squandered in a short time their substance in guzzling and merry-making. Both in their misery, venomous from privation, burning with thirst for wine and liquor, harassed by the infirmities of decrepitude, were now expiating their prolonged sinning.

Anna, with a spontaneous impulse for charity, gave to Rosaria all her money kept for alms-giving and her superfluous clothes as well as her earrings, two gold rings and her coral necklace and she promised still further support. At length she retraced the road to Pescara, in company with Fra Mansueto, and bearing the turtle in her basket.

During their walk, as the houses of Ortona withdrew into the distance, a great sadness descended upon the soul of the woman. Crowds of singing pilgrims were passing in other directions, and their songs, monotonous and slow, remained a long while in the air. Anna listened to them; an overwhelming desire drew her to join them, to follow them, to live thus, making pilgrimages from sanctuary to sanctuary, from country to country, in order to exalt the miracles of every saint, the virtues of every relic, the bounty of every Mary.

“They go to Cucullo,” Fra Mansueto said, pointing with his arm to some distant country. And both began to talk of Saint Domenico, who protected the men from the bite of serpents and the seed from caterpillars; then they spoke of the patron saints. At Bugnara, on the bridge of Rivo, more than a hundred cart-houses, among horses and mules, laden with fruit, were going in a procession to the Madonna of the Snow. The devotees rode on their chargers, with sprigs of spikenard on their heads, with strings of dough on their shoulders, and they laid at the feet of the image their cereal gifts. At Bisenti, many youths, with baskets of grain on their heads, were conducting along the roads an ass that carried on its back a larger basket, and they entered the Church of the Madonna of the Angels, to offer them up, while singing. At Torricella Peligna, men and children, crowned with roses and garlands of roses, went up on a pilgrimage to the Madonna of the Roses, situated upon a cliff where was the foot-prints of Samson. At Loreto Apentino a white ox, fattened during the year with abundance of pasturage, moved in pomp behind the statue of Saint Zopito. A red drapery covered him and a child rode upon him. As the sacred ox entered the church, he gave forth the excrescence of his food and the devotees from this smoking material presaged future agriculture.

Of such religious usages Anna and Fra Mansueto were speaking, when they reached the mouth of the Alento. The Channel carried the water of spring between the green foliage not yet flowered. And the Capuchin spoke of the Madonna of the Incoronati, where for the festival of Saint John the devotees wreath their heads with vines, and during the night go with great rejoicing to the River Gizio to bathe.

Anna removed her shoes in order to ford the river. She felt now in her soul an immense and loving veneration for everything, for the trees, the grass, the animals, for all that those Catholic customs had sanctified. Thus from the depths of her ignorance and simplicity arose the instinct of idolatry.

Several months after her return, an epidemic of cholera broke out in the country, and the mortality was great. Anna lent her services to the poor sick ones. Fra Mansueto died. Anna felt much grief at this. In the year 1866, at the recurrence of the festival, she wished to take leave and return to her native place forever, because she saw in her sleep every night Saint Thomas who commanded her to depart. So she took the turtle, her clothes and her savings, weeping she kissed the hand of Donna Cristina, and departed upon a cart, together with two begging nuns.

At Ortona she dwelt in the house of her paralytic uncle. She slept upon a straw pallet and ate nothing but bread and vegetables. She dedicated every hour of the day to the practices of the Church, with a marvellous fervour, and her mind gradually lost all ability to do anything save contemplate Christian mysteries, adore symbols and imagine Paradise. She was completely absorbed with divine charity, completely encompassed with that divine passion which the sacerdotals manifest always with the same signs and the same words. She comprehended but that one single language; had but that one single refuge, sweet and solemn, where her whole heart dilated in a pious security of peace and where her eyes moistened with an ineffable sweetness of tears.

She suffered, for the love of Jesus, domestic miseries, was gentle and submissive and never proffered a lament, a reproof, or a threat. Rosaria extracted from her little by little all of her savings, and commenced then to let her go hungry, to overtax her, to call her vicious names and to persecute the turtle with fierce insistency. The old paralytic gave forth continuously a species of hoarse howls, opening his mouth where the tongue trembled and from which dripped continually quantities of saliva. One day, because his greedy wife swallowed before him some liquor and denied him a drink, escaping with the glass, he arose from his chair with an effort and began to walk toward her, his legs wavering, his feet striking the ground with an involuntary rhythmic stroke. Suddenly he moved faster, his trunk bent forward, while hopping with short pursuing steps, as if pushed by an irresistible impulse, until at length he fell face downward upon the edge of the stairs.

XV

Then Anna, in distress, took the turtle and went to ask succour of Donna Veronica Monteferrante. As the poor woman had already done several services for the monastery, the Abbess, pitying her, gave her work as a serving-nun.

