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Updated: May 15, 2025
Count Nobili and Fra Pacifico exchange glances. There is a knock at the door. Pipa enters carrying a lighted lamp which she places on the table. Pipa does not even salute Fra Pacifico, but fixes her eyes, swollen with crying, upon Count Nobili. "What is the matter?" asks the priest. "Riverenza, I do not know. Adamo and Angelo are out watching." "But, Pipa, it is very strange. A shot was fired.
Already Pipa's arms are round him. Angelo, too, has caught him by the legs, then leaps into the air with a wild hoot. Bewildered Pipa cannot speak. No more can Adamo; but Pipa's clinging arms say more than words. Tenderly Adamo lays the marchesa down beside the fountain. He totters on a step or two, feeling suddenly giddy and strangely weak. He stands still.
"Pipa," said the marchesa, as she stood before her in the doorway, a broad smile on her merry brown face, "set that lamp on the desk here before me. So that will do. Now go up-stairs and tell the Signorina Enrica that I bid her 'Good-night, and that I will see her to-morrow morning after breakfast. Then you may go to bed, Pipa. I am busy, and shall sit up late."
"Why, he might have shot the signorina's husband the fool!" This thought steadies Pipa for an instant, but she bursts out again. "Oh hello!" Pipa gurgles like a stream that cannot stop running; then she breaks off all at once, and listens. "Hush! hush! There is Adamo coming, cavaliere hush! hush! Make haste and go away. He is coming Adamo; I hear him on the gravel."
But if any thing lurks there that mocks Pipa's mirth, it is not visible to Pipa's outward eye, so she continues addressing herself to Enrica, who is utterly bewildered by her strange ways. Pipa cannot bear to think that Enrica never dressed for her betrothed. "Poverina!" she says to her, "not dress not dress! What degradation!
These men promptly formed a line down the hill, to carry the water from the willful mountain-stream that fed the town fountain. Fra Pacifico took the lead. Adamo, recovered now, was soon upon the ladder, receiving the buckets from below. Pipa beside the fountain watched the marchesa, sprinkling water on her face. "Surely her eyelids faintly quiver!" thinks Pipa.
"Take these" and the marchesa puts her hand into her pocket and draws out some notes "take these, these are better than thanks." Adamo drew back much affronted. "Padrona, I don't want money." "Yes, yes, take them for Pipa and the boys" and she thrusts the notes into his big red hands.
Oh, the noble count! Oh, how I love him " "No, dear Pipa," Enrica answered, softly, "I am not hurt only frightened. The fire had but just reached the door when he came. He was just in time." "To think we had forgotten her!" murmured Pipa, still holding her tightly. "Who remembered me first?" asked Enrica, eagerly. "The marchesa, signorina, the marchesa. She remembered you.
If his young friend would give him the pleasure of taking a few lessons, they could begin even now. It would while away the time on the voyage. He had his own method of teaching, a method based on the Berlitz system, but not borrowed from it, and, he ventured to say, possessing its own good points. For example: el tabaco la pipa los cigarillos. Que es esto? Esto es la pipa. Very simple.
"Domine Dio orders the weather, not I," Adamo said in a grunt to Pipa when his mistress had specially upbraided him for not watering the lemon-trees ranged along the terraces. "Am I expected to give holy oil to the plants as Fra Pacifico does to the sick? Chè! chè! what will be will be!"
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