Part 7

The Pentoni knew very well the vile calumnies which had been circulated about her, but she had not even tried to contradict them. What did it matter to her? She was conscious of her virtue, long resigned to discretion because of her sad lot, and that sufficed her. And how could calumnies harm her now? She knew that she was ugly; she was already thirty-five years old, and might have been fifty as far as she was concerned; she had never flattered herself that a man could fall in love with her; she had never even had the time to think that fate might perhaps concede her a different lot, the compensation of some affection in the dark poverty which had always oppressed her, weighed upon her, and against which she had sought courageously to defend herself with every means in her power. Did people believe that in her life there had been some slip from the path of virtue, or even more than one? Very well, let them believe it! At heart this not only no longer offended her, but almost flattered her self-love, her deep-rooted feminine instinct. She closed her eyes. But it was not true. No one had ever cared for her, save this insane Cocco Bertolli. It would have been laughable had the poor fellow not worn such a tragic expression.

“Must I go away then?” he asked.

“Why, no; stay!” she hastened to reply. “But you must think no more of such madness.”

“I can not help it! When an idea has taken root here, it will not leave me, even if my head were to be broken open with Vulcan’s hammer. You know that. And know that my proposals were honest, and always will be. Carolina, will you be my wife?”

She had begun to laugh at such a precipitate proposal, but Cocco Bertolli, furious, checked the laugh on her very lips.

“Do not laugh, do not laugh, by Heaven! At least believe me, you who are a woman of heart. Save me! I have need of some one who loves me and calms me. I will resume my position as professor; you shall be the wife of a great poet, who is now miserably wasting his talent. And if you do not understand the poet, no matter; you shall be the wife of a professor; does that content you? and I will liberate you from all these good-for-nothings who came to play the buffoon at your table. Listen; I will give you the greatest proof of my love, of the seriousness of my proposal. When I leave here I must go to the hospital and submit myself to a terrible operation. The doctors have told me that it may kill me. So be it! But if I recover, I will be yours, Carolina. Leave me this hope. Farewell!” And he rushed away without giving the poor woman time even to try to dissuade him.

At the hospital he had compelled the physicians to risk the terrible operation, declaring: “I neither can nor will go on living thus. It would kill me! Therefore operate on me without fear, without remorse. At the worst I am but anticipating my death by a few days.”

Two days after the operation good Martinelli, to whom Pentoni had weepingly confided this fresh outburst of madness on the part of Bertolli, was despatched to the hospital for news. Poor Signor Martinelli returned with his great nose pale with terror, his eyes round and glassy.

Cocco Bertolli was dying, and had asked him as a favor to persuade “his” Carolina to see him for the last time. The physician had assured Martinelli that the dying man would not outlive the night. Signora Pentoni, overcome with pity, had gone to the hospital, and there had been obliged to promise, solemnly to swear to the dying man, that if he should escape death she would be his wife.

“But there will be no danger, you will see, there will be no danger!” good Martinelli had said to her, reassuringly, as they were returning from this visit. “Because--yes, I say--”

And he had raised one hand as though to bless the dying man.

II

All the boarders were at table when Biagio Speranza entered the dining-room, announcing gaily:

“Safe! Sound! I come from the hospital. In about three weeks we shall once more have at our table the magnificent poet. Gentlemen, I invite you to cry: Long live Giannantonio Cocco Bertolli!”

No one echoed this cry. Signor Martinelli bent his long nose over his plate. Trunfo cast a side glance, and went on eating. Signora Pentoni wept.

Cedebonis was the only one who rejoiced at sight of Biagio Speranza, who made him laugh quite as much as hygiene required, and exclaimed: “Oh, bravo! Now you must tell us all about it.”

But Biagio Speranza did not assent. He looked at the mistress of the house.

“In Heaven’s name!” implored Signora Pentoni, “leave me in peace this evening!”

Biagio Speranza glanced round at his friends, and with a gesture asked what had happened.

