Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

      At nightfall a man opened the gate of the ducal gardens below the Chinese pavilion and stepped out into the deserted lane. He locked the gate and slipped the key into his pocket; then he turned and walked toward the centre of the town. As he reached the more populous quarters his walk slackened to a stroll; and now and then he paused to observe a knot of merry-makers or look through the curtains of the tents set up in the squares.

      The man was plainly but decently dressed, like a petty tradesman or a lawyer’s clerk, and the night being chill he wore a cloak, and had drawn his hat-brim over his forehead. He sauntered on, letting the crowd carry him, with the air of one who has an hour to kill, and whose holiday-making takes the form of an amused spectatorship. To such an observer the streets offered ample entertainment. The shrewd air discouraged lounging and kept the crowd in motion; but the open platforms built for dancing were thronged with couples, and every peep-show, wine-shop and astrologer’s booth was packed to the doors. The shrines and street-lamps being all alight, and booths and platforms hung with countless lanterns, the scene was as bright as day; but in the ever-shifting medley of peasant-dresses, liveries, monkish cowls and carnival disguises, a soberly-clad man might easily go unremarked.

      Reaching the square before the Cathedral, the solitary observer pushed his way through the idlers gathered about a dais with a curtain at the back. Before the curtain stood a Milanese quack, dressed like a noble gentleman, with sword and plumed hat, and rehearsing his cures in stentorian tones, while his zany, in the short mask and green-and-white habit of Brighella, cracked jokes and turned hand-springs for the diversion of the vulgar.

      “Behold,” the charlatan was shouting, “the marvellous Egyptian love-philter distilled from the pearl that the great Emperor Antony dropped into Queen Cleopatra’s cup. This infallible fluid, handed down for generations in the family of my ancestor, the High Priest of Isis—” The bray of a neighboring show-man’s trumpet cut him short, and yielding to circumstances he drew back the curtain, and a tumbling-girl sprang out and began her antics on the front of the stage.

      “What did he say was the price of that drink, Giannina?” asked a young maid-servant pulling her neighbor’s sleeve.

      “Are you thinking of buying it for Pietrino, my beauty?” the other returned with a laugh. “Believe me, it is a sound proverb that says: When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself.”

      The girl drew away angrily, and the quack took up his harangue:—“The same philter, ladies and gentlemen—though in confessing it I betray a professional secret—the same philter, I declare to you on the honor of a nobleman, whereby, in your own city, a lady no longer young and no way remarkable in looks or station, has captured and subjugated the affections of one so high, so exalted, so above all others in beauty, rank, wealth, power and dignities—”

      “Oh, oh, that’s the Duke!” sniggered a voice in the crowd.

      “Ladies and gentlemen, I name no names!” cried the quack impressively.

      “You don’t need to,” retorted the voice.

      “They do say, though, she gave him something to drink,” said a young woman to a youth in a clerk’s dress. “The saying is she studied medicine with the Turks.”

      “The Moors, you mean,” said the clerk with an air of superiority.

      “Well, they say her mother was a Turkey slave and her father a murderer from the Sultan’s galleys.”

      “No, no, she’s plain Piedmontese, I tell you. Her father was a physician in Turin, and was driven out of the country for poisoning his patients in order to watch their death-agonies.”

      “They say she’s good to the poor, though,” said another voice doubtfully.

      “Good to the poor? Ay, that’s what they said of her father. All I know is that she heard Stefano the weaver’s lad had the falling sickness, and she carried him a potion with her own hands, and the next day the child was dead, and a Carmelite friar, who saw the phial he drank from, said it was the same shape and size as one that was found in a witch’s grave when they were digging the foundations for the new monastery.”

      “Ladies and gentlemen,” shrieked the quack, “what am I offered for a drop of this priceless liquor?”

      The listener turned aside and pushed his way toward the farther end of the square. As he did so he ran against a merry-andrew who thrust a long printed sheet in his hand.

      “Buy my satirical ballads, ladies and gentlemen!” the fellow shouted. “Two for a farthing, invented and written by an own cousin of the great Pasquino of Rome! What will you have, sir? Here’s the secret history of a famous Prince’s amours with an atheist—here’s the true scandal of an illustrious lady’s necklace—two for a farthing … and my humblest thanks to your excellency.” He pocketed the coin, and the other, thrusting the broadsheets beneath his cloak, pushed on to the nearest coffee-house.

      Here every table was thronged, and the babble of talk so loud that the stranger, hopeless of obtaining refreshment, pressed his way into the remotest corner of the room and seated himself on an empty cask. At first he sat motionless, silently observing the crowd; then he drew forth the ballads and ran his eye over them. He was still engaged in this study when his notice was attracted by a loud discussion going forward between a party of men at the nearest table. The disputants, petty tradesmen or artisans by their dress, had evidently been warmed by a good flagon of wine, and their tones were so lively that every word reached the listener on the cask.

      “Reform, reform!” cried one, who appeared by his dress and manner to be the weightiest of the company—“it’s all very well to cry reform; but what I say is that most of those that are howling for it no more know what they’re asking than a parrot that’s been taught the litany. Now the first question is: who benefits by your reform? And what’s the answer to that, eh? Is it the tradesmen? The merchants? The clerks, artisans, household servants, I ask you? I hear some of my fellow-tradesmen complaining that the nobility don’t pay their bills. Will they be better pay, think you, when the Duke has halved their revenues? Will the quality keep up as large households, employ as many lacqueys, set as lavish tables, wear as fine clothes, collect as many rarities, buy as many horses, give us, in short, as many opportunities of making our profit out of their pleasure? What I say is, if we’re to have new taxes, don’t let them fall on the very class we live by!”

      “That’s true enough,” said another speaker, a lean bilious man with a pen behind his ear. “The peasantry are the only class that are going to profit by this constitution.”

      “And what do the peasantry do for us, I should like to know?” the first speaker went on triumphantly. “As far as the fat friars go, I’m not sorry to see them squeezed a trifle, for they’ve wrung enough money out of our women-folk to lie between feathers from now till doomsday; but I say, if you care for your pockets, don’t lay hands on the nobility!”

      “Gently, gently, my friend,” exclaimed a cautious flaccid-looking man setting down his glass. “Father and son, for four generations, my family have served Pianura with Church candles, and I can tell you that since these new atheistical notions came in the nobility are not the good patrons they used to be. But as for the friars, I should be sorry to see them meddled with. It’s true they may get the best morsel in the pot and the warmest seat on the hearth—and one of them, now and then, may take too long to teach a pretty girl her Pater Noster—but I’m not so sure we shall be better off when they’re gone. Formerly, if a child too many came to poor folk they could always comfort themselves with the thought that, if there was no room for him at home, the Church was there to provide for him. But if we drive out the good friars, a man will have to count mouths before he dares look at his wife too lovingly.”

      “Well,” said the scribe with a dry smile, “I’ve a notion the good friars have always taken more than they gave; and if it were not for the gaping mouths under the cowl even a poor man might have victuals enough for his own.”

      The first speaker turned on him