Stories Toto Told Me (Valancourt Classics) (4 page)

  “Who were those men?” asked San Luigi.

  “Tell him, ’Bastiano,” said San Pancrazio in a whisper.

  “Gardeners,” murmured San Sebastiano; “they have to stay up all the night between the twentieth and the twenty-first of June.”

  “And I suppose they will be going to cut the lilies for the boys who are coming to fetch them?” said San Luigi.

  San Sebastiano and San Pancrazio nearly choked with laughter; and then San Sebastiano said that, if San Luigi would have the goodness to be patient, he should see what he should see.

  They watched the gardeners go and hide themselves in the syringas, and for some time there was silence.

  Then there came six ragamuffin boys, creeping cautiously through the darkness, and they made their way towards the lily-beds. As soon as they got there, the men in the bushes jumped out upon them with a loud yell, whereupon the boys took to their heels and fled in a different direction from that by which they had come. The men gave chase, but they ran so swiftly that they were soon out of sight. Now, as soon as they were gone, twenty or thirty more ragamuffin boys rushed noiselessly out of the darkness, and began to cut the lilies into sheaves as fast as they could. In a short time there was not one left standing, and then they made off with their spoils and disappeared.

  The next minute the gardeners came back, loudly lamenting that they had failed to catch the robbers; but when they saw the beds where the lilies once stood, they called for the Madonna to have pity on them. And the chief gardener wept, for he said the Prince would surely send him to prison.

  And the three saints sat still by the fountain.

  San Luigi was trembling very greatly; but because he is, as you know, of such wonderful innocence, he did not understand what he had seen; and he begged his companions to explain it to him.

  So San Sebastiano told him that the boys of the world were wicked little devils, and very clever, too. So they sent the six best runners first, because they knew the gardeners would be watching. And these six were to make the gardeners chase them and lead them a long dance, so that the others could come, as soon as the place was clear, and steal the lilies. All of which had been done.

  And then San Luigi was very grieved; but most of all because the gardeners would lose their places. So he asked San Sebastiano if he could not do something for them.

  Then San Sebastiano said that they would be very pleased and quite happy if San Luigi would show himself to them, for they were most respectable men, and pious into the bargain; neither had they sworn nor used bad words.

  But San Luigi was so modest that he did not like to show himself alone, and he held out his hands, the one to San Sebastiano and the other to San Pancrazio, saying:

  “My friends—if you allow me to say so—dear ’Bastiano—dear Pancrazio—who have both been so kind to me, let us all show ourselves, and then I will give them back the lilies.”

  So they called Sebastianello and mounted upon his insteps again; and then a silver
light, more bright than the moon, beamed from them, and the gardeners saw in the midst of the blaze the great angel by the magnolia tree, and the three saints standing in front of him—San Luigi in the middle, with San Sebastiano on his right hand and San Pancrazio on his left hand, with their arms round each other. Then the gardeners fell on their knees and returned thanks for this vision; and, as the angel spread his wings and rose from the ground, San Luigi made the sign of the cross over the garden. And the men stood amazed and watched till the brightness seemed to be only a tiny star; and so the three saints went back with Sebastianello into heaven.

  And, after they had disappeared, the gardeners saw that the lily-beds were full of flowers more beautiful than had ever been seen before. But when the thieves brought their stolen flowers to the Church of San Luigi in the Via Livia they were nothing but sticks and dirty weeds.

  And the three saints are most friendly together now, because San Sebastiano and San Pancrazio cannot help admiring San Luigi for his strange innocence, as well as for the strange penance with which he gained his place in heaven; and they are always delighted to do anything to oblige him, because they have been longer there than he has, and understand the ways of that blessed place so well; while San Luigi carries only the lilies of Paradise now, and is never so happy as when he is choosing the best branches of golden palm for his two martyr-friends; nor is he ever shocked at San Pancrazio because he is of a gay heart, nor at San Sebastiano because he is naked and not ashamed.

  How could he be ashamed, sir?

III

A CAPRICE OF THE CHERUBIM

When
you have the happiness, sir, to see the Padre Eterno sitting upon His throne, I can assure you that, at least, your eyes will be delighted with the sight of many splendid persons who are there also.

