International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1

Dr. Riccabocca shrugged his shoulders, restored his pipe to his mouth, and took a long whiff. It was a whiff eloquent, though cynical—a whiff peculiar to your philosophical smoker—a whiff that implied the most absolute but the most placid incredulity as to the effect of the Parson's moral lesson.

"Still you have not given us your decision," said the Parson, after a pause.

The Doctor withdrew the pipe. "Cospetto!" said he. "He who scrubs the head of an ass wastes his soap."

"If you scrubbed mine fifty times over with those enigmatical proverbs of yours," said the Parson testily, "you would not make it any the wiser."

"My good sir," said the Doctor, bowing low from his perch on the stile, "I never presumed to say that there were more asses than in the story; but I thought I could not better explain my meaning, which is simply this—you scrubbed the ass's head, and therefore you must lose the soap. Let the fanciullo have the sixpence; and a great sum it is, too, for a little boy, who may spend it all upon pocket-money!"

"There, Lenny—you hear?" said the Parson, stretching out the sixpence. But Lenny retreated, and cast on the umpire a look of great aversion and disgust.

"Please, Master Dale," said he, obstinately, "I'd rather not."

"It is a matter of feeling, you see," said the Parson, turning to the umpire; "and I believe the boy is right."

"If it is a matter of feeling," replied Dr. Riccabocca, "there is no more to be said on it. When Feeling comes in at the door, Reason has nothing to do but to jump out of the window."

"Go, my good boy," said the Parson, pocketing the coin; "but stop! Give me your hand first. There—I understand you—good-by!"

Lenny's eyes glistened as the Parson shook him by the hand, and, not trusting himself to speak, he walked off sturdily. The Parson wiped his forehead, and sat himself down on the stile beside the Italian. The view before them was lovely, and both enjoyed it (though not equally) enough to be silent for some moments. On the other side the lane, seen between gaps in the old oaks and chestnuts that hung over the moss-grown pales of Hazeldean Park, rose gentle verdant slopes, dotted with sheep and herds of deer; a stately avenue stretched far away to the left, and ended at the right hand, within a few yards of a ha-ha that divided the park from a level sward of table-land gay with shrubs and flower-pots, relieved by the shade of two mighty cedars. And on this platform, only seen in part, stood the Squire's old-fashioned house, red brick, with stone mullions, gable-ends, and quaint chimney-pots. On this side the road, immediately facing the two gentlemen, cottage after cottage whitely emerged from the curves in the lane, while, beyond, the ground declining gave an extensive prospect of woods and cornfields, spires and farms. Behind, from a belt of lilacs and evergreens, you caught a peep of the parsonage-house, backed by woodlands, and a little noisy rill running in front. The birds were still in the hedgerows, only, as if from the very heart of the most distant woods, there came now and then the mellow note of the cuckoo.

"Verily," said Mr. Dale softly, "my lot has fallen on a goodly heritage."

The Italian twitched his cloak over him, and sighed almost inaudibly. Perhaps he thought of his own Summer Land, and felt that amidst all that fresh verdure of the North, there was no heritage for the stranger.

However, before the Parson could notice the sigh or conjecture the cause, Dr. Riccabocca's thin lips took an expression almost malignant.

"Per Bacco!" said he; "in every country I find that the rooks settle where the trees are the finest. I am sure that, when Noah first landed on Ararat, he must have found some gentleman in black already settled in the pleasantest part of the mountain, and waiting for his tenth of the cattle as they came out of the Ark."

The Parson turned his meek eyes to the philosopher, and there was in them something so deprecating rather than reproachful, that Dr. Riccabocca turned away his face and refilled his pipe. Dr. Riccabocca abhorred priests; but though Parson Dale was emphatically a parson, he seemed at that moment so little of what Dr. Riccabocca understood by a priest, that the Italian's heart smote him for his irreverent jest on the cloth. Luckily at this moment there was a diversion to that untoward commencement of conversation, in the appearance of no less a personage than the donkey himself—I mean the donkey who ate the apple.

