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Updated: June 1, 2025
Besides, he always preferred Dante to Virgil, and Leopardi to Horace. One day, when he was sixteen or thereabouts, he was making a noise, as usual, shouting some motive or other to Mariuccia and the cat, while I was labouring to collect my senses over a lecture I had to prepare. Suddenly his voice cracked horribly and his singing ended in a sort of groan.
Such was indeed my intention up to the year 1785, when I found this runagate at Vienna. He was then Count Erdich's man, and when we come to that period the reader shall hear what I did. I promised Mariuccia to come and see her in the course of Lent. The Princess Santa Croce and the worthy Cardinal Bernis pitied me for my hapless love; I often confided my sufferings to their sympathizing ears.
I went to Momolo's in the evening, and found the intended husband of my fair Mariuccia there, but not the lady herself. I heard she had sent word to the 'scopatore santissimo' that, as her father had come from Palestrina to be present at her wedding, she could not come to supper. I admired her subtlety.
"How about Signora Maria?" said the jealous sister. "As Signora Maria is going to be married," I replied, "she must not be present at any festivity without her future husband." The mother applauded this decision of mine, and sly Mariuccia pretended to feel mortified. I turned to Momolo and begged him to ask Mariuccia's future husband to meet me at supper, by which I pleased her mother greatly.
And I looked, too, and was horrified; and Hedwig, looking also, screamed and sprang back to the window, overturning the chair she had sat on. In the doorway stood Ahasuerus Benoni, the Jew. Mariuccia had imprudently forgotten to shut the door when Hedwig and Nino came, and the baron had walked in unannounced. You may imagine the fright I was in.
A few minutes after she entered with her puritanical mother, who told me I must not be surprised to see her daughter better dressed, as she was going to be married in a few days. I congratulated her, and Momolo's daughters asked who was the happy man. Mariuccia blushed and said modestly, to one of them,
He certainly had a new coat before Christmas, and gloves, and very nice boots, that made me smile when I thought of the day when he arrived, with only one shoe and it had a hole in it as big as half his foot. But now he grew to be so careful of his appearance that Mariuccia began to call him the "signorino."
At nine o'clock on the morning of the baroness' death, as Nino was busy singing scales, there was a ring at the door, and presently Mariuccia came running in as fast as her poor old legs could carry her, and whiter than a pillow-case, to say that there was a man at the door with two gendarmes, asking for Nino; and before I could question her the three men walked unbidden into the room, demanding which was Giovanni Cardegna, the singer.
I managed to squeeze my fair neighbour's hand, and she returned the pressure with all her strength. From that time I knew that my fate with Mariuccia was sealed. I left them at midnight, begging the worthy Momolo to ask me again in two days' time, that we might rejoice together over our gains. On our way home my brother said I had either become as rich as Croesus or had gone mad.
They used to be only a baiocco apiece, and I could get one at a time. But now they are two for three baiocchi; and so I have to get two always, because there are no half baiocchi any more nothing but centimes. That is one of the sources of my extravagance. Mariuccia says I am miserly; she was born poor, and never had to learn the principles of economy.
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