The Argosy. Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891

The climate is described by some emulator of Thomson to consist of "Tre mesi d'Inferno, nove d'inverno." But then you must remember that Turin houses are provided with chimneys, and Turin floors with carpets, and that no one who does not wish it is forced—as so many of us have been—to shiver upon marble pavement and be half suffocated by a charcoal-brazier. No refuge from the cold save that, one's bed, or sitting in a church. And one can neither lie for ever in bed, nor sit the day through in a church, however fine it may be.

It is extremely healthy, however, and altogether one of the pleasantest towns in Italy to live in. It has, too, one of the fairest gardens in Europe: the Valentino, with its old red-brick palace, its elms, its lawns, its river and setting, on one side, of lovely hills. Lady Mary W. Montagu speaks of the beauty of this garden in her day. I think she would scarcely recognise it at the present. Modern art has done its best, and over the whole yet lingers the mysterious charm of the Past; the dark historical legends connected with the palace and its quondam frail, fair, and, I regret to add, ferocious mistress, its—But what has all this to do with "Saint or Satan," you will ask? Where is your promised story?

Well, Satan enters somewhat largely into the story of the Valentino which I will relate you at some future time; and, as to the part, if any, his dark Majesty had in what I am going to tell you to-day, you yourself must judge, reader. I am inclined to think he had a claw in the matter, rather than Saint Antonio to whom the miracle is ascribed. The miracle! Yes, the miracle. And if you could see her, you would certainly say that a miracle of some kind there certainly was.

I have, after long consideration and study, come to the conclusion that "Old Maids" are, generally speaking, a very pleasant, kind-hearted portion of society. They may be a little irritable and restive while standing upon the border-land that divides the marriageable from the un-marriageable age; but that boundary once passed, they take place among the worthiest and best. And surely their anxiety as to the reply to the question of "Miss or Mrs.?" is pardonable. Matrimony means an utter change of life to a woman; while to a man it is of infinitely less import.

I am afraid I cannot class the "Signorina Guiseppina Pace" as having formed one of the pleasant section of old maids; I must even, however reluctantly, place her among the decidedly unpleasant ones. "Peace"—"Pace" was her name, but her old mother, with whom she lived, would have told you that she differed greatly from her name.

So do most of us, indeed; and I am sure you have only to run over the list of your friends in the kindliest manner to see that I am right in my affirmation.

Perhaps Miss Guiseppina thought that one can have too much of even a good thing; that the name of Pace was quite enough for the house, and that, in consequence, she ought to do her best to banish it under all other circumstances. She certainly succeeded; for she led her poor old widow-mother and their single servant such a life as to give them a lively foretaste of what Purgatory—to say no worse—might possibly be.

Ah! if she could but have cut off the Pace from her own name as cleanly as she cut off all possible peace from the two poor women who were doomed, for their sins, to live under the same roof with her!

But, despite the endeavours during thirty odd long years, she had never had one single chance of doing so; and it riled her to the core. Schoolfellows had floated away upon the sea of matrimony, friends had become mothers—grandmothers—and yet she remained Guiseppina Pace, as she ever had remained; and with no prospect of a change.

How she learned to loathe the sight of a bridal procession; and how she taught mother and maid to tremble at the passing of the same! How the news of a projected marriage stirred her bile, and how her dearest friends hastened to her with any matrimonial news they could gather, or invent! It was wonderful to see, and pleasant enough to witness—from a distance.

Guiseppina and her mother occupied a small flat in Via Santa Teresa: Guiseppina's bed-room and their one sitting-room looking into the street; her mother's room, the kitchen and a sort of coal-hole in which the servant slept being at the back of the house.

It was summer. People pushed perspiringly for the shady side of the street, puffed and panted under pillar and portico. The public gardens were besieged; fans fluttered everywhere; iced-beer and pezzi duri were in constant requisition.

It was on a Friday afternoon. Guiseppina had sunk, exhausted with the heat and exasperated with the flies, into a large arm-chair opposite her bed, and was sitting there fanning herself violently and trying to catch a breath of fresh air from the widely-opened window beside her. But there was no air, fresh or otherwise; and nothing but the languid steps of the passers in the street below was heard. Not the roll of a wheel, the hoof of a horse, or the yelp of a dog. It seemed as if the whole place had been given over to the cruel glare of sunshine and the persevering impertinence of flies.

It was just one of those days which make one long intensely for the shade of ilexes upon the sea shore, and the swish of idle waters upon the beach.

And Guiseppina did long, and had longed, and had finally driven her poor mother in tears to her room with reproaches for not being able to go for a month to Pegli, as, that very morning, their upper floor neighbours, the Castelles, had gone—and—and—and—: the usual litany—the usual nagging—the usual temper; hinc ille lacrimæ.

"Why should she alone," she exclaimed to herself sitting there, "remain to roast in town, while all her friends—? Ah, it was too cruel! If she could only—!"

Her eyes fell upon the little picture of Saint Antonio hanging over her bed—the Saint credited with presiding over marriages—the Saint to which, through all these long years, Guiseppina had daily appealed and prayed. Alas, all in vain! Not the shadow of a lover had he sent her—not the ghost of an offer had he vouchsafed her in return for all her tears and tapers.

