The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II

"That's another formality, Cary," said I, "is n't it?" She nodded for reply. "Tell them I detest ceremony, my dear," said I; "and – and " – I could n't keep down my passion – "and if they don't take that fellow away, I'll pitch him head and crop over the banisters." I tried to spring up, but back I fell, weak, and almost fainting. The sad truth came home to me at once that I had n't strength to face a baby; so I just turned my face to the wall, and sulked away to my heart's content. If I tell you how I spent that day, the same story will do for the rest of the week. I saw that they were all watching and waiting for some outbreak, of either my temper or my curiosity. They tried every means to tempt me into an inquiry of one kind or other. They dropped hints, in half-whispers, before me. They said twenty things to arouse anxiety, and even alarm, in me; but I resolved that if I passed my days there, I 'd starve them out: and so I did.

On the ninth day, when I was eating my breakfast, just as I had finished my mutton-chop, and was going to attack the eggs, Cary, in a half-laughing way, said, "Well, pappy, do you never intend to take the air again? The weather is now delightful, – that second season they call the summer of St. Joseph."

"Ain't I a prisoner?" said I. "I thought I had murdered somebody, and was sentenced for life to this chamber."

"How can you be so silly!" said she. "You know perfectly well how these foreigners make a fuss about everything, and exaggerate every trifle into a mock importance. Now, we are not in Ireland – "

"No," said I, "would to Heaven we were!"

"Well, perhaps I might echo the prayer without doing any great violence to my sincerity; but as we are not there, nor can we change the venue – is n't that the phrase? – to our own country, what if we just were to make the best of it, and suffer this matter to take its course here?"

"As how, Cary?"

"Simply by dressing yourself, and driving into Como. Your case will be heard on any morning you present yourself; and I am so convinced that the whole affair will be settled in five minutes that I am quite impatient it should be over."

I will not repeat all her arguments, some good and some bad, but every one of them dictated by that kind and affectionate spirit which, however her judgment incline, never deserts her. The end of it was, I got up, shaved, and dressed, and within an hour was skimming over the calm clear water towards the little city of Como.

Cary was with me, – she would come, – she said she knew she did me good; and it was true: but the scene itself – those grand, great mountains; those leafy glens, opening to the glassy lake, waveless and still; that glorious reach of blue sky, spanning from peak to peak of those Alpine ridges – all soothed and calmed me; and in the midst of such gigantic elements, I could not help feeling shame that such a reptile as I should mar the influence of this picture on my heart by petty passions and little fractious discontents an worthy of a sick schoolboy.

"Is n't it enough for you, K. I.," says I, "ay, and more than you deserve, just to live, and breathe, and have your being in such a bright and glorious world? If you were a poet, with what images would not these swooping mists, these fleeting shadows, people your imagination? What voices would you hear in the wind sighing through the olive groves, and dying in many a soft cadence along the grottoed shore? If a painter, what effects of sunlight and shadow are there to study? what tints of color, that, without nature to guarantee, you would never dare to venture on? But being neither, having neither gift nor talent, being simply one of those 4 fruit consumers,' who bring back nothing to the common stock of mankind, and who can no more make my fellow-man wiser or better than I make myself taller or younger, is it not a matter of deep thankfulness that, in all my common-place of mind and thought, I too – even K. I. that I am – have an intense feeling of enjoyment in the contemplation of this scene? I could n't describe it like Shelley, nor paint it like Stan field, but I 'll back myself for a five-pound note to feel it with either of them." And there, let me tell you, Tom, is the real superiority of Nature over all her counterfeits. You need no study, no cultivation, no connoisseurship to appreciate her: her glorious works come home to the heart of the peasant, as, mist-begirt, he waits for sunrise on some highland waste, as well as to the Prince, who gazes on the swelling landscape of his own dominions. I could n't tell a Claude from a Canaletti, – I 'm not sure that I don't like H. B. better than Albert Durer, – but I 'd not surrender the heartfelt delight, the calm, intense, deep-souled gratitude I experience from the contemplation of a lovely landscape, to possess the Stafford gallery.

