Saturnino

“ She tended him as she would have taken care of a stricken deer or a maimed hawk. Saturnino's name said nothing to her. She thought of him only as a thief who had robbed the dead; but even as she had aided and pitied him, so she did this man. ”

“ Saturnino was gone: a dead man, or worse than a dead man, and never more would his native Maremma thrill with the Homeric tales of his acts; never more would this town of Grosseto see him stride through their public places with his pistols and knife in his broad red sash, and his bold black eyes full of challenge and scorn. ”

“ Saturnino was at large once more, he felt sure that it was in the tombs that he was sheltered. He did not for a moment believe that either the sharks or the sea had killed him; he made no doubt for an instant that her father's presence was her secret, and his danger her anxiety. He grew angry against himself for ever having suspected otherwise; for ever having attributed to that fearless life of hers the passions and the weakness of an amorous secrecy. ”

“ Her fear of the city was lost in a yet intenser fear. Had its streets been a furnace, she would have plunged into its flames.
Saturnino left the noisier and gayer streets to pass into the dark steep lanes that encompass the Pantheon and lead the way to Tiber. It seemed to her as if these miry, crooked, gloomy ways would never end; their rough uneven pavements, their battered darkling house-walls, their stench, and the cries that filled them from the brazen lungs of the populace thronging through them, made them seem to her like the passage-ways of hell. ”

“ Twenty years had gone by, and Saturnino, from a young and generous man who, although fierce and terrible, could be merciful and just, had grown year by year a deeper terror, a dreader name; not to Maremma still, for still he spared the poor, but to the law and state. More murders lay upon his soul than he had time to count ”

“ She only watched the figure of Saturnino, towering a full head above the throngs through which his long stride passed.
Once only he paused; it was to go into a wineshop, and, under cover of drinking, ask the way to the palace that Este had inherited; the palace once of a Pope's mistress; a grand and gorgeous place, standing with its sculptured walls on a small piazza, dark and old, across the water on Trastevere. It had a wooded garden sloping to the Tiber, as the Farnesina had. So they told him in the wine-shop, making clear to him the way that he should take. ”

“ He must resort to that betrayal of her which would seem to her most vile. He must state what he knew of her to the civic authorities of Grosseto; he must set at work against her the machineries of that law against which Saturnino's life had been one long revolt. He must publish to her and every one that story of her birth which the rude tenderness of Joconda had so carefully concealed. ”

“ The drummer was surprised to see that it was Coronel Saturnino. The salesman had thought the colonel was in San Geronimo, but no doubt he had come to Canalejos for the fiesta. The expression on the officer's face struck Strawbridge. For once his look of satire had vanished, and it left exposed what must have been [Pg 200] the real Saturnino beneath all his quips and mockeries. He was speaking through the door, in a low tone:
"When a man has only one desire in life, señora, would he not be a fool to sacrifice that! Why should he sacrifice it! ”

“ Saturnino waved a hand.
"For a long time there has been a plot brewing in Canalejos, against General Fombombo. It came to a head in Rosales...." He shrugged. "Cá! You can scarcely blame a joven of spirit from playing the game. If he had won...." Saturnino looked at the town and the wide river. "Caramba! he would have won a nucleus for a state of his own, thrust in between federal and insurgent territory. Cá! It was quite a stroke. I think I will give the lad a military funeral. Such souls as his have made the Latin race great." Just then the colonel's eyes fell on the drummer's bandaged hand. ”

“ And when full day came, he himself took Montino down the mountain as far as the first ford that crosses the Fiora. Five hundred times, if once, have I heard the history from Montino himself. Nay, Saturnino was a brave man, and a generous, and because he aided this stranger to escape from the burden of life, they have caged him in a trap as you catch a dondola. It is vile. The stranger was a rich man in his own country, a great prince, they say; what did he do here in Italy? why not stay where he was? It was always the rich that Mastarna made war on; the poor were sacred to him. That we know. ”

