have led an intelligent looker-on at the game to hope that there might be something better in store for poor Beppo, though it altogether failed to assure or comfort him. This was the way in which Giulia would behave when others attacked, or slighted, or belittled Beppo; especially when his brother, who was about two years his junior, and just Giulia’s own age, did so, as was not unfrequently the case. Then, indeed, it was clear enough that Beppo had a friend, if nothing else, in his beautiful cousin! And surely it ought to have led him to see a thing or two! Only Beppo was not the man to see anything that anybody tried to hide from him. Besides, it was more generally in his absence that Giulia would make a sortie, like a tigress from a jungle in defence of her young, in Beppo’s behalf. And Carlo would get a scratch from the claw that he did not forget as soon as he ought to have done. And then old Paolo or dame Sunta would sneer, and say something disagreeable if they were present; and Giulia would be as cross and scratchy as possible to Beppo afterwards.
This younger brother Carlo was by no means a lad of whose allegiance most pretty girls would have been otherwise than proud. He was, though not so tall as his brother, who was slightly taller than his father—and he was over six feet in his stockings,—nevertheless, like most of the Romagnole peasantry, a very fine young man. He was of a lighter build altogether than his brother, somewhat darker in hair and eyes, and of a less jovially ruddy brown complexion. Beppo would have been deemed probably the handsomer specimen of manhood by a jury of girls—(delivering a secret verdict to a female judge)—taken from the fields and hill-sides. Carlo might perhaps have had the verdict from a similar jury chosen from a city population. Then he was cleverer than Beppo, or at least was held to be so by all the world in which they both lived, including Don Evandro, and both Beppo and Carlo themselves. Beppo considered Carlo as a quite unprecedented (at least in those parts) prodigy of genius. And Carlo, if not quite persuaded of the justice of that opinion, was thoroughly convinced that his brother was a brainless lout, while he himself was a very clever fellow.
He was the cleverer of the two, certainly. His intelligence was the readier, and nimbler; he was the better scholar, wrote a better hand, and was infinitely quicker at accounts, or calculations. But Beppo, though slow, was no fool; and there are many subjects—and those not amongst the least important that human hearts and heads are called upon to decide for themselves—respecting which—give him time to bring his mind to bear upon the point—I would far rather have bound myself to be ruled by Beppo’s than by Carlo’s judgment. And then one was always sure to know what Beppo really did think and feel. And I am not so clear of that in the case of master Carlo.
Perhaps old Paolo and Sunta might have made up their minds to allow young Carlo and Giulia to come together, if only she would have kept her hands off the sacred person of Beppo their first-born. It is too bad to use such language! As if Giulia showed any sign of wanting to . . . . . I think I can see how her eye would flash, and all those laughing devils in it we talked of, would turn to fire-darting furies, if the phrase were used in her presence. But that was the thought of the old couple upon the subject. And though I don’t think either of them would have dared to say as much in crude words in Giulia’s hearing, I have little doubt that she had to brook many a sneer and insinuation of the sort from them,—to be rebutted by cruel treatment from her towards poor Beppo, and, I strongly suspect, to be followed by midnight hours of weeping, and bursts of passionate agony, of which laughing, flashing, proud, scornful Giulia’s pillow was the only witness.
I think, as has been said, that Giulia might have had Carlo Vanni, if she would. But though there were symptoms enough that he would have been well pleased to settle all the family disagreements in that manner, it was very clear that Giulia would have nothing to say to any such arrangement.
Clever, sharp Carlo, with his handsome dark eye, his locks as black as her own, his fine long Grecian nose, and light svelte figure, did not suit her taste. Was it really true that she liked heavy, good-natured Beppo, with his honest dark-blue eyes, and curly dark-brown hair, and Herculean shoulders, at all better? Old Paolo would have sneered bitterly in reply, that Giulia knew which side of the bread the butter was, none better! Young Beppo would have almost as bitterly answered, that she cared as much about him as she did about the oxen in the stable!
In fact, he often did say so; for it was a favourite comparison of himself in poor Beppo’s mouth.
“I don’t remember ever to have seen cousin Giulia steal away into the fields to help the oxen at their work, the way she went off to’ther night to help you, Beppo, with shucking that lot of gran-turco[1] in the loft,” said Carlo once, viciously, for his father and mother were present.
“Because the gran-turco would never have been finished that night, if I hadn’t given a hand; for Beppo was so sleepy he could not hold his stupid head up!” replied Giulia, colouring up and tossing her head.
“And wouldn’t she do as much or more for you, or for Babbo,[2] or for old Cecco, the blind beggarman, or for the oxen either, for that matter? Would not she do anything on earth she could for any living creature?” demanded Beppo, with immense energy. “But for me more than another,” he added, with bitterness, “no! You know better than that, Carlo!”
But what would most have tended to make all straight and comfortable at Bella Luce, would have been that Beppo should have made up his mind to the match which his father and his parish priest had picked out for him. And there was really very little reason why he should not do so;—very little reason, that is to say, except those mischief-making eyes of cousin Giulia;—and the natural and notorious perversity of Dan