  These, you know, are called the angels, and they are in nine rows. All these rows are in the shape of an egg with pointed ends, just like that gold ring on your finger. Those in the first row are named serafini. Those in the second row are called cherubini; and you will find their appearance quite beautiful and curious to look at. They have neither arms, nor bodies, nor legs, like the other angels, but are simply heads like those of little boys. Their eyes are as brown as the shadows on the stream, where you fished last Thursday, when the sun was shining through the trees. Their skin, if you will only believe me, has the colour and brightness of the blue jewels which la Signora Duchessa sometimes wears, and their hair waves like the sea at Ardea. They have no ears; but, in the place where the ears of a boy would be, they have wings shaped like those of a sandpiper, and blue as the sky at day-dawn. These flutter and shine for ever in regular watches in the second ring of the Glory of the Highest, and cool the perfumed air with the gentle quivering of their feathers.

  Once upon a time, some of the cherubini came to hear of the pastimes with which people in the world weary themselves; and they humbly asked permission of the Padre Eterno to make a little gita down to the earth, and to have a little divel to play with next time they were off duty. And the Padre Eterno, Who always allows you to have your own way when He knows it will teach you a lesson, making the sign of the cross, said, “
+
It is allowed to you.”

  So the following day a very large number—I believe about ninety-five millions, but I should not like to be quite sure, because I do not exactly know—of these beautiful little blue birds of Heaven were taken by San Michele Arcangiolo down into the world, and they perched on the trees in the gardens of the Palazzo Sforza Cesarini, in that city over the lake.

  San Michele Arcangiolo left them there, and made the second of his journeys into the pit of hell. The first, you know, was after he had conquered the King of the divels in a dreadful duel and bound him in chains and flames for ever and the day after. As he passed along the pathway, down the red-hot rocks, the flames of the burning divels licked up till, meeting the cool air of Heaven which San Michele Arcangiolo breathed, they curved backward, and still upward, forming a sort of triumphal arch of yellow flame above his head.

  When he arrived at the gate where hope must be laid down, he called aloud that the Father and King of gods and men had occasion for the services of a young imp named Aeschmai Davi. The arch-fiend shook his chains with rage, because he was obliged to obey; and caused a horrible dæmon to flash into bodily shape from a puddle of molten brimstone.

  If you looked at his face or his body, you would have thought he was a boy about fourteen years old; but his eyeballs glittered with the red of a burning coal. If you looked at his arms, you would have thought he was a bat, for wings grew there of spikes and skin. Oh, and he had nasty little horns in his hair, but it was not hair but vipers; and from his waist to his feet he was a he-goat, and all over he was scarlet. It was a different scarlet to the scarlet coat of that English soldier whom I saw once near the Porta Pia of Rome. I can only make you understand what I mean, by saying that it was the colour of the ashes of burning wood, which have been almost dead, but which you have blown up again into a fiery glow. He was of the most bad and hideous from his hoofs to his horns; and no one, whether he was a saint, or an angel, or a man like you, sir, as long as he had the protection of the Madonna, would need to be a bit afraid of him, because his nastiness was clear, and he could be seen through like a piece of glass; and in the middle of him there was his dirty dangling heart as black as ink.

  San Michele Arcangiolo, who knows exactly how to deal with everybody, and especially with a
scimiotto
like this, stuck his lance into the middle of the little divel’s stomach, just as Gianetta would spit a woodcock for toasting, and holding it out before him, because it is always best to see mischief in front of you, carried the writhing, wriggling little divel up into the world. The flames, as before, licked upward and around the great archangel, but never a feather was singed nor a blister came upon his whitest skin, because they could not pierce the ice of his purity; but they made the little divel kick and struggle,—just as I should, sir, if you whipped me naked with a whip of red-hot wires, instead of with the lilac twigs you do use when I am disobedient.

  So they came into the Prince his garden; and having released the little divel from his uncomfortable position, San Michele Arcangiolo—who, because he commands the armies in heaven, is very fond of soldiers—went down into the city to pass a half-hour inspecting the barracks.

  When the little divel found himself free, he could hardly believe his good luck, and sat for a few minutes rubbing the sparks out of his eyes, and wondering what his next torture would be. Meanwhile, the cherubini sat in the trees saying nothing, but watching with all their might, for they never had seen such a thing before.

  Presently, as nothing happened to the little divel, he plucked up what small courage he had and took a sly look round. The first thing he saw was the fountain near the magnolia tree; and as the divels know very well what water is, although a rare commodity in their own country, where one drop is worth more than all the wealth the world has ever seen, he plunged head first into the basin, to cool the burning pangs which always torment him. And still the cherubini said not a word, but watched with all their eyes.

  Now the basin, sir, is a deep one, as you know, because you have often dived in there yourself when the sun was in Leo. And the little divel disappeared under the water. But a moment after his head popped up, twitching with pain, amid clouds of steam and a frightful hissing; and he screamed very much and began to clamber over the edge as fast as possible.

