Palio

“ It is history! It is religion! All year long the Palio is a fire banked. Then it stirs; it blazes; it comes like flames sweeping down the centuries. Oh, how beautiful the faces light up and the voices sing and the banners wave!" He closed his eyes to see it all the better, and the quiet was like an intermission, only no one stirred.
Giorgio waited in a torment of suspense until at last he had to break through. "But Uncle Marco! Speak of the race! Please!"
The man shook off his trance. "I enter into that now." He shivered in excitement. "First comes the story parade. Is it a common parade?" ”

“ A peasant boy, named Giorgio Terni, and a half-bred Arabian mare seemed pawns of fate, doomed to a life of tragedy. Their battle to outwit destiny is a drama of human and animal courage.
The secret plotting of the Palio is so strange that I had to journey from America to Siena three times in order to understand the inner workings. ”

“ His eyes then came back to Giorgio and flashed warmly. "As fantino, you must know that the probability of winning the Palio is based on the speed of the horse, the skill of the fantino, and the diplomacy of the captain. But it cannot be said that even with all these favorable, the victory is secure. Man tries to fix and arrange, but ah, the horse ... he knows only the one law, and that is to win. It is the most beautiful and bittersweet lesson of the Palio." ”

“ The Umbrella Man rocked with laughter. "Palio has always been! That is fine reason why it always will be. You go any year. Time only sharpens the appetite."
At sundown that evening, with the mended dish put away in the cupboard and the umbrella, good as new, hanging on its peg, Giorgio stood before the window at the end of the long room. It was flung wide to the hills of Tuscany, but the boy did not see the trees flaming from the touch of sun, nor the swallows tumbling in the sky, nor the mountains growing bluer with the oncoming night. ”

“ There are so many he dizzies trying to separate them. And all those eyes are asking for the most beautiful Palio in history, and Gaudenzia will give it to them!
The bigness of it all makes him afraid, and then he sees the small boys who have been waiting in the sun since noon, sitting there on the white posts that fence the shell. One looks up, focusing right at Giorgio with his shiny, worshipful eyes, and Giorgio knows he wants to win for him, and he wants to win for all the little colonnini, and for Emilio back home in Monticello, and for little boys everywhere. ”

“ A thousand times no! Some boys are old before their time. "I was born old," he thought. He could never remember when he had not worked, nor when in the sweat of his work he had not dreamed of doing great things, of proving himself big for his size.
The day that was to have been all shining glory turned to ashes. In dull numbness Giorgio lived out the Palio of July second. As the sound of shields rattling and drums beating and battle cries came to him, he bridled Lubiana and rode far outside the city walls. She was not good enough for the Palio ”

“ The Palio is war. Contradas form alliances as countries do, to help each other fight a common enemy."
Giorgio sat silent at the desolating words.
"But of course"—the Monsignore took off his spectacles, and now he spoke eagerly, earnestly—"the unforeseen can happen! Have you forgotten," he asked, "the grand element of uncertainty? The horse knows nothing of the clouds of intrigue gathering while he eats happily his grain. He knows only that he is the servant of man, who sometimes betrays him." ”

“ He tries again. "Giorgio, I have made her coat damp. It will help you stick on. Now, run the best race of your life." He unties her from the iron ring. "Here, she is yours. I have done all I can. Now rules Fate, the Queen of the Palio."
Giorgio takes the reins and studies the mare from pricked ears to tail. Her neck is frosted with foam, her nostrils distended, her eyes darkly intent. He does not answer the groom. He has just himself to answer. ”

“ He saw the Palio square alive with people, and heard voices crying the names of their contradas, but mostly they were screaming to a white mare, winging her in.
Still handfast, the Chief cried, "Forza! Forza!"
The waiter came running. "You call me?"
"No, no," the Chief laughed heartily. "We are in the Palio."
The waiter nodded in complete understanding. There was nothing surprising in this.
"Giorgio!" The Chief spoke now in whispered confidence. "No wonder Farfalla fails. Who wants 'butterfly' for horse? We change her name! I am a man very earthy. For me, Gaudenzia is the name I favor. ”

