BEPPO, THE CONSCRIPT.
BY T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
CHAPTER XV. THE BAD NUMBER.
The communal lists were all made out. There was very little interest attached to that part of the business. It was a matter of course that all except the few names of those who were utterly out of the question should appear in them. Nor did they, when completed, afford to the inhabitants of each commune any even approximative indication of the amount of chances for and against them. For this depended upon the proportion of the number of men required to the number of those liable,—not in each commune, but in the entire military district; and though a tolerably fair estimate of this might be known to the authorities in the provincial capital, the contadino inhabitants of each rustic commune were wholly ignorant upon the subject.
So the lists were made out and sent to the town, and the population hardly yet realised the nature and nearness of the misfortune which was about to fall on them.
Then came news that the day for the drawing was fixed. It was a day very near at hand—a day towards the end of May.
Early on the fateful morning the men began to arrive from all sides in the city. They came up in droves from the different communes, and the comparison of them to cattle driven to the slaughterhouse was too obvious to escape many of the men themselves, and was with malicious bitterness suggested to them by many a parish priest, as his parishioners were starting from their obscure little villages in the hills, on their unwelcome errand. The appearance of the poor fellows when they arrived in the city was also suggestive enough of the comparison. They came with heavy steps and reluctant limbs, not knowing what was going to happen, or what they were to do first, stupidly jostling each other in the crowded streets, and vacantly staring with great wide eyes at the preparations that had been made for the drawing.
Some few parties were accompanied by their priests; but for the most part those gentlemen did not choose to take any overt share in the matter, or to sanction it by their presence. They preferred to do their part respecting it in the background. A greater number of the rustic parties were accompanied by the older men, and some had women with them.
If the population had looked forward to the day with terror and vague misgiving, the authorities had not been altogether free from apprehension with regard to it. It was well known how very repugnant the measure was to the almost entire population. The government were well aware that this feeling was stimulated and worked on to the utmost of their power by the clergy, and it was feared that disturbances might take place. A considerable force of military therefore were under arms at different points of the little city; and as the rustics, decked out for the sacrifice in their best holiday trim, arrived in the town, they saw bodies of soldiers drawn up, as if to show them specimens of what they were about to become.
In the large open piazza of the city—and at Fano the principal piazza is a remarkably large and fine one—the crowd was chiefly assembled in front of the palazzo pubblico—the town-hall, as we should say. For there the drawing, which was to award despair or the rejoicing of escape to many a homestead, was to take place, in the largest hall of the building. The operation was to be conducted in the presence of the civic authorities. The military powers took no part in the matter at its present stage, seeing that they were interested only in the due forthcoming of the prescribed number of men. Who those men were to be was of interest to the population and to their communal and municipal authorities, but of no interest to the military authorities. They demanded their pound of flesh; but left the cutting of it to the discretion and convenience of the patient.
It was a curious and interesting thing to thread that anxious crowd and mark the varying expression of the different groups. There were reckless faces of men, on whom, if the lot should fall, the service would gain little, and the country lose as little. There were stolid-looking boors, who seemed scarcely more capable of appreciating the nature of the change which threatened them than the great meek-eyed, dove-coloured oxen which were their most habitual companions. There were spruce-looking well-to-do youths, the hope and stay of well-regulated households, anxiously talking over the chances of the fateful urn with downcast elders. There were yet more interesting groups in which an aged mother, a sister, or one holding a yet tenderer relationship to the youth, menaced with what to her was almost equivalent to death, were the principal figures.
Beppo was there alone. The other young men from his commune had come up together; but he had felt too miserable and down-hearted to come with them. Yet there was little in their comradeship, that would have jarred upon his melancholy mood. The lads of the French rural district, though abhorring the conscription to the full as much as these Romagnoles could do will go to the fatal urn, singing and laughing, hiding the death in their hearts from every eye, and from their own consciousness as far as noise and bluster, and “Dutch courage,” will enable them to do so. But the simpler, more genuine, less vain, and less self-conscious Italian nature makes no such attempt. They go to the drawing miserable and dejected, and they make no attempt to conceal the fact. One of the most touchingly melancholy of all the popular melodies I ever heard, is the song of the