The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (59 page)

‘Ah!
Per Baccho!
’ Signor Pastrini cried. ‘At last! Someone is talking sense.’

Albert poured himself a glass of Lacryma Christi, which he drank in small sips, muttering unintelligibly.

‘So, then, Signor Pastrini,’ Franz continued, ‘my friend, as you see, has calmed down; now that you have been able to judge of my peaceful temperament, tell us: who is this gentleman, Luigi Vampa? Is he a shepherd or a nobleman? Young or old? Short or tall? Describe him for us so that, if we should chance to meet him in society, like Jean Sbogar or Lara, we shall at least recognize him.’

‘You could not have a better informant than I, Excellency, if you want to have the full story, because I knew Luigi Vampa as a young child. One day when I myself fell into his hands while travelling from Ferentino to Alatri, he remembered our earlier acquaintance, luckily for me. He let me go, not only without making me pay a ransom, but even making me a present of a very fine watch, and telling me his life story.’

‘Let us see the watch,’ said Albert.

Signor Pastrini pulled out of his fob a magnificent Breguet, signed by its maker and marked with the stamp of Paris and a count’s coronet. ‘Here it is,’ he said.

‘Dammit!’ said Albert. ‘I congratulate you. I have one almost the
same’ – he took his watch out of his waistcoat – ‘and it cost me three thousand francs.’

‘Let us hear the story,’ said Franz, drawing up a chair and signalling to Signor Pastrini to sit down.

‘Do Your Excellencies permit?’

‘Please!’ said Albert. ‘You are not a preacher, my dear man, that you must speak on your feet.’

The hotelier sat down, after bowing respectfully to his future listeners, with the intention of letting them know that he was ready to give them any information about Luigi Vampa that they might require.

‘Now,’ said Franz, interrupting Signor Pastrini just as he was about to open his mouth. ‘You say that you knew Luigi Vampa as a young child. This means he must still be a young man?’

‘A young man! I should say he is. He’s barely twenty-two years old. Oh, don’t worry! He’s a young man who will go far!’

‘What do you say to that, Albert?’ said Franz. ‘It’s a fine thing, is it not, to be famous already at twenty-two?’

‘Yes, indeed; and at his age, Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, who later acquired a certain reputation, had not gone as far as he.’

‘So,’ Franz continued, turning to the innkeeper, ‘the hero whose story we are about to hear is only twenty-two.’

‘Barely, as I have just had the honour to inform you.’

‘Is he short or tall?’

‘Of medium height, much the same as His Excellency,’ Pastrini replied, indicating Albert.

‘Thank you for the comparison,’ the latter said with a bow.

‘Carry on, Signor Pastrini,’ Franz urged, smiling at his friend’s sensitivity. ‘And what class of society does he come from?’

‘He was a simple herdsman attached to the farm of the Count of San-Felice, lying between Palestrina and the Lake of Gabri. He was born in Pampinara, and entered the count’s service at the age of five. His father, himself a shepherd in Anagni, had a little flock of his own and lived on the product of the wool from his sheep and the milk of his ewes, which he brought to Rome to sell.

‘While still a child, little Vampa had an unusual character. One day, at the age of seven, he came to see the curé of Palestrina and begged him to teach him to read. This was not easy, because the young herdsman could not leave his flock. But the good curé would go every day to say Mass in a poor little town that was too small
to be able to afford a priest; it was too small even to have a name, just being known by that of Il Borgo. He invited Luigi to wait for him on his way at the time when he was returning, when he would give him his lesson, warning him that the lesson would be short and he would have to take full advantage of it. The boy gleefully accepted.

‘Every day, Luigi would take his flock to graze on the road between Palestrina and Il Borgo. Every day, at nine in the morning, the curé came past. The priest and the child would sit on the edge of a ditch and the little shepherd learned his lesson from the priest’s breviary.

‘In three months, he could read.

‘This was not all: now he needed to learn to write. The priest had a teacher of writing in Rome make him three alphabets: one in large script, one in medium and the third in small; and he showed Luigi that by tracing the alphabet on a slate with a metal point he could learn to write.