“Martinelli,” explained Cariolin, “has been to the hospital before you to get news, and Carolinona has learned--”

“And regrets it?” cried Biagio Speranza, feigning surprise. “Ah, excuse me, Carolinona; what ingratitude! I have seen your poet, and by a miracle restrained myself from kissing his brow. What a hero of love! He spoke to me only of you. He asked me--”

Signora Pentoni rose to her feet, convulsed; she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, tried to say “Excuse me,” but a burst of sobs smothered the words in her throat, and she rushed toward the door of her room.

Cariolin, Scossi, ran forward and stopped her; all except Cedebonis and Trunfo rose to their feet and surrounded the weeping woman.

“Rubbish! Absurd!” sneered Trunfo from the table.

But the others, all in chorus, exhorted Carolinona to be of good courage. Was she really afraid that Cocco Bertolli would compel her to marry him? Preposterous, if she did not wish to! Disturbances? But were there not the police to keep him in order? Her promise as he lay at the point of death? What promise? Oh, nonsense! He should be made to understand, willy-nilly, that she had but uttered a pious lie. No? How was that?

“See here!” Biagio Speranza cut short the discussion, becoming fervent. “Be quiet, Carolinona, I will marry you myself.” All burst out laughing.

“What is there to laugh at?” cried Speranza, in earnest. “I am speaking seriously. Are we, or are we not, gentlemen? A hawk, gentlemen, threatens this dove; I will defend her. I shall marry her, I tell you. Who wishes to wager on it?”

“I do; a thousand francs!” suddenly proposed Cariolin. And Biagio Speranza cried as promptly: “Out with your thousand francs!” Then Cedebonis too rose from the table, rubbing his hands with delight: “Excellent! Excellent! Do you wish me to hold the stakes, gentlemen?”

“Out with the thousand francs!” repeated Biagio Speranza more emphatically.

“I have not got them with me,” said Cariolin, feeling in his pockets. “But I give my word. Here is my hand on it. A thousand francs and the wedding breakfast.”

“You will lose!” affirmed Speranza, clasping Cariolin’s hand. “All of you gentlemen are witnesses of the wager: I shall marry Carolinona. Come, come, hush, my betrothed. Dry your tears, smile, look at me! Do you not like me?”

With affectionate violence he drew her fat, puffy hands from her face. Pentoni smiled amid her tears. Applause and cries of “Bravo!” broke forth. Biagio Speranza, growing more and more ardent, embraced his betrothed, who struggled: “In Heaven’s name, let me go! let me go!”

“Let the engaged couple sit side by side!” some of them proposed. “Here, here! at the head of the table!” And Biagio Speranza and Carolinona were escorted in triumph, and made to sit side by side.

Good Martinelli was confounded. His nose seemed to grow visibly. Trunfo continued to sneer. “Rubbish! Rubbish!”

“Are you jealous perhaps?” Biagio cried to him, rising to his feet, and striking his fist on the table. “Will you do me the great favor of stopping that? If you gentlemen believe that at this moment I am jesting, you are mistaken. If you think that I am committing a mad

## act in marrying Carolinona, I have the honor of telling you that you

are crazy yourselves. I, who know my poor clay, am aware that at this moment I am wiser than I have ever been before in my life. I am a poor man, gentlemen, who, as a punishment from God, must fall in love with every beautiful woman I see. In love I at once become capable of the greatest follies. Quite different from Cariolin’s lies. Twice, gentlemen, twice I have been at the point--I shudder to think of it--at the point of really marrying. I must escape as soon as possible, at any cost, from this terrible catastrophe which continually threatens me. I profit by this moment, in which, fortunately, I am not in love, and shall marry Carolinona. A flash of genius, gentlemen. A true inspiration from heaven!”

“It is necessary to see,” objected Scossi, “whether Carolinona consents.”

Biagio Speranza turned toward his betrothed.

“Would you do me such a wrong? To such a good-looking young fellow as me? No, no; you see? My bride laughs, and the world laughs. It is settled, gentlemen!”

