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Updated: May 28, 2025
"I shall have to," he returned deliberately, "if you persist in recognizing in me your former friend Count Siviano." "Roberto!" He lifted his hand. "Egidio," he said, "I am alone here, and without friends. The companionship, the sympathy of my parish priest would be a consolation in this strange city; but it must not be the companionship of the parocco of Siviano. You understand?"
"I have never told you," he went on, "the name of the family in which I was brought up. It was Siviano, and that was the grave of the Count's eldest son, with whom I grew up as a brother. For eighteen years he has lain in that strange ground in terra aliena and when I die, there will be no one to care for his grave." I saw what he waited for. "I will care for it, signor parocco."
The gate-keeper showed that delusive desire to oblige that is certain to send its victims in the wrong direction; but I had the presence of mind to go exactly contrary to his indication, and thanks to this precaution I came, after half an hour's search, on the figure of my poor parocco, kneeling on the wet ground in one of the humblest by-ways of the great necropolis.
I ran forward, but his look stopped me. "Signor parocco," he said, "the doctor tells me that I owe my life to your nursing, and I have to thank you for the kindness you have shown to a friendless stranger." "A stranger?" I gasped. He looked at me steadily. "I am not aware that we have met before," he said.
To these ministrations I left the parocco, intending to call for news of him the next evening; but an unexpected pressure of work kept me late at my desk, and the following day some fresh obstacle delayed me. On the third afternoon, as I was leaving the office, an agate-eyed infant from the Point hailed me with a message from the doctor. The parocco was worse and had asked for me.
He signed an assent. "That is a long way for you to go alone, signor parocco. The streets are sure to be slippery and there is an icy wind blowing. Give me your flowers and let me send them to the cemetery by a messenger. I give you my word they shall reach their destination safely." He turned a quiet look on me. "My son, you are young," he said, "and you don't know how the dead need us."
"One of my lads, Gianpietro, is employed by the gardener there, and every year on this day he brings me a beautiful bunch of flowers for such a purpose it is no sin," he added, with the charming Italian pliancy of judgment. "And why are you travelling in this snowy weather, signor parocco?" I asked, as he ended with a cough. He fixed me gravely with his simple shallow eye.
Just then there was a hand on the door and we heard Donna Marianna. "Faustina has sent to know if the signar parocco is here." "He is here. Bid her come down to the chapel." Roberta spoke quietly, and closed the door on her so that she should not see his face. We heard her patter away across the brick floor of the salone. Roberto turned to me.
My engagements, however, made these visits infrequent, and several weeks had elapsed without my seeing the parocco when, one snowy November morning, I ran across him in the railway-station. I was on my way to New York for the day and had just time to wave a greeting to him as I jumped into the railway-carriage; but a moment later, to my surprise, I saw him stiffly clambering into the same train.
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