‘The same evening, when the flock had returned to the farm, little Vampa ran across to the locksmith’s in Palestrina, took a large nail, heated it in the forge, hammered it, shaped it and made a kind of antique stylus.

‘The next day he collected some slates and set to work. In three months, he could write.

‘The curé, astonished by this intelligence and touched by his aptitude, made him a present of several notebooks, a sheaf of pens and a penknife.

‘This required further study, but it was nothing compared to what he had already done. A week later, he could write with a pen as well as he could write with his stylus.

‘The curé told the story to the Count of San-Felice, who wanted to see the little shepherd, made him read and write in front of him, ordered his steward to have him eat with the servants and gave him two
piastres
a month. With the money Luigi bought books and pencils.

‘In fact, he applied this faculty for imitation that he possessed to everything and, like the young Giotto, he would draw his ewes, the trees and the houses on his slates. Then, with the point of his knife, he began to carve wood, giving it all sorts of shapes: this is how Pinelli, the popular sculptor, began.

‘A girl of six or seven, that is to say a little younger than Vampa,
was keeping the ewes in a farm next door to Palestrina. She was an orphan called Teresa, born in Valmontone.

‘The two children began to meet; they used to sit down together beside one another, let their flocks mingle and graze beside each other, while they would chatter, laugh and play. Then, in the evening, they separated the Count of San-Felice’s sheep from those of the Baron Cervetri, and the two children would take leave of each other and go back to their respective farms, promising to meet again the following morning.

‘The next day, they would keep their promise, and so they grew up side by side.

‘In due course, Vampa was approaching the age of twelve and little Teresa eleven. Meanwhile, their natural instincts were developing.

‘Beside the taste for the arts that Luigi had taken as far as it is possible to do in isolation, his nature was fitfully sad, intermittently passionate, capriciously angry, and always derisive. None of the young boys of Pampinara, Palestrina or Valmontone could gain any influence over him, or even become his companion. His wilful temperament, always inclined to demand without ever wishing to make the slightest concession, repelled any friendly advance or demonstration of sympathy. Only Teresa could command this impetuous character with a word, a look or a gesture; he bent beneath the hand of a woman, yet would have stiffened to breaking point beneath that of any man.

‘Teresa, in contrast, was vivacious, merry and lively, but excessively coquettish. The two
piastres
that Luigi was given by the Count of San-Felice’s steward and the price of all the little carvings that he would sell in the toy markets in Rome went on pearl earrings, glass necklaces and gold pins. Thanks to her young friend’s generosity, Teresa was the most beautiful and most elegantly dressed peasant girl in all the country around Rome.

‘The two children continued to grow, spending all their days together and abandoning themselves freely to the primitive instincts of their natures. Thus, in their conversations, in their longings and in their dreams, Vampa would always imagine himself the captain of a ship, the general of an army or the governor of a province. Teresa imagined herself rich, wearing the loveliest dresses and attended by servants in livery. Then, when they had spent all day embroidering their futures with these brilliant and foolish patterns,
they went their separate ways, each leading the sheep to the appropriate fold, and plummeting from the summits of their dreams to the humble reality of their situation.

‘One day the young shepherd told the count’s steward that he had seen a wolf coming down from the mountains of La Sabina and prowling around the flock. The steward gave him a gun – which is what Vampa wanted.

‘As it happened this gun was a fine Brescia piece which fired as far as an English carbine; but one day the count had broken the butt while bludgeoning a wounded fox, and they had thrown it on the scrap heap.

‘This was no problem for a wood-carver like Vampa. He studied the original setting, adjusted the aim to suit himself and made a new butt so splendidly carved that, if he had wanted to sell the wood by itself, he could certainly have got fifteen or twenty
piastres
for it in town.

‘But the young man had no interest in doing that: for a long time he had dreamed of having a gun. In every country where independence takes the place of liberty, the first need felt by any strong mind and powerful constitution is to possess a weapon which can serve both for attack and defence; and which, by making its bearer formidable, will mean that he often inspires dread.

