but now in a monologue. Fra
Battista looked and longed, and Vanna looked again and thrilled. It grew
quite dark; nothing of each other could they see and little know, until
the friar put out his foot and found Vanna's. A tremor, beginning at her
heart, ran down to her toes; Battista felt the flutter of it and was
assured.

When he left her that night he kissed her cold hand, then La
Testolina's, which he found by no means cold, and moved off leisurely
towards the Piazza dell' Erbe. Neither woman spoke for a while: La
Testolina was picking at her apron, Vanna sat quietly in the dark
holding her heart. She was still in a tremble, so ridiculously moved
that when her friend kissed her she burst out crying. La Testolina went
nodding away; and the end of the episode may be predicted. Not at one
but at many sermons of the tall Carmelite did Vanna sit rapt; not for
one but for every dusk did he stoop to kiss her hand. All Verona saw
her devotion,--all Verona, that is, but one old Veronese. The essence of
comedy being that the spectators shall chuckle at actors in a fog, here
was a comedy indeed.

III

THE SEED OF DISCORD

When Vanna announced her condition the neighbours looked slyly at each
other; when her condition announced Vanna, they chattered; the gossip
sank to whispering behind the hand as time went on, and ceased
altogether when the baby was born. That was a signal for heads to shake.
Some pitied the father, many defended the mother: it did not depend upon
your sex; sides were taken freely and voices were shrill when neither
was by. Down by the river especially, upon that bleached board below the
bridge, _ci_ and _si_ whistled like the wind in the chimneys, and the
hands of testimony were as the aspen leaves when storms are in. Some
took one side, some another; but when, in due season, it was seen what
inordinate pride Baldassare had in the black-eyed _bambino_ there was no
question of sides. He had ranked himself with the unforgivable party:
the old man was an old fool, a gull whose power of swallow stirred
disgust. Vanna had the rights of it, they said; such men were made to be
tricked. As for Fra Battista's pulpit, it was thronged about with
upturned faces; for those who had not been before went now to judge what
they would have done under the circumstances. Having been, there were
no two opinions about that. Messer Gabriele Arcangelo, some said,
judging by the honey-tongue; San Bastiano, others consid