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Updated: September 11, 2025
Outside the old walls of Ruscino nearly all the land of vale of Edera was untilled, and within them a few poverty-stricken people dragged out their days uncared for by any one, only remembered by the collectors of fiscal dues. "They never forget," said the people. "As soon as one is born, always and in every season, until one's bones rattle down into the ditch of the dead, they remember always."
In her youth the great brigands of the Upper Abruzzo had been names of terror in Ruscino, and in the hamlets lying along the course of the Edera, and many a time a letter written in blood had been fastened with a dagger to the door of church or cottage, intimating the will of the unseen chief to the subjugated population.
The name of the stream running underneath the walls of Ruscino caught his regard; a few lines were headed with it, and these lines said curtly: "The project to divert the course of the Edera river will be brought before the Chamber shortly; the Minister of Agriculture is considered to favour the project." He held the sheet nearer to the light and read the paragraph again, and yet again.
"We kill ourselves oftentimes; or we hasten our end, as drunkards do." "Did your father hasten his end?" said his mother. "Did not some one break that olive branch? It was not the tree itself, though the Ruscino folks would have it cut down because they called it a felon." "Was it not the devil?" said Adone.
I fear, sir, that if it be ever put into execution we shall have trouble in your commune. Your council has been over hasty in allying itself with these speculators. You and they have not taken into account the immense injury which will be done to the valley and to my own village or town, call it as you will, of Ruscino.
He closed the door behind him. "Damnation!" said Giovacchino Gallo; "that is a strong man! Is Mother Church blind that she lets such an one rust and rot in the miserable parish of Ruscino?" When Don Silverio rejoined the Vicar of Sant Anselmo the latter asked him anxiously how his errand had sped. "It was a waste of breath and words," he answered.
They were soldiers; yes, they were soldiers; the sounds she had heard had been the crushing of the plants under their feet, the click of their muskets as they moved; they were soldiers! Where had they come from? There were no soldiers at Ruscino. The only time when she had ever seen soldiers had been when the troopers had captured Baruffo.
What sacrilege could be more heinous than to chase it from its chosen course? No Lucumon of Etruria, or Esarch of Ravenna, or Pope or Rome, had ever dared to touch it. Revolutionists! they, who only sought to preserve it? The revolutionists were those who with alien hands and vampire's greed would seek to disturb its peace. All that day the people of Ruscino crowded round the Presbytery.
They seized their arms, and assembled in haste at Ruscino, and began to devise measures of defense. Ruscino was the same place as that in which the Roman embassadors met the great council of the Gauls on their return to Italy from Carthage.
The Prefect approves; the Minister approves; the local deputies approve; I and my municipal and provincial councils approve; Parliament has approved and authorised. Who remain opposed? A few small landowners and a mob of poor persons living in your village of Ruscino and in similar places." "Who can create grave disorders and will do so."
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