“ There is a need in the people to relive the past, a need so intense that they change themselves into knights and noblemen of the Middle Ages for a brief moment each year.
While I was there, I myself became embroiled in the passion of the Palio. I attended the solemn ritualistic banquet on the eve of the race, and afterward I went with Giorgio Terni and his bodyguards to listen to music in the heart of the Piazza, and I went with him into the stable of the mare, Gaudenzia. ”

“ Before and behind are other companies. The contrada of Lupa is entering Il Campo, and Onda will be next. Yes, he will be next. And he will be really seeing the historical parade for the first time. Those other times he had moved like one in sleep. But this is real. Now he knows that the pageant is more than a parade; it is a bright fuse burning itself around the shell of Il Campo until it blazes into the fire of the Palio.
And at last, at last, he is riding into the square! His eyes blink at the awesomeness. The facades of the palaces are alive with thousands upon thousands of heads. ”

“ And he could not use the reply he had rehearsed awake and asleep: "Signore, I am honored deeply to ride in the Palio for your contrada."
When the day of August the sixteenth came and the bell in the Mangia Tower began tolling, Giorgio forgot he was man-grown. With all his clothes on, even his high-laced country boots, he went to bed like a child and pulled the covers up over his head. But still he could hear the bell, sonorous and deep; could see the pageant unfold in his mind, telling the beads of history. The solemn tolling went on and on. ”

“ More often she lipped the back of his sweater, in the way a dam gently nibbles along the neck of her colt.
Giorgio lived all day—digging and planting—for the night. He might have been sticking faggots in the earth for all he knew. His mind was everywhere else: on the calendar in the stable, taking the curves of the mountain, putting on his helmet for the race. Trumpets and drums beat like blood in his ears. Unconsciously he began whistling the "March of the Palio." It made Babbo and all the other men work better, happier. ”

“ To see Italy in all its glory, one must be there at the Vintage.{87}
Strictly speaking, the Palio is the banner which forms the prize in a race of ten horses, representing ten of the seventeen wards into which the city is divided; seven of the wards being selected by rotation and three by lot. There are trial races on the 14th and 15th, and the race itself is on the 16th. It is run in honour of God and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by statute of 17 June 1310; and the horses go to church before the race, and are blessed and sprinkled with holy water after certain prayers on their behalf. ”

“ After the Umbrella Man left, there was a sense of urgency in the way Giorgio lived and worked. If he was to become a fantino in the Palio, or a horse trainer, or only a groom, he must grow hard, wiry, quick; and stronger than boys twice his size. ”

“ Then came the Palio itself, borne on the great carroccio decorated with the banners of Siena and her contrade. How the people yelled as the enormous waggon, so splendidly mediaeval with its poles and banners and its four heraldic horses, rumbled round the square. Before it went two rows of children, little Quattrocento children in striped jerkin and hose, scarlet and green and black, linked together with long festoons of laurel. And round the car rode knights in jousting helmets, clad in velvet and cloth of gold, on richly caparisoned steeds with jewelled reins. ”

“ Cynthia sat enthralled. Almost she had to pinch herself to believe it was real. Glorious in color as an old window of stained glass; silks and velvets, knights in full armor, pages, banners and trumpeters, and at the very end the Palio itself, a great banner drawn in a cart, with the staked flags of the contrada around it.
The procession was over. Cynthia sat back and cracked a few nuts and ate them. Just to return to reality for a while, after so much beauty, was a rest and a relief. ”

“ He clucked to the mare. A faster pace might make the words come faster, easier.
He tried again to make his voice strong, to empty his thoughts. "Gaudenzia! You won the July Palio without real battle, without the nerbo, without the secret arrangements." The words flowed faster. "Now you are marked. You are the one to beat. You and I—in the next Palio we could be separated. The contrada which draws you could already have engaged some other fantino." He burst out shouting: "What if you have to be beaten and slashed back? ”

