gun slung across his shoulders, but to-day the weapon was absent.
Don Agostino noted the fact, and also that the agent's face was lighted up with unusual excitement.
"And what is there new, Signor Fontana?" he asked, briefly.
"Perbacco! What is there new?" repeated Fontana. "There is a whole world of new – but your reverence will never guess what it is! Such a thing has not happened for fifteen years – "
"But what is it?" insisted Don Agostino, tranquilly. "I quite believe that nothing new has happened in Montefiano for fifteen years. I have been here nearly ten, and – "
"I have ridden down to tell you. The letter came only an hour ago. Her excellency the princess – their excellencies the princesses, I should say – "
"Well," interrupted Don Agostino, "what about them?"
The agent took a letter from his pocket and spread it out on the pommel of his saddle. Then he handed it to Don Agostino.
"There!" he exclaimed. "It is her excellency herself who writes. They are coming here – to the palace – to stay for weeks – months, perhaps."
Don Agostino uttered a sudden ejaculation. It was difficult to say whether it was of surprise or dismay.
"Here!" he said – "to Montefiano? But the place is dismantled – a barrack!"
"And do I not know it – I?" returned Sor Beppe. "There are some tables and some chairs – and there are things that once were beds; but there is nothing else, unless it is some pictures on the walls – and the prince – blessed soul – took the best of those to Rome years ago."
Don Agostino read the letter attentively.
"The princess says that all the necessary furniture will be sent from Rome at once," he observed, "and servants – everything, in fact. The rooms on the piano nobile are to be made ready – and the chapel. Well, Signor Fontana," he continued, "you will have plenty to occupy your time if, as the princess says, everything is to be ready in a fortnight from to-day. After all, the palace was built to be lived in – is it not true?"
"Very true, reverence; but it is so sudden. After so many years, to want everything done in fifteen days – "
"Women, my dear Signor Fontana – women!" said Don Agostino, deprecatingly.
The agent laughed. "That is what I said to my wife," he replied.
"It was not a wise thing to say," observed Don Agostino.
"It is an incredible affair," resumed the other, brushing a fly from his horse's flank as he spoke; "and no reception by the people – as little notice as possible to be taken of their excellencies' arrival. You see what the letter says, reverence?"
"Yes," replied Don Agostino, meditatively. "It is unusual, certainly, under the circumstances."
"But," he added, "the princess has undoubtedly some good reason for wishing to arrive at Montefiano in as quiet a manner as possible. Perhaps she is ill, or her daughter is ill – who knows?"
"They say she is a saint," observed Fontana.
Don Agostino looked at him; the tone of Sor Beppe's voice implied that such a fact would account for any eccentricity. Then he smiled.
"She is at all events the mistress of Montefiano, until the young princess is of age or marries," he remarked; "so, Signor Fontana, there is nothing more to be said or done."
"Except to obey her excellency's instructions."
"Exactly – except to obey her instructions," repeated Don Agostino.
"It is strange that your reverence, the parroco of Montefiano, should never have seen our padrona."
"It is still stranger that you – her representative here – should never have seen her," returned Don Agostino.
"That is true," said the agent; "but" – and his white teeth gleamed in his beard as he smiled – "saints do not often show themselves, reverendo! My respects," he added, lifting his hat and gathering up his reins. "I have to ride down to Poggio to arrange with the station-master there for the arrival of the things which will be sent from Rome." And settling himself in his saddle, Sor Beppe started off at an easy canter and soon disappeared round a turn of the white road, leaving a cloud of dust behind him.
Don Agostino looked after him for a moment or two, and then returned thoughtfully to his house.
The intelligence the agent had brought him was news, indeed, and he wondered what its true purport might be. It was certainly strange that, after studiously avoiding Montefiano for all these years, the princess should suddenly take it into her head to come there for a prolonged stay. Hitherto, Don Agostino had been very happy in his exile, chiefly because that exile was so complete. There had been nobody at Montefiano to rake up the past, to open old wounds which the passing of years had cicatrized, and which only throbbed now and again when memory insisted upon asserting her rights.
The petty jealousies and malignities which poison the atmosphere of most courts, and which in that of the Vatican are the more poisonous inasmuch as they wear a religious mask, could not penetrate to Montefiano, or, if they did, could not long survive out of the air of Rome. Monsignor Lelli had quickly realized this; and, the confidence of his parishioners once gained, he had learned to appreciate the change of air. The financial conditions of the Vatican did not interest Montefiano. Consequently, the story of Don Agostino's financial indiscretions had not reached the little room in the Corso Garibaldi, which was the nightly resort of the more wealthy among the community, and in which high political matters were settled with a rapidity that should have made the parliaments of Europe blush – were any one of them capable of blushing.
As to the other stories – well, Don Agostino had soon lived them down. Montefiano had declared – with some cynicism, perhaps, but with much justice – that there were those who were lucky in their adventures and those who were unlucky, and that priests, when all was said and done, were much the same as other people. Nevertheless, Montefiano had kept its eyes on Don Agostino for a while, in case of accidents – for nobody likes accidents to happen at home.
But it was not entirely of these matters that Don Agostino was thinking as he let himself into the little garden by the side of the church. His house, connected with the sacristy by a pergola over which vines and roses were struggling for the mastery, stood at the end of this garden, and Don Agostino, opening the door quietly lest his housekeeper should hear and descend upon him, passed into his study.
The news Sor Beppe had brought had awakened other memories – memories which took him back to the days before he was a priest; when he had been a young fellow of three or four and twenty, very free from care, very good to look upon, and very much in love.
It was strange, perhaps, that the impending arrival at Montefiano of an elderly lady and a girl of seventeen, neither of whom Don Agostino had ever seen, should arouse in him memories of his own youth; but so it was. Such links in the chain that binds us to the past – a chain that perhaps death itself is powerless to break – are perpetually forging themselves in the present, and often trifles as light as air rivet them.
In this case the link had been forged long ago. Don Agostino remembered the forging of it every time he donned the sacred vestments to say mass, and was conscious that the years had riveted it only more firmly.
It was, perhaps, as well that his housekeeper
