farms or villages, young or old, male or female. But the Italian peasant has, without much—at all events acknowledged—respect or liking for the city or its inhabitants, a very great awe and admiration for the townsfolk. The peasant considers them to be less honest, less kind, less hearty and healthy, less instructed in all matters really worth knowing, than he himself is. At all events he professes so to consider. But he looks upon the luxury, the fasto, the pomp, the magnificence, and the finery of the neighbouring city, as something wonderful and stupendous;—affects to reprobate and despise it all, and probably, if an old man, would in reality not change his own life for a city one; but nevertheless looks up to his town-bred neighbours with a very considerable sense of their superior position.
This same feeling, which had sent Giulia off in a hurry to her chamber, manifested itself in la sposa in care for the reputation of her kitchen. It was supremely displeasing to her that a stranger from the city should arrive thus unannounced a few minutes only before the dinner hour. If she could have got warning in time, she would have sent into Fano for delicacies of all sorts. If there was no time for that, she would have ransacked the neighbouring villages. But here she was left to make the best figure she could entirely on her own resources. And she had no doubt that the townsman thus managed that his visit should be wholly unannounced, for the express purpose of triumphing over her unprovidedness. That he might himself be hungry and like a good dinner, and be pleased at getting one at Bella Luce, never occurred to her as a possible phase of the matter. It shaped itself to her mind as a contest between town and country, in which the townsman’s object would be attained, and his vanity gratified at the expense of hers, in proportion to the poorness of the fare set before him. For to an Italian the gratification of an appetite is a small matter in comparison with the gratification of a vanity.
So la sposa, much and deeply grumbling between her teeth, set herself to do all that could be done at so short a notice.
“Carlo,” she said to her second son, as he came in from the field, “run quick to his reverence, and tell him to come and take a bit of dinner with us, and ask la Nunziata (the priest’s housekeeper) to send me a pot of her quince preserve, and some biscuits,—quick.”
It must not be supposed that the priest was invited for the sake of the quince sweetmeats and the biscuits. He and they were equally benefactions to her board, and the priest himself by far the most important of the two. It was respectable and in good style, and perhaps even what Signor Sandro himself could not have accomplished at so short a notice, to have the parish priest at the board. His reverence, on his part, it may be observed, hastened to put on his very best coat and a clean collar, not so much from any personal care about or vanity in such matters, but in order to do honour to Signor Vanni’s board, and to support the country in its contest with the city. That was the feeling of the priest, as it would also have been of any of the neighbours. They were all in one boat, so far as the necessity for hiding the nakedness of their land, and making the best possible appearance in the eyes of the townsman went.
Meanwhile Sunta did her utmost within the cruelly short space of time which the cunning of the citizen had allowed her. Eggs in abundance were brought in from the poultry-house and stables, and la sposa proceeded to concoct a frittata with slices of ham cunningly introduced into a stratified formation of egg and flour, fried in abundance of oil, and flavoured with some herbs according to a special receipt in the possession of Signora Sunta, and which were supposed to be Apennine products unobtainable in the towns. Beppo was sent to catch and kill a fowl in all haste, and prepare it for instant spitch-cocking. This, with a sweet confection, in which more eggs were the principal ingredient, and the minestra—the pottage—which would have constituted the entire dinner for the family, if Signor Sandro had stayed at home, made out a tolerably presentable repast, especially when accompanied by an unstinted supply of Signor Vanni’s choicest wine, which they all knew was really such as the attorney did not drink every day of his life.
But for all this, be it observed, the Bella Luce family, however anxious to shine in the eyes of their guest, did not dream of changing the venue of their repast to the great eating-room upstairs. That would have been too serious and solemn an affair to be thought of for such a mere extemporary matter as the present. The dinners eaten in that state room were dinners indeed! To have placed the hurriedly prepared modest meal of to-day before their guest in that huge, bare-looking guest-chamber, would have been to render it and themselves ridiculous. So the little party sat down as usual at the table in the kitchen, which was the common living room of the family.
Giulia stole down from her room, the young men washed their hands and faces, the anxious and hard-working Sunta seized a moment to give one re-ordering touch to her hair and kerchief after her culinary labours, and then announced to her husband, and Don Evandro, and Signor Sandro Bartoldi, that “their lordships were served,” i.e., in base plebeian terms, that the dinner was ready.
“It’s not to be expected,” said Signora Sunta, as they sate down, with an aigre-doux manner, half mock-modest hospitality, and half self-asserting defiance, “that the like of us can set before a gentleman from the city anything fit for him to eat, and that too at a moment’s notice! I am afraid the soup is not what you can eat, Signor Sandro!”
“On the contrary, my dear madam, I positively must take the liberty of asking for another ladleful. I was just thinking that I had never tasted a better minestra in my life!”
“Ah! that’s our Bella Luce air! We can grow appetites up here, if our soil is too poor to grow anything else!” said farmer Paolo.
The farm of Bella Luce was anything but poor land; but an Italian farmer always calls his land poor, and a land-owner as invariably deems it rich.
“Any way,” said the priest, “I find that, let