I was, then, in a far more peaceful and practicable frame of mind as we entered Como than when I quitted the villa.

I should like to have lingered a little in the old town itself, with its quaint little arched passages and curious architecture; but Cary advised me to nurse all my strength for the "Tribunal." I suppose it must be with some moral hope of discountenancing litigation that foreign Governments always make the Law Courts as dirty and disgusting as possible, pitch them in a filthy quarter, and surround them with every squalor. This one was a paragon of its kind, and for rags and ruffianly looks I never saw the equal of the company there assembled. I am not yet quite sure that the fellow who showed us the way did n't purposely mislead us; for we traversed a dozen dark corridors, and went up and went down more staircases than I have accomplished for the last six months. Now and then we stopped for a minute to interrogate somebody through a sliding pane in a kind of glass cage, and off we went again. At last we came to a densely crowded passage, making way through which, we entered a large hall with a vaulted roof, crammed with people, but who made room at the instance of a red-eyed, red-bearded little man in a black gown, that I now, to my horror and disgust, found out was my counsel, being already engaged by Lord George to defend me.

"This is treachery, Cary," whispered I, angrily.

"I know it is," said she, "and I 'm one of the traitors; but anything is better than to see you pine away your life in a sick-room."

This was neither the time nor place for much colloquy, as we now had to fight our way vigorously through the mob till we reached a row of seats where the bar were placed, and where we were politely told to be seated. Directly in front of us sat three ill-favored old fellows in black gowns and square black caps, modelled after those brown-paper helmets so popular with plasterers and stucco men in our country. I found it a great trial not to laugh every time I looked at them!

There was no case "on" at the moment, but a kind of wrangle was going forward about whose was to be the next hearing, in which I could hear my own name mingled. My lawyer, Signor Mastuccio, seemed to make a successful appeal in my favor; for the three old "plasterers" put up their eyeglasses, and stared earnestly at Cary, after which the chief of them nodded benignly, and said that the case of Giacomo Lamporeccho might be called; and accordingly, with a voice that might have raised the echoes of the Alps, a fellow screamed out that the "homicidio" – I have no need to translate the word – was then before the Court If I only were to tell you, Tom, of the tiresome, tedious, and unmeaning formalities that followed, your case in listening would be scarcely more enviable than was my own while enduring them. All the preliminary proceedings were in writing, and a dirty little dog, with a vile odor of garlic about him, read some seventy pages of a manuscript which I was informed was the accusation against me. Then appeared another creature, – his twin brother in meanness and poverty, – who proved to be a doctor, the same who had professionally attended the wounded man, and who also read a memoir of the patient's sufferings and peril. These occupied the Court till it was nigh three o'clock, when, being concluded, Giacomo himself was called. I assure you, Tom, I gave a start when, instead of the large, fine, burly, well-bearded rascal with the Lablache voice, I beheld a pale, thin, weakly creature, with a miserable treble, inform the Court that he was Giacomo Lamporeccho.

Cary, who translated for me as he spoke, told me that he gave an account of our interview together, in which it would appear that my conduct was that of an outrageous maniac. He described me as accusing everybody of roguery and cheating, – calling the whole country a den of thieves, and the authorities their accomplices. He detailed his own mild remonstrances against my hasty judgment, and his calm appeals to my better reason. He dwelt long upon his wounded honor, and, what he felt still more deeply, the wounded honor of his nation; and at last he actually began to cry when his feelings got too much for him, at which the Court sobbed, and the bar sobbed, and the general audience, in a mixture of grief and menace, muttered the most signal vengeance against your humble servant.

I happened to be – a rare thing for me, latterly – in one of my old moods, when the ludicrous and absurd carry away all my sympathies; and faith, Tom, I laughed as heartily as ever I did in my life at the whole scene. "Are we coming to the wound yet, Cary," said I, "tell me that," for the fellow had now begun again.

"Yes, papa, he is describing it, and, by his account, it ought to have killed him."

"Egad," said I, "it will be the death of me with laughing;" and I shook till my sides ached.

"Does his Excellency know that he is in a Court of Justice?" said Plasterer No. 1.