  When he got on to the grass, he jumped and skipped all over the place, and shook his wings and squeezed his hairy legs, and stroked his naked breast, and rolled about on the ground, and leaped and howled, till the cherubini found him most diverting, and laughed so much that they tumbled out of the trees, and came and fluttered round the little divel; for this was a far funnier entertainment even than that which they had promised themselves.

  And the reason of it all is very easy to understand, if you will only think. You see, one of the torments that the divels and the damned have to bear is to be always disappointed; they never get their wishes fulfilled; all their plans, no matter how carefully they construct them, fall to the ground; all their arrangements are always upset at the very last moment, and everything goes by the rule of contrary. So when the wretched little creature plunged into the cold water, the heat of hell-flame boiled it, and the Breath of God made it hotter still; and so, instead of being cooled at all, the little divel got handsomely scalded.

  Now, when the cherubini had had their fill of laughter, and could observe accurately this sight, which was to them so strange, they saw great patches of scalded flesh hanging in shreds and strips from his neck and sides and back and belly, and the skinny leather of his wings crinkled and warped, and the horn of his hoofs beginning to peel; and they would have felt sorry, if to grieve over a little divel had not been wrong. So they said nothing, hovering in the air around him, and looking at him with their clear eyes all the time.

  The little divel looked at them too; and, being a cheeky little beast, he asked who, the hell, they were staring at.

  They said that they wanted to play with him, and they desired him to do some more tricks, and to tell them merry stories, and where he came from, and what he did there, and how he liked it, and why he had that nasty black heart-shaped blotch hanging in the middle of his inside, and many other things.

  And the little divel said that he had had a bad accident, and he was not going to hurt his throat by shouting to a lot of blue birds up there in the sky; and if they wanted him to answer their questions, they must come down lower, because he was in great pain.

  And the cherubini wondered very much where this pain could be in which the little divel said he was, and, also, what kind of thing was this same pain: but, as they were curious and wanted to know, they descended a bit until they fluttered in a ring round and round the little divel’s head.

  And there they became aware of a horrible stench, and they said to one another: “He stinks—stinks of sin!” But, because they wished to be diverted, they resolved to put up with small inconveniences for a while.

  Still the little divel was not satisfied; and perceiving that these would be very agreeable playmates, he tried to make a good impression. So he flopped down upon his stomach, and propped his chin up in his hands, and invited the cherubini to come and sit round him and listen to such tales as they had never heard before.

  And the cherubini came a little lower, but they did not sit down.

  And then other things happened.

  And, suddenly, the cherubini found that they did not desire to play with this little divel any longer; and with one swoop of their wings, sounding like the strong chord you strike, sir, when you begin to play on the chitarone in the evening, they went back into Paradise; while the earth opened under the little divel, and a red flame, shaped like a hand with claws, came up and gripped and squeezed him so tightly round the waist, that his face bulged, and his eyes went out like crabs’, and his breasts swelled like pumpkins, and his shoulders and arms like sausages, and his middle was like Donna Lina’s, and the skin of his hairy thighs became balloons and burst, and then he was tossed back into his puddle of molten brimstone.

  When the Ave rang, and this company of cherubini went on duty in the Aureola, the Padre Eterno observed, from the expression of their faces, that they had been insulted and their feelings hurt. And, when La Sua Maestà deigned to inquire the reason, they replied that the little divel, whom He had allowed them to play with, had been very rude, and they had no desire to see him any more; for they had asked him to show them funny tricks and to tell them merry stories, and where he came from, and what he did there, how he liked it, why he had a nasty black heart-shaped blotch dangling in the middle of his inside, and so forth, and that he had said he would be pleased to answer all this and to play with them if they would come and sit down on the grass round him; but they had to reply that they were not able to sit down, and the little divel had asked why not; and they had answered politely that they had not the wherewithal; and then the little divel jumped up from the ground, where he was lying with his legs a-straddling, and showed them that he could sit down, and had turned head over heels, and laughed and made a gibe and a jeer of them, because he could do things they could not do, and had also done many other disgusting tricks before them, which had caused them much offence; and so they were bored and came back to Paradise.

  They added that they did not desire to mix up with that class of person again; and begged pardon if they had seemed to prefer their own will this time.

  And the Padre Eterno smiled, and at that Smile the light of Heaven glowed like a rainbow, and the music rose in a strain so beautiful that I believe I shall die when I hear it, and He made the sign of the cross and said: “It is well, My children, and God bless you. Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus +
Pater et + Filius et + Spiritus Sanctus.”