At this point Trunfo leaped to his feet, furiously tearing the napkin from his neck.

“Let us make an end to it once for all! This senseless, stupid jest gets on my nerves; this jest on a subject which you do not understand, and which I will tell you about, by Heaven!”

At thought of Trunfo’s matrimonial disaster there was a moment of embarrassment. All the faces became fixed in the act of laughing, then the laughter suddenly ceased.

“Pardon me,” said Biagio Speranza pacifically. “Why do you persist in believing that this is a joke of mine? I know better than you what an enormous folly it is to marry, and repeat that it is to prevent myself from committing such an act that I am marrying Carolinona.”

“The reasoning could not be more logical,” remarked Dario Scossi, again provoking all to mirth. “And I appeal to Cedebonis, professor of logic.”

“Most logical, most logical!” the latter affirmed. “Signor Speranza is, in fact, marrying so to escape the temptation of marrying.”

“Exactly!” replied Biagio Speranza. “And this is no joke. For Carolinona is seriously afraid of the poet Cocco Bertolli, and I am seriously afraid of losing my liberty some day or other. By marrying, we are both saving ourselves; she from that kind of a husband, I from a feared reality of a future wife. Married, we are both of us absolutely free to do whatever we please. She here, and I in my own home. In the eyes of the law, we have but the name in common, which is not properly a name at all, I beg you to observe, gentlemen. Speranza[1], just a common noun; I do not know what to do with it, and I cede it voluntarily. What do you say, Carolinona?”

“As far as I am concerned,” said Pentoni, smiling and shrugging her shoulders, “if you do not regret it--”

New applause, new congratulations, amid bursts of laughter.

The following day the whole city was filled with the amazing news. Biagio Speranza, stroking his fine blond beard with his fat, white hand, laughed with his limpid blue eyes, and from time to time his hand passed quickly, with a gesture habitual with him, from his beard upward and beneath his bold nose. He was most content with the great folly he was about to commit. Folly in the opinion of stupid people, be it understood. He was conscious of acting well. He had thought it over all night long, and had almost died of laughing. “Carolinona, my wife!”

Friends and acquaintances stopped him on the streets. “You are joking, then?”--“No; I mean to marry, really to marry. But as a precaution, you understand? To protect myself from taking a wife, that is all.”--“What! But you _are_ marrying!”--“Why, yes! I shall stay in my own home; I shall do as I please. I shall only go to her home as I do now, to dine. I shall not give her anything except the price of my meals, as usual. Well?”--“And your name?”--“But if she is willing, why not? It does not seem to me such a serious thing.”

And he left his questioner planted there in the middle of the street.

He had an appointment with Dario Scossi at the pension, to go over Carolinona’s papers together. At the pension besides Scossi, a witness for the groom, he found the timorous Martinelli, a witness for the bride, who had come purposely first of all to dissuade Signora Pentoni from lending herself to this highly scandalous proceeding.

“But do you think so?” she had replied, with a sad smile. “They are merry young fellows, let them alone. They were joking, and by this time think no more of it. I, on the other hand, have not been able to close my eyes all last night, thinking of that other in the hospital.”

But at the arrival of Scossi she had been amazed.

“What is this all about? Really? Again?”

Biagio Speranza found her obstinate in her refusal.

“Oh, do not let us have any nonsense,” said he to her. “Do you wish to make me lose the thousand francs of the wager?”

“What thousand francs? Nonsense, say no more about it, Signor Biagio.”

“What?” said the latter. “Did we not come to an agreement yesterday evening? Have you repented? You are then no longer afraid of Cocco Bertolli? You will see that he will seriously wish to marry you then.”

And once more he began to discuss the terms of the bargain, and dilate upon the reciprocal advantages of this marriage, at once serious and burlesque. “We, Carolinona, should not ascribe any importance to this our marriage, is it not so? and therefore for us it is not a serious affair.”

