I understand and recognise the great inconvenience I am causing,
but really----"

Signor Giacomo's small, clean-shaven, pink face, rose above an enormous
white stock, and a lean little body, buttoned up in a great, black
overcoat, and in the convulsive workings of his lips and eyebrows as
well as in his troubled eyes, the most comical anxiety was expressed.

"What is the matter now?" asked the engineer, somewhat sharply. He, the
most upright and straightforward man alive, had little sympathy with the
hesitation of poor, timid Signor Giacomo.

"Allow me," Puttini began, and, turning to the servant, said harshly:

"Begone, you! Go into the kitchen. You will come when I call for you.
Go, I say! Why don't you do what I tell you? Where is your respect for
me? I command here! I am the master!"

It was the servant's curiosity, her insolent disregard for the orders of
her superior, which had provoked this outburst of despotic fury in
"Sior Zacomo."

"Whew! What a violent man!" she said, lifting the lamp on high. "There
is no need to shout in that way! What do you think of it, _Scior
Parento_?"

"Look here!" the engineer exclaimed. "Would it not be better for you to
take yourself off, instead of standing there and jabbering?"

Marianna went away grumbling, and Signor Giacomo began to communicate
his most secret thoughts to the worshipful engineer, interlarding his
sentences with many _buts_ and _ifs_, _that is_ and _reallys_. He had
promised to be present in the capacity of witness at Luisa's secret
marriage, but now, when it was time to start for Castello, he was
assailed by an overpowering fear of compromising himself.

He was "first political deputy," as the highest communal authority was
then called. If the worshipful Imperial and Royal Commissary of Porlezza
should get wind of this affair, how would he look upon it? And the
Marchesa? "A terrible woman, most worthy engineer! A vindictive woman!"
Besides he had so many other worries! "There is that cursed bull!" This
bull, a bone of contention between the town and the _alpador_, or tenant
of the hill-pastures, had, for the last two years, been a moral incubus
to poor Signor Giacomo, who, in speaking of his troubles and trials,
always began with "that perfidious servant," and ended with "that
cursed bull!" In speaking these words he would raise his small face, his
eyes full of pained execration, and stretch out accusing hands towards
the brow of the hill which overhu