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Updated: June 26, 2025
Slowly, as he wended his way through the many turnings of the narrow calle to Campo San Maurizio, carrying a beautiful Moorish box filled with the pearly shells which the Venetians call "flowers of the Lido," and a bouquet of aromatic carnations for the bambino, he recalled the figure and speech of his Madonna, and they were not those of the maidens whom one might encounter at the traghetto or in the Piazza; there had been a dignity and self-forgetfulness in such perfect harmony with the face that, at the moment, this had seemed entirely natural.
"H'm," said the young man flippantly, "what became of the Bambino meanwhile, I wonder?" The scribe shrugged his shoulders. "We all know," said he, "that Cino the barber lies like a christened Jew; but I'm not surprised the thing was known in advance, for I make no doubt the priests pulled the wires that brought down the crown."
He loved the "Pastorale" almost without knowing that he loved it. It reminded him of the festa of Natale, when, as a child, dressed in a long, white garment, he had carried a blazing torch of straw down the steps of the church of San Pancrazio before the canopy that sheltered the Bambino. It was a part of his life, as his mother was, and Tito the donkey, and the vineyards, the sea, the sun.
But when he drew near the sirens changed into devout peasant women, and their alluring songs into prayers uttered to the Bambino and the Virgin. But one watched him with eyes that gleamed like black jewels, and her lips smiled while they uttered prayers, as if they could murmur love words and kiss the lips of men. "Signorino! Signorino!" Delarey stirred on the great, white bed.
Now I must let you know that I have at this moment every distress, negative and positive, that I can have, et les voici. My negative one is, being for the moment in an impossibility of going to town to see you, Caroline, and the bambino, and that is enough, for it would be a great pleasure to me, as you must imagine. Then, I am, in a manner, here with one single servant.
See how that staid old signor allows himself to be buried and excavated by the bambino. Watch that charming maman unblushingly bathing bebe. What cares she for her dignity? "Your photograph, senorita?" Look! the coquettish contadina is slapping the face of the roguish vetturino!
The Bambino lay in a pathetic heap on the floor, scattered with fragments of a rare Venetian glass. She sat erect and imperious, looking with scorn at the wreck. Two great tears welled. They overflowed. The floods pressed behind them. She dropped her face in her hands. Before he could reach her she had darted from the chair. The mask of scorn was gone.
She listlessly extended her arm and filled it to the brim with Cyprian and a sweetened Oriental wine which I afterward found so bitter on the deserted Lido. "Here," she said, presenting it to me, "per voi, bambino mio." "For you and for me," I said, presenting her my glass in turn. She moistened her lips while I emptied my glass, unable to conceal the sadness she seemed to read in my eyes.
There were horns on the walls to keep off the evil eye, prints of the Madonna, some with sprigs of camomile stuck into the frame, a cheapissimo coloured lithograph of S. Giuseppe with the Bambino, and in front of it on a little bracket, in half a tumbler of oil, floated a burning wick.
That, he said, was what the strange gentleman who had come that very morning asked, a queer, bent little gentlemen, very bald and with big eye-glasses, who was kind, and wept with them and gave them money to bury the "bambino." "Moseley, by the Lord Harry!" exclaimed Mr. Curtis Fleming. "But what was the death-agent?" Average Jones shook his head. "Too early to do more than guess.
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