"Tell him, my dear, that I quite forgot it. I fancied I was at a play, and enjoyed it much."

I believe Cary did n't translate me honestly, for the old fellow seemed appeased, and the case continued. I could now perceive that my atrocious conduct had evoked a very strong sentiment in the auditory, for there was a great rush forward to get a look at me, and they who were fortunate enough to succeed complimented me by a string of the most abusive and insulting epithets.

My advocate was now called on, and, seeing him rise, I just whispered to Cary, "Ask the judge if we may see the wound?"

"What does that question mean?" said the chief judge, imperiously. "Would the prisoner dare to insinuate that the wound has no existence?"

"You've hit it," said I. "Tell him, Cary, that's exactly what I mean."

"Has not the prisoner sworn to his sufferings," repeated he, "and the doctor made oath to the treatment?"

"They 're both a pair of lying scoundrels. Tell him so, Cary."

"You see him now. There is the man himself in his true colors, most illustrious and most ornate judges," exclaimed Giacomo, pointing to me with his finger, as I nearly burst with rage.

"Ah! che diavolo! che demonio infernale!" rang out amidst the waving crowd; and the looks bestowed on me from the bench seemed to give hearty concurrence to the opinion.

Now, Tom, a court of justice, be its locale ever so humble, and its procedure ever so simple, has always struck me as the very finest evidence of homage to civilization. There is something in the fact of men submitting, not only their worldly interests and their characters, but even their very passions, to the arbitration of their fellow-men, that is indescribably fine and noble, and shows – if we even wanted such a proof – that this corrupt nature of ours, in the midst of all its worst influences, has still some of that divine essence within, unsullied and untarnished. And just as I reverence this, do I execrate, with all my heart's indignation, a corrupt judicature. The governments who employ, and the people who tolerate them, are well worthy of each other.

Take all the vices that degrade a nation, "bray them in a mortar," and they 'll not eat so deep into the moral feeling of a people as a tainted administration of the law.

You may fancy that, in my passionate warmth, I have forgotten all about my individual case: no such thing. I have, however, rescued myself from the danger of an apoplexy by opening this safety-valve to my indignation. And now I cannot resume my narrative. No, Tom, "I have lost the scent," and all I can do is to bring you "in at the death." I was sentenced to pay seven hundred zwanzigers, – eight-pences, – all the costs of the procedure, the doctor's bill, and the maintenance of Giacomo till his convalescence was completed. I appealed on the spot to an upper court, and the judgment was confirmed! I nearly burst with indignant anger, and asked my advocate if he had ever heard of such iniquity. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled slightly, and said, "The law is precarious in all countries."

"Yes, – but," said I, "the judges are not always corrupt. Now, that old president of the first court suggested every answer to the witness – "

"Vincenzio Lamporeccho is a shrewd man – "

"What! How do you call him? Is he anything to our friend Giacomo?"

"He is his father!"

"And the Brigadier who arrested me?"

"Is his brother. The junior judge of the Appeal Court, Luigi Lamporeccho, is his first cousin."

I did n't ask more questions, Tom. Fancy a country where your butler is brother to the chief baron, and sues you for wages in the Court of Exchequer!

"And you, Signor Mastuccio," said I. "I hope I have not exposed you to the vengeance of this powerful family by your zeal in my behalf?"

"Not in the least," said he; "my mother was a Lamporeccho herself."

Now, Tom, I think I need not take any more pains to explain the issue of my lawsuit; and here I'll leave it.

My parting benediction to the Court was brief: "Goodbye, old gentlemen. I 'm glad you have the Austrians here to bully you; and not sorry that you are here to assassinate them." This speech was overheard by some learned linguist in court, and on the same evening I received an intimation to quit the Imperial dominions within twenty-four hours. Tiverton was for going up to Milan to Radetzky, or somebody, else, and having it all "put straight," as he calls it; but I would not hear of this.

"We 'll write to the Ambassador at Vienna?" said he.

"Nor that either," said I.

"To the 'Times,' then."

"Not a word of it."

"You don't mean to say," said he, "that you 'll put up with this treatment, and that you'll lower the name of Briton before these foreigners by such a tame submission?"