Anna, though she had not taken the orders, dressed in the nun’s costume: the black tunic, the throat-bands, the head-dress with its ample white brims. She seemed to herself, in that habit, to be sanctified. And at first, when the air flapped the brims around her head with a noise as of wings, she shuddered with a sudden confusion in her veins. Also when the brims struck by the sun reflected on her face the colour of snow, she suddenly felt herself illuminated by a mystic ray.

With the passing of time, her ecstasies became more frequent. The grey-haired virgin was thrilled from time to time by angelic songs, by distant echoes of organs, by rumours and voices not perceptible to other ears. Luminous figures presented themselves to her in the darkness, odours of Paradise carried her out of herself.

Thus a kind of sacred horror began to spread through the monastery as if through the presence of some occult power, as if through the imminence of some supernatural event. As a precaution the new convert was released from every obligation pertaining to servile work. All of her positions, all of her words, all of her glances were observed and commented upon with superstition. And the legend of her sanctity began to flower.

On the first of February in the year of Our Lord 1873, the voice of the virgin Anna became singularly hoarse and deep. Later her power of speech suddenly disappeared. This unexpected dumbness terrified the minds of the nuns. And all, standing around the convert, considered with mystic terror her ecstatic postures, the vague motions of her mute mouth and the immobility of her eyes from which overflowed at intervals inundations of tears. The lineaments of the sick woman, extenuated by long fastings, had now assumed a purity almost of ivory, while the entire outlines of her arteries now seemed to be visible, and projected in such strong relief and palpitated so incessantly, that before that open palpitation of blood a kind of dread seized the nuns, as if they were viewing a body stripped of its skin.

When the month of Mary drew near, a loving diligence prompted the Benedictines to the preparation of an oratory. They scattered throughout the cloisteral garden, all flowering with roses and fruitful with oranges, while they gathered the harvest of early May in order to lay it at the foot of the altar. Anna having recovered her usual state of calmness, descended likewise to help at the pious work. She conveyed often with gestures the thoughts which her obstinate muteness forbade her to express. All of the brides of Our Lord lingered in the sun, walking among the fountains luxuriant with perfume. There was on one side of the garden a door, and as in the souls of the virgins the perfumes awoke suppressed thought, so the sun in penetrating beneath the two arches revived in the plaster the residue of Byzantine gold.

The oratory was ready for the day of the first prayer. The ceremony began after the Vespers. A sister mounted to the organ. Presently from the keys the cry of the Passion penetrated everywhere, all foreheads bowed, the censers gave out the fumes of jasmine and the flames of the tapers palpitated among crowns of flowers. Then arose the canticles, the litanies full of symbolic appellations and supplicating tenderness. As the voices mounted with increasing strength, Anna, impelled by the immense force of her fervour, screamed. Struck with wonder, she fell supine, agitating her arms and trying to arise. The litanies stopped. The sisters, several almost terrified, had remained an instant immobile while others gave assistance to the sick woman. The miracle seemed to them most unexpected, brilliant and supreme.

Then, little by little, stupor, uncertain murmurs and vacillation were succeeded by a rejoicing without limit, a chorus of clamorous exaltations and a mingled drowsiness as of inebriety. Anna, on her knees, still absorbed in the rapture of the miracle, was not conscious of what was happening around her. But when the canticles with greater vehemence were begun again, she sang too. Her notes from the descending waves of the chorus, at intervals emerged, since the devotees diminished the force of their voices in order to hear that one which by divine grace had been restored. And the Virgin became from time to time the censer of gold from which they exhaled sweet balsam, she was the lamp that by day and night lighted the sanctuary, the urn that enclosed the manna from heaven, the flame that burned without consuming, the stem of Jesse that bore the most beautiful of all flowers.

Afterwards the fame of the miracle spread from the monastery throughout the entire country of Ortona and from the country to all adjoining lands, growing as it travelled. And the monastery rose to great respect. Donna Blandina Onofrii, the magnificent, presented to the Madonna of the Oratorio a vest of brocaded silver and a rare necklace of turquoise came from the island of Smyrna. The other Ortosian ladies gave other minor gifts. The Archbishop of Orsagna made with pomp a congratulatory visit, in which he exchanged words of eloquence with Anna, who “from the purity of her life had been rendered worthy of celestial gifts.”

In August of the year 1876 new prodigies arrived. The infirm woman, when she approached vespers, fell in a state of cataleptic ecstasy; from which she arose later almost with violence. On her feet, while preserving always the same position, she began to talk, at first slowly and then gradually accelerating, as if beneath the urgency of a mystic inspiration. Her eloquence was but a tumultuous medley of words, of phrases, of entire selections learned before, which now in her unconsciousness reproduced themselves, growing fragmentary or combining without sequence.