‘From this time on, Vampa devoted all his spare moments to practising with his gun. He bought powder and shot, and took anything as his target: the trunk of the olive-tree that grows sadly, grey and cringing on the slopes of La Sabina; the fox emerging from its earth at dusk to begin its nightly hunt; the eagle gliding through the air. He soon became so skilled that Teresa overcame the fear that she had originally felt on hearing the gun fire and was entertained at seeing her friend put the shot just where he wanted to, as precisely as if he had placed it with his hand.

‘One evening, a wolf did indeed come out of a pine wood near which the young people were in the habit of staying. This wolf had not taken ten steps in the open before it was dead. Vampa, proud of his prowess, slung the body over his shoulders and took it back to the farm.

‘All this gave Luigi a certain reputation in the district. A superior being, wherever he may be, always acquires a following of admirers. People spoke of the young shepherd as the most skilful, the strongest and bravest
contadino
for ten leagues around; and even though
Teresa, for her part, was considered over an even greater distance as one of the loveliest girls of La Sabina, no one considered speaking a word to her about love, because everyone knew she was loved by Vampa.

‘Despite this, the two young people had never declared their love to one another. They had grown up side by side like two trees, the roots of which mingle beneath the earth, as their branches above it and their scents in the air. Yet their desire to see one another was the same: this desire had become a need, and they could understand death better than a single day’s separation.

‘Teresa was sixteen and Vampa seventeen.

‘At about this time, people began to speak a great deal about a band of brigands that was gathering in the Lepini mountains. Banditry has never been properly eradicated from the countryside around Rome. There may sometimes be a shortage of leaders but, when one appears, seldom does he find any shortage of bandits to lead.

‘The celebrated Cucumetto, hunted down in the Abruzzi, driven out of the kingdom of Naples, where he had been carrying on a veritable war, had crossed Garigliano like Manfred and come to take refuge on the banks of the Amasina between Sonnino and Juperno. Here he set about reorganizing a band of outlaws, following in the footsteps of Decesaris and Gasparone, whom he hoped soon to surpass. Several young people from Palestrina, Frascati and Pampinara vanished. At first people were concerned about them, but it was soon learned that they had gone to join Cucumetto’s band.

‘Cucumetto himself shortly became the focus of everybody’s attention. Acts of astonishing daring were attributed to him, as well as disgusting brutality.

‘One day, he carried off a young girl, the daughter of the land surveyor in Frosinone. The rule among bandits is clear: any girl belongs to the man who first abducts her, then the others draw lots for her, and the unfortunate creature serves to satisfy the lusts of the whole band until the brigands abandon her or she dies.

‘When the parents are rich enough to buy her back, the bandits send a messenger to bargain over the ransom: the prisoner’s life serves as a guarantee of the emissary’s safety. If the ransom is refused, the prisoner is irretrievably condemned.

‘This girl had a lover in Cucumetto’s band; his name was Carlini.
When she recognized the young man, she held out her arms to him and imagined that she was saved. But poor Carlini, when he in turn recognized her, felt his heart break, because he knew very well what fate had in store for her.

‘However, as he was Cucumetto’s favourite, had shared every danger with him for three years and had saved his life by shooting a
carabiniere
whose sabre was already poised above Cucumetto’s head, he hoped that the chief would take pity on him. So he took him aside, while the young girl, seated against the trunk of a tall pine growing in the middle of a clearing in the forest, had made a veil from the picturesque head-dress that these Roman peasant women wear, and was hiding her face from the lustful gaze of the bandits.

‘He told Cucumetto everything: about his love for the prisoner, their promises of fidelity and how, every night while they had been in the district, they had met in some ruins. That evening, as it happened, Cucumetto had sent Carlini to a neighbouring village, so he had not been able to keep his appointment; but Cucumetto, or so he said, had chanced to go there and this was how he came to abduct the girl. Carlini begged his leader to make an exception for him and to respect Rita, telling him that her father was rich and would pay a good ransom.