“Now, perhaps not,” remarked Signora Pentoni. “But what if later you repent it?”

“But undoubtedly I shall repent it!” admitted Biagio. “And just when I repent it I shall feel the advantage of it. Do you understand? That is why I am taking this step.”

“You understand then?” said Pentoni in conclusion. “If I offer opposition it certainly is not for myself. What have I to lose by it? I have everything to gain and nothing to lose. While you--”

“Do not think of me,” said Biagio Speranza, cutting short the discussion. “I know what I am doing. Come, let us get on, Scossi, it is getting late. But come then, answer, Carolinona: Name (I know that), paternity--age--place of birth--state; maid, widow, nothing; it is not necessary to tell the truth on this point. But the age, yes, be accurate; I beg of you.”

“Thirty-five,” replied Carolinona.

“There now!” exclaimed Biagio, shrugging his shoulders. “Do not begin at once!”

“Thirty-five, I assure you; I was born in 1865 at Caserta.”

“Good gracious! So you are still young and tender? Oh, my dear! One would never have thought it. And--well, shall we say a maid?”

“Most assuredly, yes, sir!”

“I believe you. Let us then write to Caserta for the birth certificate. Come, Scossi, let us hasten to the City Hall for the announcement.”

III

There were two reasons for hastening this memorable marriage: first, Giannantonio Cocco Bertolli was leaving the hospital, cured; secondly, Biagio Speranza had as usual fallen in love in the mean time with a seductive woman. During these days, in order to escape temptation, he walked the streets with his eyes on the ground and his nose in the air.

But the Pentoni had wished for time at least to have a new gown made for the ceremony. White? Oh, no indeed. Modest, suitable to her age, but new. Could she go to the City Hall otherwise? “And what do you care about it?” Biagio had asked her.

“Nothing for my own sake, of course. But for you, Signor Speranza. What would people say?”

“Let them talk. What does it matter to me? Dress as you like. I do not want you to throw away money needlessly.”

And what pains the choice of the gown cost her! Although so long subdued and resigned to her lot, she felt her heart oppressed that day by a strange anguish, which brought to her lips an unusual desire to laugh, to her eyes a longing to weep.

Though without wishing to ascribe importance to this buffoonery, yet the mere idea, the word “marriage,” instinctively awoke in her weary frame a certain sense of her real womanhood; not enough to cause her self-love to rebel against the part she was to play, yet enough to make her feel the bitterness, almost scorn, of it: and so she was to be married as a joke! And she laughed at it with the others, and still more than the others. Bah!

When the wedding day arrived, before the little procession started for the City Hall, for they would not perpetrate the joke in church, Biagio Speranza declared that he did not wish to take the thousand francs of the wager: he did not wish it to be said that this marriage had put money in his pocket; Cariolin should, therefore, buy with it a gift for the bride according to the bride’s own taste.

The bride objected to this. She did not wish anything either. But they all protested, Cariolin more loudly than any, for he had lost the thousand francs, and being at a ball, as the saying goes, wished to dance. “No, no, I will attend to it! I have already thought of something; you will see, Signora Speranza, a fine present, and very useful. Let me attend to it!”

He was in full dress, as he had promised, this tiny Cariolin, and wore an elegant black velvet vest. Scossi, too, was in evening dress. Cedebonis remembering at the last moment that he was professor of philosophy and pedagogy, came in a frock coat. The most dismal of all was good Martinelli, with his shiny coat, his light trousers, and his time-yellowed white cravat. Trunfo was the only one absent from the festive group.

Although the dining-room was all decked with flowers, a present from the boarders, and the long table in the middle was splendidly arranged by two hotel waiters hired for the occasion by Cariolin, who was to pay for the wedding repast, the merriment that each one had promised himself for this great day was lacking. Laughter was forced. How could that Carolinona have chosen material of such an incredible shade for her wedding gown! And why was not Biagio Speranza in evening dress? Good gracious! Was he or was he not going to be married? Biagio Speranza felt a sinking in his stomach, listening to Cariolin’s silly jests, who wished--so Biagio fancied--to avenge himself for the money he had lost, by calling Carolinona “Signora Speranza.” He now wished to get through with the ceremony as soon as possible, that he might think no more of it, that he might think of other things.

