Somerset Maugham - The Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (33 Works in One Edition)

I never heard such silence as that among the listeners. It was awful. Checco's voice sank lower and lower, but yet every word could be distinctly heard. The tremor was increasing.

'Is it necessary that birth and life here should be the birth and life of slaves? Our glorious ancestors never submitted to this terrible misfortune. They were free, and in their freedom they found life. But this is a living death....'

He recounted the various acts of tyranny which had made the Count hateful to his subjects, and he insisted on the insecurity in which they lived.

'You all know the grievous wrongs I have suffered at the hands of the man whom I helped to place on the throne. But these wrongs I freely forgive. I am filled only with devotion to my country and love to my fellowmen. If you others have private grievances, I implore you to put them aside, and think only that you are the liberators from oppression of all those you love and cherish. Gather up to your hearts the spirit of Brutus, when, for the sake of Freedom, he killed the man whom above all others he loved.'

He gave them the details of the plot; told them what he would do himself, and what they should do, and finally dismissed them.

'Pray to God to-night,' he said earnestly, 'that He will look with favour upon the work which we have set ourselves, and implore Him to judge us by the purity of our intentions rather than by the actions which, in the imperfection of our knowledge, seem to us the only means to our end.'

We made the sign of the cross, and retired as silently as we had come.

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My sleep was troubled, and when I woke the next morning the sun had only just risen.

It was Saturday, the 14th of April 1488.

I went to my window and saw a cloudless sky, brilliantly yellow over in the east, and elsewhere liquid and white, hardening gradually into blue. The rays came dancing into my room, and in them incessantly whirled countless atoms of dust. Through the open window blew the spring wind, laden with the scents of the country, the blossoms of the fruit trees, the primroses and violets. I had never felt so young and strong and healthy. What could one not do on such a day as this! I went into Matteo's room, and found him sleeping as calmly as if this were an ordinary day like any other.

'Rise, thou sluggard!' I cried.

In a few minutes we were both ready, and we went to Checco. We found him seated at a table polishing a dagger.

'Do you remember in Tacitus,' he said, smiling pleasantly, 'how the plot against Nero was discovered by one of the conspirators giving his dagger to his freedman to sharpen? Whereupon the freedman became suspicious, and warned the Emperor.'

'The philosophers tell us to rise on the mistakes of others,' I remarked in the same tone.

'One reason for my affection towards you, Filippo,' he answered, 'is that you have nice moral sentiments, and a pleasant moral way of looking at things.'

He held out his dagger and looked at it. The blade was beautifully damaskeened, the hilt bejewelled.

'Look,' he said, showing me the excellence of the steel, and pointing out the maker's name. Then, meditatively, 'I have been wondering what sort of blow would be most effective if one wanted to kill a man.'

'You can get most force,' said Matteo, 'by bringing the dagger down from above your head—thus.'

'Yes; but then you may strike the ribs, in which case you would not seriously injure your friend.'

'You can hit him in the neck.'

'The space is too small, and the chin may get in the way. On the other hand, a wound in the large vessels of that region is almost immediately fatal.'

'It is an interesting subject,' I said. 'My opinion is that the best of all blows is an underhand one, ripping up the stomach.'

I took the dagger and showed him what I meant.

'There are no hindrances in the way of bones; it is simple and certainly fatal.'

'Yes,' said Checco, 'but not immediately! My impression is that the best way is between the shoulders. Then you strike from the back, and your victim can see no uplifted hand to warn him, and, if he is very quick, enable him to ward the blow.'

'It is largely a matter of taste,' I answered, shrugging my shoulders. 'In these things a man has to judge for himself according to his own idiosyncrasies.'

After a little more conversation I proposed to Matteo that we should go out to the market-place and see the people.

'Yes, do!' said Checco, 'and I will go and see my father.'

As we walked along, Matteo told me that Checco had tried to persuade his father to go away for a while, but that he had refused, as also had his wife. I had seen old Orso d'Orsi once or twice; he was very weak and decrepit; he never came downstairs, but stayed in his own rooms all day by the fireside, playing with his grand-children. Checco was in the habit of going to see him every day, morning and evening, but to the rest of us it was as if he did not exist. Checco was complete master of everything.

The market-place was full of people. Booths were erected in rows, and on the tables the peasant women had displayed their wares: vegetables and flowers, chickens, ducks and all kinds of domestic fowls, milk, butter, eggs; and other booths with meat and oil and candles. And the sellers were a joyful crew, decked out with red and yellow handkerchiefs, great chains of gold around their necks, and spotless headdresses; they were standing behind their tables, with a scale on one hand and a little basin full of coppers on the other, crying out to one another, bargaining, shouting and joking, laughing, quarrelling. Then there were the purchasers, who walked along looking at the goods, picking up things and pinching them, smelling them, tasting them, examining them from every point of view. And the sellers of tokens and amulets and charms passed through the crowd crying out their wares, elbowing, cursing when someone knocked against them. Gliding in and out, between people's legs, under the barrow wheels, behind the booths, were countless urchins, chasing one another through the crowd unmindful of kicks and cuffs, pouncing on any booth of which the proprietor had turned his back, seizing the first thing they could lay hands on, and scampering off with all their might. And there was a conjurer with a gaping crowd, a quack extracting teeth, a ballad singer. Everywhere was noise, and bustle, and life.

'One would not say on the first glance that these people were miserably oppressed slaves,' I said maliciously.

'You must look beneath the surface,' replied Matteo, who had begun to take a very serious view of things in general. I used to tell him that he would have a call some day and end up as a shaven monk.

'Let us amuse ourselves,' I said, taking Matteo by the arm, and dragging him along in search of prey. We fixed on a seller of cheap jewellery—a huge woman, with a treble chin and a red face dripping with perspiration. We felt quite sorry for her, and went to console her.

'It is a very cold day,' I remarked to her, whereupon she bulged out her cheeks and blew a blast that nearly carried me away.

She took up a necklace of beads and offered it to Matteo for his lady love. We began to bargain, offering her just a little lower than she asked, and then, as she showed signs of coming down, made her a final offer a little lower still. At last she seized a broom and attacked us, so that we had to fly precipitately.

I had never felt in such high spirits. I offered to race Matteo in every way he liked—riding, running and walking—but he refused, brutally telling me that I was frivolous. Then we went home. I found that Checco had just been hearing mass, and he was as solemn and silent as a hangman. I went about lamenting that I could get no one to talk to me, and at last took refuge with the children, who permitted me to join in their games, so that, at 'hide-and-seek' and 'blind man's buff,' I thoroughly amused myself till dinner-time. We ate together, and I tried not to be silenced, talking the greatest nonsense I could think of; but the others sat like owls and did not listen, so that I too began to feel depressed....