“ So we came through Tuscany to Siena, and found her all agog with excitement for the Palio, with pennons flying and music echoing down her streets, and her inns already full to overflowing.
Ah, Siena, with your gaunt red palaces and your lily tower, and your ineffectual walls which thread the vineyards like old men dreaming life away in memories, it is you who are the heart of Tuscany! You are not pale and beautiful like Florence, not such a great lady; nor have you the silent grace of Pisa, but how lovable, how intimate you are! ”

“ Then he swooped up the letter and held it on high as if it were the Palio banner itself.
"Mammina!" he cried. "Everybody! Everybody! Bring out the satchel. I go to Siena."
CHAPTER VIII Over the Mountain
Babbo rose to his feet. In the darkening room his eyes gleamed in pride. "I have goose flesh! I cannot believe it could be! Today a letter is come. Tomorrow our Giorgio goes over the mountain. ”

“ A corps of howling, happy men of Onda try to force them back, but it is the Chief-of-the-Guards who succeeds. He makes himself a one-man shield and his voice bellows like a bull. "Lift him high! Higher!" he commands. "Before they murder him!" Then, eyes brimming in pride, he salutes Giorgio on both cheeks, and kisses his white mare full on the mouth.
The cart horse of Casalino has won the 536th running of the Palio. ”

“ The streets had echoed at dawn to the feet of contadini coming in by the Porta Romana, the Porta Camollia, the Porta Pespini. The oxen had been fed and left in their stalls; there was no ploughing in the fields on this day, no gathering of figs, no sound of singing voices and laughter in the vineyards. The brown wrinkled old men and women, the lithe, slender youths in their suits of black broadcloth—wood gods disguised by cheap tailoring—all had left their work and come many a mile along the dusty roads and across fields to the town for the dear Madonna’s sake, and to see the Palio. ”

“ Giorgio put down his fork, listening.
"It will be enough for me to say that even the most unseasoned horse could win. Take any of the losers. Take Farfalla. In today's battle she may have been deliberately held back at the last moment. You must know," he repeated with all the force he could summon, "that sometimes there are secret arrangements between the captains of the contradas. The fantino is given orders. He has to lose, even when his heart cries out to win. There is no choice."
CHAPTER XIII The Goddess Fortuna
Time in Siena is reckoned by the Palio. ”

“ The next morning, I saw him at early dawn at the windows of the saloon-carriage, devouring with a delighted curiosity the sights that met his eyes as the train rushed at full speed through the verdant plains of the Charente. Nothing escaped his youthful enthusiasm: fields, forests, rivers, things, people. Everything gave rise to sparkling exclamations:
"What a lovely country yours is, M. Paoli!" he cried, when he saw me standing near him. "I feel as if I were still at home, as if I knew everybody: the faces all seem familiar. ”

“ Farewell Paolo too: what shall I say
When I shall meet your maiden on my way?
Paolo—
Haste, Cupid; haste: fly forth on rapid wing
Bearing your dainty bow and feathered darts;
And with the graceful practise of your arts
Whisper into my darling's ear, or sing
The sweetest messages that love can bring;
And weave such tender dreams as spring imparts
Where youth and beauty know each others hearts
And feel the thrill that from such joy can spring. ”

“ Five months later, Alfonso XIII, returning from Germany, where he had been to pay his accession-visit to the Berlin Court, stopped to spend a day incognito in Paris. I found him as I had left him; gay, enthusiastic, full of good-nature, glad to be alive.
"Here I am again, my dear M. Paoli," he said, when he perceived me at the frontier, where, according to custom, I had gone to meet him. "But this time I shall not cause you any great worry. I must go home and I sha'n't stop for more than twenty-four hours—worse luck!—in Paris." ”

“ Psychology makes answer that motives must be sought in the origin, the early experience and subsequent career of the personality with whom we are concerned.
Like the great Napoleon, for whom he has always felt a touching adoration, M. Paoli is a Corsican. He was born in 1835 at La Porta, a picturesque little town perched like an eagle's nest on the crest of a hill on the eastern slope of the island, overlooking the sea, with the Island of Elba and the coast of Tuscany in the distance. ”