“Come, come! Let us get through with it all!”

“Wait a moment,” said Carolinona, her hat already on her head; “I want to take a look at the kitchen--”

There was a general exclamation of horror at so commonplace a thought thus ingenuously expressed at such a moment. Cariolin rushed forward ahead of them all, and, with the gracious bow befitting the conqueror of an Austrian archduchess, offered his arm to the bride.

The ceremony over, Cariolin rushed away to purchase the gift, begging then to wait a little for him before sitting down to the table. He wished to keep the secret absolutely dark.

At table they at last began to be merry. Biagio Speranza, who could now see the end of this carnival, was most gallant to his bride. The dinner was choice, delicious, abundant. With the champagne, toasts began. Toasts of all shades and to every one. Among others, one of Dario Scossi’s to Martinelli’s absent wife was so positively unfortunate that it made Martino, who, contrary to custom, had buried his nose somewhat too deeply in his glass, weep. While they were at table Cariolin’s long-expected gift arrived.

“There’s a couple of porters outside,” one of the hotel waiters announced.--Everybody became interested.--“Porters? So the gift had come in a cart?”--“And what then is the gift?”

They all rose and rushed out into the hall. There stood a magnificent double bed of inlaid wood, with complete furnishings. Biagio Speranza was annoyed.

“What a pity!” cried Carolinona, wringing her hands, sorry that a thousand francs should be so wasted.

But all the others applauded Cariolin’s magnificent idea. Cariolin himself was radiant. “Gentlemen, help me to set up this bed.”

Carolinona interposed, mortified, unhappy: “Where do you wish to put it, Signor Cariolin?”--“Where? In your room?”--“But it would not go in, pardon me. And besides, what do you think I could do with it?”--“Do you ask me?” cried Momo Cariolin.

These last words caused a fresh burst of applause and confused outcries. The pieces of the bed were taken by assault, and carried into Carolinona’s room. Her own bed was quickly pulled apart, and the new one, the nuptial couch, set up in its place.

She laughed, poor thing, at sight of these inexpert men laboring so hard, first at placing the mattress, then the first sheet, the second embroidered one, then putting the pillows in their slips, and finally covering the bed with a splendid silk cover. They were all perspiring. But where was Biagio Speranza? Oh, rascal! He had quietly stolen away.

IV

It was already evening. Carolinona, although tired after the tumultuous day, must spend several hours in putting the house in order. Finally, having dismissed the waiters and cook and sent her own servant to bed, she retired to her room. And the bed? Certainly she was not going to sleep in that new bed. She went and examined it closely, and first passed her hand gently over the pink silk coverlet; but against the soft, delicate, rose-colored material she suddenly noticed how dark her fat hand looked, disfigured by hard work, with short, rough nails, and instinctively she drew it back, murmuring anew: “What a pity!” She stooped down to examine the embroidery of the sheet, but no longer noticed the beauty of the bed; she was thinking of herself, thinking that if she had been pretty this ridiculous marriage would not have occurred; if she had been pretty she would have been married long ago. And yet, how many of her former friends, certainly not prettier than she, had married, and now had homes of their own, position, while she--as a joke--married, and no wife! “Fate!”

She started, looked around; saw in a corner, rolled up, the mattress of her bed, the iron framework leaning against the wall. She stood for a moment perplexed whether or not to call the servant to help her. What should she do? She moved toward the corner where stood the mattress, but passing before the mirror of her wardrobe, she caught sight of herself and paused. From the attentive examination of herself in the mirror there arose in her a lively dislike for the task of making up her bed. No, she would not do it! She would sleep in the armchair. So much the worse for her that at her age, to amuse others, she had lent herself to such folly, ridicule, mockery.