“ They were now treading on what was once the Via Cassia, and they pursued it some little way; but in lieu of going on by it to the Ponte Molle, Saturnino crossed the green turf by paths he knew, and at length entered on a broad crowded public road, which once had been the great Flaminian Way. He deemed it less perilous to pass through the gates with other men than to endeavour to enter the city secretly by any suspected means. ”

“ For herself, she did not want any saint. The religion of Santa Tarsilla went past her; it never reached her, still less did it ever enter into her. They had taught her the usual formula, and she had had the priestly benison on her dusky head like other children; but it all went by her as the wind did; it never took hold upon her. 'And yet Saturnino was a true believer,' said the good Priore of Santa Tarsilla, to whom alone Joconda had told the truth. ”

“ Once a brown-eyed Trasteverina with red laughing mouth heard him ask that, and smiled.
'A handsome youth and open-handed,' she said; 'he lives yonder where you see the statues on the roof; he led a mirthful life last winter, but he did not forget the poor. He was away all summer at some pleasure, I suppose; now he is back again; yes, he is there; he is not alone, he is never alone; he is a gay gentleman, and handsome as a camellia-tree in carnival.'
Saturnino said nothing; he slid his hand within his clothes to feel his dagger-hilt.
Musa was not near enough to hear the woman's words. ”

“ A man happened to be passing, whom the alcalde pressed into service, and he trotted on before with the halter of the led horse. Don Saturnino hurried him along; as we approached the next village Carrera's soldiers were in sight, returning on the direct road to Guatimala, fresh from the slaughter at Quezaltenango. Don Saturnino told the guide that he must avoid the plaza and go on to the next village. The guide begged, and Don Saturnino rode up, drew his sword, and threatened to cut his head off. The poor fellow trotted on, with his eye fixed on the uplifted sword ”

“ Don Pepé had had a shot at him as he was retreating from the Antigua, and the padre had a musket left at night by a flying soldier against the wall of the convent.
The morning opened with troubles. The grey mule was sick. Don Saturnino bled her on both sides of her neck, but the poor animal was not in a condition to be ridden. Shortly afterwards Mr. Catherwood had one of the mozos by the throat, but Padre Alcantara patched up a peace. Don Saturnino said that the grey mule would be better for exercise, and for the last time we bade farewell to our kind host. ”

“ The preference of the multitude may be unsound morality, but it has a wild justice and a rude logic at its base.
Santa Tarsilla once more lamented for Saturnino. It was of the same mind with the mob of Orbetello, which, could it have got at the woman whose stupidity had cost him his liberty, would have made her rue that ever she had been born.
In like manner all the villages and the towns in Maremma mourned for him; feeling pity and pain for the old eagle of their rocks who had broken loose from his cage only to be trapped afresh. He had once been the glory of Maremma ”

“ Don Saturnino had had the prudence to keep out of sight; but the captain, who had intended to campaign against these fellows, never flinched, and when the last man passed added an extra "Viva Carrera." I again felt rejoiced that the soldiers had left the town and that there had been no fight. It would have been a fearful thing to fall into the hands of such men, with their passions roused by resistance and bloodshed. Reaching the plaza, they gave a general shout of "Viva Carrera," and stacked their arms. In a few minutes a party of them came down to our house, and asked for breakfast ”

“ The idea of Saturnino was to get ashore somewhere near either the Albegna's or the Fiora's mouth, and so in time creep home to his old lair by Monte Labbro. We pulled all day long; we were half dead of hunger and thirst; we had drunk at a spring near Romito, and for food we had a bit of black Gorgona bread, but we had finished that at dawn. We rowed on, keeping some way off the shore, hoping against hope that if the coastguard or the carabineers saw us they would see in us two fishermen and nothing more. ”

“ But what set up a questioning in the drummer were the tones of the man and the woman, and the nickname, "Pancho," which the señora had used. This diminutive and just such overtones the drummer recalled hearing through the hedge as he stood in the plaza outside the [Pg 201] cathedral garden. The idea that those quarreling lovers in the garden had been Saturnino and Dolores came to him with a shock. All along, had Saturnino been a suitor for the señora's favors? Was the officer attempting intimacies with the wife of his employer and general? Such duplicity filled the American with disdain. ”