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CHAPTER VI

The Tinker was a stout swarthy fellow, jovial and musical withal, for he was singing a stave as he flourished his staff, and at the end of each refrain down came the staff on the quarters of the donkey. The Tinker went behind and sung, the donkey went before and was thwacked.

"Yours is a droll country," quoth Dr. Riccabocca; "in mine it is not the ass that walks first in the procession, who gets the blows."

The Parson jumped from the stile, and, looking over the hedge that divided the field from the road-"Gently, gently," said he; "the sound of the stick spoils the singing! O Mr. Sprott, Mr. Sprott! a good man is merciful to his beast."

The donkey seemed to recognize the voice of its friend, for it stopped short, pricked one ear wistfully, and looked up.

The Tinker touched his hat, and looked up too. "Lord bless your reverence! he does not mind it, he likes it. I would not hurt thee; would I, Neddy?"

The donkey shook his head and shivered; perhaps a fly had settled on the sore, which the chestnut leaves no longer protected.

"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him, Sprott," said the Parson, more politely I fear than honestly—for he had seen enough of that cross-grained thing called the human heart, even in the little world of a country parish, to know that it requires management, and coaxing, and flattering, to interfere successfully between a man and his own donkey—"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him; but he has already got a sore on his shoulder as big as my hand, poor thing!"

"Lord love 'un! yes; that vas done a playing with the manger, the day I gave 'un oats!" said the Tinker.

Dr. Riccabocca adjusted his spectacles, and surveyed the ass. The ass pricked up his other ear, and surveyed Dr. Riccabocca. In that mutual survey of physical qualifications, each being regarded according to the average symmetry of its species, it may be doubted whether the advantage was on the side of the philosopher.

The Parson had a great notion of the wisdom of his friend, in all matters not immediately ecclesiastical.

"Say a good word for the donkey!" whispered he.

"Sir," said the Doctor, addressing Mr. Sprott, with a respectful salutation, "there's a great kettle at my house—the Casino—which wants soldering: can you recommend me a tinker?"

"Why, that's all in my line," said Sprott, "and there ben't a tinker in the country that I would recommend like myself, thof I say it."

"You jest, good sir." said the Doctor, smiling pleasantly. "A man who can't mend a hole in his own donkey, can never demean himself by patching up my great kettle."

"Lord, sir," said the Tinker, archly, "if I had known that poor Neddy had two sitch friends in court, I'd have seen he was a gintleman, and treated him as sitch."

"Corpo di Bacco!" quoth the Doctor, "though that jest's not new, I think the Tinker comes very well out of it."

"True; but the donkey!" said the Parson, "I've a great mind to buy it."

"Permit me to tell you an anecdote in point," said Dr. Riccabocca.

"Well!" said the Parson, interrogatively.

"Once in a time," pursued Riccabocca, "the Emperor Adrian, going to the public baths, saw an old soldier, who had served under him, rubbing his back against the marble wall. The Emperor, who was a wise, and therefore a curious, inquisitive man, sent for the soldier, and asked him why he resorted to that kind of friction. 'Because,' answered the veteran, 'I am too poor to have slaves to rub me down.' The Emperor was touched, and gave him slaves and money. The next day, when Adrian went to the oaths, all the old men in the city were to be seen rubbing themselves against the marble as hard as they could. The Emperor sent for them, and asked them the same question which he had put to the soldier; the cunning old rogues, of course, made the same answer. 'Friends,' said Adrian, 'since there are so many of you, you will just rub one another!' Mr. Dale, if you don't want to have all the donkeys in the county with holes in their shoulders, you had better not buy the Tinker's!"

"It is the hardest thing in the world to do the least bit of good," groaned the Parson, as he broke a twig off the hedge nervously, snapped it in two, and flung the fragments on the road-one of them hit the donkey on the nose. If the ass could have spoken Latin, he would have said, "Et tu, Brute!" As it was, he hung down his ears, and walked on.

