“You will not help me, then, with my bazaar?”--“No, I will not.”--“And you will not give a little contribution towards it?”--“One who has so lately lost her husband,” answered Donna Elisa, “ought not to trifle.”
Donna Micaela saw that Donna Elisa was angry with her for some reason or other, and that she therefore would not help her. But there must be others who would understand; and it was a beautiful plan, which would save Diamante.
But Donna Micaela wandered in vain from door to door. However much she talked and begged, she gained no partisans.
She tried to explain, she used all her eloquence to persuade. No one was interested in her plans.
Wherever she came, people answered her that they were too poor, too poor.
The syndic’s wife answered no. Her daughters were not allowed to sell at the bazaar. Don Antonio Greco, who had the marionette theatre, would not come with his dolls. The town-band would not play. None of the shop-keepers would give any of their wares. When Donna Micaela was gone they laughed at her.
A railroad, a railroad! She did not know what she was thinking of. There would have to be a company, shares, statutes, concessions. How should a woman manage such things?
While some were content to laugh at Donna Micaela, some were angry with her.
She went to the cellar-like shop near the old Benedictine monastery, where Master Pamphilio related romances of chivalry. She came to ask him if he would come to her bazaar and entertain the public with Charlemagne and his paladins; but as he was in the midst of a story, she had to sit down on a bench and wait.
Then she noticed Donna Concetta, Master Pamphilio’s wife, who was sitting on the platform at his feet knitting a stocking. As long as Master Pamphilio was speaking, Donna Concetta’s lips moved. She had heard his romances so many times that she knew them by heart, and said the words before they had passed Master Pamphilio’s lips. But it was always the same pleasure to her to hear him, and she wept, and she laughed, as she had done when she heard him for the first time.
Master Pamphilio was an old man, who had spoken much in his day, so that his voice sometimes failed him in the big battle-scenes, when he had to speak loud and fast. But Donna Concetta, who knew it all by heart, never took the word from Master Pamphilio. She only made a sign to the audience to wait until his voice came back. But if his memory failed him, Donna Concetta pretended that she had dropped a stitch, raised the stocking to her eyes, and threw him the word behind it, so that no one noticed it. And every one knew that although Donna Concetta perhaps could have told the romances better than Master Pamphilio, she would never have been willing to do such a thing, not only because it was not fitting for a woman, but also because it would not give her half so much pleasure as to listen to dear Master Pamphilio.