She repeated native dialectic expressions mingled with courtly forms, and with the hyperboles of Biblical language as well as extraordinary conjunctions of syllables and scarcely audible harmonies of songs. But the profound trembling of her voice, the sudden changes of inflection, the alternate ascending and descending of the tone, the spirituality of the ecstatic figure, the mystery of the hour, all helped to make a profound impression upon the onlookers.

These effects repeated themselves daily, with a periodic regularity. At vespers in the oratorio they lit the lamps; the nuns made a kneeling circle, and the sacred representation began. As the infirm woman entered into the cataleptic ecstasies, vague preludes on the organ lifted the souls of the worshippers to a higher sphere. The light of the lamps was diffused on high, giving forth an uncertain flicker, and a fading sweetness to the appearance of things. At a certain point the organ was silent. The respiration of the infirm woman became deeper, her arms were stretched so that in the emaciated wrists the tendons vibrated like the strings of an instrument. Then suddenly, the sick woman bounded to her feet, crossed her arms on her breast, while resting in the position of the Caryatides of a Baptistery. Her voice resounded in the silence, now sweetly, now lugubriously, now placid, almost always incomprehensible.

At the beginning of the year 1877 these paroxysms diminished in frequency, they occurred two or three times a week and then totally disappeared, leaving the body of the woman in a miserable state of weakness. Then several years passed, in which the poor idiot lived in atrocious suffering, with her limbs rendered inert from muscular spasms. She was no longer able to keep herself clean, she ate only soft bread and a few herbs and wore around her neck and on her breast a large quantity of little crosses, relics and other images. She spoke stutteringly through lack of teeth and her hair fell out, her eyes were already glazed like those of an old beast of burden about to die.

One time, in May, while she was suffering, deposited under the portal, and the sisters were gathering the roses for Maria, there passed before her the turtle which still dragged its pacific and innocent life through the cloisteral garden. The old woman saw it move and little by little recede. It awakened no recollection in her mind. The turtle lost itself among the bunches of thyme.

But the sisters regarded her imbecility and the infirmity of the woman as one of those supreme proofs of martyrdom to which the Lord calls the elect in order to sanctify and glorify them later in Paradise and they surrounded her with veneration and care.

In the summer of the year 1881, there appeared signs of approaching death. Consumed and maimed, that miserable body no longer resembled a human being. Slow deformations had corrupted the joints of the arms; tumours, large as apples, protruded from her sides, on her shoulder and on the back of her head.

The morning of the 10th day of September, about the eighth hour, a trembling of the earth shook Ortona to its foundations. Many buildings fell, the roofs and walls of others were injured, and still others were bent and twisted. All of the good people of Ortona, with weeping, with cries, with invocations, with great invoking of saints and madonnas, came out of their doors and assembled on the plain of San Rocco, fearing greater perils. The nuns, seized with panic, broke from the cloister and ran into the streets, struggling and seeking safety. Four of them bore Anna upon a table. And all drew toward the plain, in the direction of the uninjured people.

As they arrived in sight of the people, spontaneous shouts arose, since the presence of these religious souls seemed propitious. On all sides lay the sick, the aged and infirm, children in swaddling clothes, women stupid from fear. A beautiful morning sun shed lustre upon the tumultuous waves of the sea and upon the vineyards; and along the lower coast the sailors ran, seeking their wives, calling their children by name, out of breath, and hoarse from climbing; and from Caldara there began to arrive herds of sheep and oxen with their keepers, flocks of turkey-cocks with their feminine guardians, and cart-houses, since all feared solitude and men and beasts in the turmoil became comrades.

Anna, resting upon the ground, beneath an olive tree, perceiving death to be near, was mourning with a weak murmur, because she did not wish to die without the Sacrament, and the nuns around her administered comfort to her, and the bystanders looked at her piously. Now, suddenly among the people spread the news that from the Porta Caldara had issued the image of the Apostle. Hope revived and hymns of thanksgiving mounted to the sky. As from afar vibrated an unexpected flash, the women knelt and tearfully with their hair dishevelled, began to walk upon their knees, towards the flash, while intoning psalms.

Anna became agonised. Sustained by two sisters, she heard the prayers, heard the announcement, and perhaps under her last illusions, she saw the Apostle approaching, for over her hollow face there passed a smile of joy. Several bubbles of saliva appeared upon her lips, a violent undulation of her body occurred, extended visibly to the extremities of her body, while upon her eyes the eyelids fell, reddish as from thin blood, and her head shrank into her shoulders. Thus the virgin Anna finally expired.

When the flash appeared more closely to the adoring women, there shone in the sun the form of a beast of burden carrying balanced upon its back, according to the custom, an ornament of metal.

THE END