"Gee hup," said the Tinker, and he followed the ass. Then stopping, he looked over his shoulder, and seeing that the Parson's eyes were gazing mournfully on his protégé, "Never fear, your reverence," cried the Tinker kindly; "I'll not spite 'un."

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CHAPTER VII

"Four o'clock," cried the Parson, looking at his watch; "half-an-hour after dinnertime, and Mrs. Dale particularly begged me to be punctual, because of the fine trout the Squire sent us. Will you venture on what our homely language calls 'pot luck,' Doctor?"

Now Riccabocca, like most wise men, especially if Italians, was by no means inclined to the credulous view of human nature. Indeed, he was in the habit of detecting self-interest in the simplest actions of his fellow-creatures. And when the Parson thus invited him to pot luck, he smiled with a kind of lofty complacency; for Mrs. Dale enjoyed the reputation of having what her friends styled "her little tempers." And, as well-bred ladies rarely indulge in "little tempers" in the presence of a third person, not of the family, so Dr. Riccabocca instantly concluded that he was invited to stand between the pot and the luck! Nevertheless—as he was fond of trout, and a much more good-natured man than he ought to have been according to his principles-he accepted the hospitality; but he did so with a sly look from over his spectacles, which brought a blush into the guilty cheeks of the Parson. Certainly Riccabocca had for once guessed right in his estimate of human motives.

The two walked on, crossed a little bridge that spanned the rill, and entered the parsonage lawn. Two dogs, that seemed to have sat on watch for their master, sprang toward him barking; and the sound drew the notice of Mrs. Dale, who, with parasol in hand, sallied out from the sash window which opened on the lawn. Now, O reader! I know that in thy secret heart, thou art chuckling over the want of knowledge in the sacred arcana of the domestic hearth, betrayed by the author; thou art saying to thyself, "A pretty way to conciliate little tempers, indeed, to add to the offense of spoiling the fish, the crime of bringing an unexpected friend to eat it. Pot luck, quotha, when the pot's boiled over this half hour!"

But, to thy utter shame and confusion, O reader, learn that both the author and Parson Dale knew very well what they were about.

Dr. Riccabocca was the special favorite of Mrs. Dale, and the only person in the whole county who never put her out by dropping in. In fact, strange though it may seem at first glance, Dr. Riccabocca had that mysterious something about him which we of his own sex can so little comprehend, but which always propitiates the other. He owed this, in part, to his own profound but hypocritical policy; for he looked upon woman as the natural enemy to man—against whom it was necessary to be always on the guard: whom it was prudent to disarm by every species of fawning, servility, and abject complaisance. He owed it also, in part, to the compassionate and heavenly nature of the angels whom his thoughts thus villanously traduced—for women like one whom they can pity without despising; and there was something in Signer Riccabocca's poverty, in his loneliness, in his exile, whether voluntary or compelled, that excited pity; while, despite the threadbare coat, the red umbrella, and the wild hair, he had, especially when addressing ladies, that air of gentleman and cavalier, which is or was more innate in an educated Italian, of whatever rank, than perhaps in the highest aristocracy of any other country in Europe. For, though I grant that nothing is more exquisite than the politeness of your French marquis of the old régime—nothing more frankly gracious than the cordial address of a high-bred English gentleman—nothing more kindly prepossessing than the genial good-nature of some patriarchal German, who will condescend to forget his sixteen quarterings in the pleasure of doing you a favor—yet these specimens of the suavity of their several nations are rare; whereas blandness and polish are common attributes with your Italian. They seem to have been immemorially handed down to him from ancestors emulating the urbanity of Caesar, and refined by the grace of Horace.

"Dr. Riccabocca consents to dine with us," cried the Parson hastily.

"If Madame permit!" said the Italian, bowing over the hand extended to him, which however he forebore to take, seeing it was already full of the watch.

"I am only sorry that the trout must be quite spoiled," began Mrs. Dale, plaintively.