“ They have taken him, and they will cage him out on Gorgona yonder, or send him to the King's mines. If man could free him, I would free him. What did he do ever? Did he steal from the poor? No. Did he rob the church? No. Did ever a peasant miss his sheep, or a woodman his wallet; or a labourer that had got his wages in his waistband, was he ever lightened of them by Saturnino? Nay, never. That we know. We have come and gone on his mountains and never were we the worse. When old Montino was lost in the snow on Santa Fiora, what did Mastarna do when he found him? ”

“ With sardonic wrinkles in his dust mask he looked at the drummer.
Strawbridge tried to shift his leg so it would not touch the hard carbine. He was somehow incensed at Saturnino's tone.
"What better thing can they fight for than their freedom?"
The colonel shrugged.
"Probably nothing. It makes a very exciting game for [Pg 157] gentlemen—these peons wanting to be free. What finer thing could a peon do than to entertain a caballero?" ”

“ The colonel beckoned a soldier to him and gave an order that sent the man to the rear, to return presently with a carbine for Strawbridge. While the peon strapped it to the drummer's saddle, the colonel's black eyes, with their look of chronic amusement, passed over his recruits.
"These peons are going out to fight for their freedom," he observed with his tone of satire. "They are perpetually going out to fight for their freedom. Different saviors rise up—a Miedo, a Fombombo. Now it is Saturnino, and only the Holy Virgin knows who next will be leading these tatterdemalions to freedom!" ”

“ The women at the window muttered that this was just the caprice and injustice of the government and the soldiers; a murder more or less (if it were a murder) , did it matter so much? Saturnino was a fine bold man, and never had harmed the poor.
'Why, he had good about him,' assented Joconda. 'But murder is not a good thing; I wish he had had other ways of living. Alas! poor soul! upon that rock of Gorgona his crimes will be cold comfort to him.'
'And that is true, said the gossips, crossing themselves ”

“ As who would say in Rome no justice were. But if I live, his feigned ecstasies Shall be no shelter to these outrages; But he and his shall know that justice lives In Saturninus' health; whom, if she sleep, He'll so awake as he in fury shall Cut off the proud'st conspirator that lives. TAMORA. My gracious lord, my lovely Saturnine, Lord of my life, commander of my thoughts, Calm thee, and bear the faults of Titus' age, Th' effects of sorrow for his valiant sons Whose loss hath pierc'd him deep and scarr'd his heart ”

“ I will not re-salute the streets of Rome,
Or climb my palace, till from forth this place
I lead espous'd my bride along with me.
TAMORA. And here in sight of heaven to Rome I swear,
If Saturnine advance the Queen of Goths,
She will a handmaid be to his desires,
A loving nurse, a mother to his youth.
SATURNINUS. Ascend, fair Queen, Pantheon. Lords, accompany
Your noble Emperor and his lovely bride,
Sent by the heavens for Prince Saturnine,
Whose wisdom hath her fortune conquered;
There shall we consummate our spousal rites. ”

“ The most remarkable and certain characteristic of the Saturnine man is that, as an old author observes 'he will never look thee in the face.' 'If they have to love any one, these Saturnines,' says another old author, 'they love most constantly; and if they hate, they hate to the death.' The persons signified symbolically by Saturn are grandparents, and other old persons, day labourers, paupers, beggars, clowns, husbandmen of the meaner sort, and especially undertakers, sextons, and gravediggers. ”

“ Saturninus.] The harangues of Memmius had shown that the spirit of the Gracchi was still alive in Rome; and now Lucius Apuleius Saturninus took up their revolutionary projects with a violence to which they had been averse, but for which the acts of their adversaries had become a fatal precedent. Of Saturninus himself we do not know much more than that he was an eloquent speaker, and a resolute though not over-scrupulous man at a time when to be scrupulous was equivalent to self-martyrdom or self-effacement. [Sidenote: Glaucia.] ”