She looked across at the Saint, this time with a scowl, however. The Saint seemed to return her gaze with a mocking smile. No! That was indeed adding insult to injury! After thirty years unswerving devotion, to mock at her thus!

She didn't say thirty years, mind, though she could have added somewhat to the figure without risking a fib. She said something else, a something that didn't sound exactly like a blessing; and, in a sudden fit of rage, started from her seat, sprang across the room, tore the offending Saint from the nail from which he had dangled for such long years, and, without further ceremony, flung him out through the open window into the street below.

Then, aghast at what she had done, she stood as if turned to stone, not daring to go to the window to see what the effect of her novel proceeding might have been.

Minutes, to her ages, passed: then came a ring at the bell. Answer she must; the maid was out marketing, her mother in tears—for it might be the post—it might be—! Ah, she shivered as she thought thereon—it might be a municipal guard with a "contravenzione"—fine; for in Italy one cannot now fling even saints from a window down upon the passers' heads with impunity. Time was when worse things were periodically showered down upon passengers, but, thanks to government and wholesome laws, nous avons changé tout cela.

With a beating heart Guiseppina drew the bolt and opened the door. There on the landing stood, not a policeman, but an elderly gentleman, his hat in one hand, Saint Antonio in the other, and his bald head looming out from the gloom—some Turin stairs are very dark—like the moon in a fog.

"Signora"—he began in a hesitating voice, and holding forward the imperturbable Saint as a shield and excuse for his intrusion—

"Signore," replied the ancient maiden, gazing forth at her visitor with wonder on her face and relief in her heart.

The relief fled quickly, however, for she suddenly remembered that many of the police were said to prowl about in civil clothes and inflict no end of fines, of which they pocketed a part.

But he didn't look a bit like a policeman. So she smiled upon him, and listened benignantly to his tale. He had been passing the house—musing upon his business—that of a broker—and trying to guess at the truth of a report relative to certain investments, when suddenly his calculations had been put to flight by the arrival of some unseen object from on high, which, after alighting upon the crown of his Panama, fell at his feet.

Here a wave of his hand and a flourish of the Saint indicated his having picked up the same.

He then proceeded to relate his having looked up—the Saint could only have come from Heavenward, he had perched so exactly upon the crown of his hat—having seen the open window—all the rest in the house were closed—and having taken the liberty—

Here another wave of the hand, followed by a bow.

And then, at this juncture, Signora Pace came out from her room, and she, after being informed of the cause of her daughter's being found in close converse upon the landing with a stranger of the male sex, asked the said stranger in. Her invitation being accepted, the trio adjourned to the sitting-room, the gallant knight still retaining his trophy.

Only after being warmly pressed to do so by Signora Pace did the all-unexpected and unknown visitor deposit Saint Antonio upon the centre table, and take his seat upon the red rep sofa next to her.

Guiseppina sat facing him. She seemed suddenly to have quite changed—never once snubbed her mother, and appeared throughout all sugar and sweetness.

We can suppose that remorse at having treated her Saint after this fashion, and relief at his not having fallen into the hands of a policeman, as she at first had most reasonably feared, had worked the change.

Policeman, indeed! Signor Cesare Garelli—such the visitor gave as his name—appeared to her to be quite a charming person. To be sure, he was bald, but that mattered little. So was Julius Cæsar and a host of other great men.

Cesare Garelli was something, to her, infinitely more interesting than his great namesake ever had been. He was a partner of the well-known Zucco, and the office they kept in Via Carlo Alberto had wooden cups of gold nuggets, no end of glittering coins and crisp bank-notes of foreign and formidable appearance, in its solitary window. More than once she had longingly halted before its treasures.

So a vast deal of information was exchanged on both sides, and when Signor Cesare Garelli rose to go, the flood of golden sunshine had crept quite across to the other side of the street.

Apparently some of it had crept into Guiseppina's heart also, for she refrained from flying out when the long-delayed "minestra" turned out to be smoked, and she even went so far as to give Saint Antonio a chaste kiss as she restored him to the crooked nail to which he had hung for so long a time.

Cesare Garelli's visits became more and more frequent in Via Santa Teresa. Then followed excursions to Rivoli, to Superza, to Moncalieri. Nice little dinners, and evenings spent at the Caffe San Carlo or under the horse-chestnuts in the Valentino garden, succeeded rapidly. La Signora Pace's life savoured of the seventh heaven, and Guiseppina's temper grew mellow as the peaches which her admirer was for ever sending her.

That phase passed away, and then one fine day Cesare Garelli burst forth in all the glory and radiance of a declared and accepted lover.

In less than three months from the date of Saint Antonio's flight through the window into the hot, dusty street, Guiseppina voluntarily—oh, how voluntarily!—renounced the name of Pace for ever and took that of Garelli.

If you want to know if Saint or Satan made his match for him, you had better ask Cesare Garelli himself. I cannot tell you.

    A. Beresford.

IN A BERNESE VALLEY

I met her by this mountain stream
At twilight's fall long years gone by,
While, rosy with day's afterbeam,
Yon snow-peaks glowed against the sky;

And she was but a simple maid
Who fed her goats among the hills,
And sang her songs within the glade,
And caught the music of the rills;

And drank the fragrance of the flowers
That bloomed within love-haunted dells;
And wandered home in gloaming hours,