Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part two, chapter 14

The prince of Iraci had stayed until midnight in the palace Pietraperzia, behind the church of St. Cita and went to his house, in porterina. He had played and lost and was in a bad mood, but not already for the losses. He was too great a gentleman to worry about a sum thrown away on a rug. His mood had other reasons. First of all the disappearance of Blasco occurred in such an inexplicable and extraordinary way, and therefore the uncertainty of his fate and the concern that it was known who ordered and arranged the night aggression. Actually, none of the attackers knew him, no one could say that they had received such an assignment from him.

The blow had been attempted by some criminals, gathered among the slums of the city by his vassal, an old fork surplus, which he kept in the palace as the executor of his private vendetta or his whims. This good boy always accompanied him at night, armed with rifle, and the evening of the show at the house Lungarini was waiting next to the porterina.

It took him half a word to run to the old market, not far from there, to find those citizens bandits and recruit four of them with a few tarì. After the blow, the prince thought it prudent to send the good man in his fiefdoms. So it was quiet on this side. But the unexpected rescue and the disappearance of Blasco made him suspect that someone had prevented his design to prevent its execution. Who could this be? And Blasco was alive or dead?

The fact that he could not know anything, the mystery that reigned around the young knight kept him in an apprehension that made him nervous and irrascible.

The other reason for the mood was the departure of Gabriella woman who, from the Night of the Show, had no longer been seen by him, and had left without letting him know. After all, as a woman Gabriella had never been able to obtain anything; her relationship passed from sudden hopes and illusions to defeats without reason; her vanity passed from flattery to repulse that made him weep in spite, but she was still not persuaded that he was a trick in the hands of woman Gabriella: a trick you used on occasions and for fine data, and that you threw away when it became useless. Recognizing this, his vanity did not grant him, and that's why he was angry about that departure; all the more so because some young patrician, to whom he flauntedly had made believe that he had conquered the Duchess, asked him to mock him into what stage his honeymoon had entered.

And that night, in fact, about his termination of the game, someone had poked him for his fortunes in love, and the sparkling allusions had reawakened his bad mood and his spite.

So he went back to his house, in porterina, accompanied by two stirrups with lit torches and two armed slaves and, crossing the square San Domenico, took the road of the Flag, when, just before arriving at the corner of the street of St. Basil, a beggars, perhaps drawn by the light of the torch, stood before the porterina, saying with a whiny voice:

"Love, Your Excellency; a grain that I starve to death."

The bearer of the head tried to escape him, but the begging fell before him, as if to stop him, repeating his lamentable verse:

"A grain, Your Excellency..." "Throw away such armchairs!" cried the angry prince.

The two slaves threw themselves at the begging, but even before they could put their hands on him, they felt their legs kneaded and rushed to the ground, while from the way of St. Basil, from a vicolet in front, from the dark space of some doors, a mysterious crowd sprang up on the porters, on the staffieri, landing them, gagging them, binding them, threatening them with death.

The torches went out and the darkness turned everything upside down.

The prince also jumped out of the sedan trying to draw the sword, but other arms had taken him tight, unarmed.

"It is useless, sir," said a man whose face the prince could not see; "all resistance is useless. Take a good look around..."

He looked around; he had fallen into the midst of a true gang and his men reduced to impotence.

"Who are you? What do you want? Money?"

"Oibò, sir, we are not thieves!" answered the man who had spoken. "We only have an assignment to do; give her a little warning..."

And bowing to his ear he added:

"To teach her that a gentleman, as she should be, doesn't have to kill people at night, out of treason."

The prince of Iraki had a gesture of pride.

"Look at what you say, and think who I am!..."

The other answered with a laugh, and turned to his men, and said cheerfully:

"Come on, you're the horse!"

Two strong men overturned the prince, taking him by the arms and legs, and put him on a horse by a third, holding him on you, firm, with the shoulders and the deer uncovered; while a fourth, armed with an ox nerb, began to stable him in the fleshiest parts, counting the blows between the laughs of the companions and the roarings of the prince.

"One, two, three, four."

It was the punishment that was given in schools to negligent or undisciplined children and which was sometimes disgraced to those guilty of violations; nor could there be worse and greater trouble for a nobleman, and for a noble of the prince of Iraki's mold.

"Five, six, seven, eight..."

The prince was fighting, howling and roaring; more than the weeds that were frying on the buttocks, he could be ashamed of that punishment. With his mouth full of foam, his eyes bursting out of orbit, his face congested, he couldn't utter a word...

The nerve fell with equal rhythm, relentless, whistling, and the voice counted:

"nine, ten..."

The others laughed. The sedan still, with the door wide open seemed to wait. They counted to twenty.

"That's enough," said the chief; "that's enough."

They laid down on the ground the prince, who gave no sign of life, and at a nod of the head all that black and mysterious band wandered in the shadows. And when he passed by one of the builders, and kicked him, he said to him,

"You, you bastard, will tell your master that this warning is given to him by the Beati Paoli. For now, they're limited to this. Be quiet now, and leave Mr. Blasco alone at Castiglione's, if you don't want worse. Do you understand?"

And he also went away, and on the road stood still, under the nightmare of fear, porters, slaves, staffieri, as if the threat of that whistling and formidable nerb loomed upon them. Then, after half an hour, when no noise was heard in the night silence and seemed to be alone, someone lifted up his head, looked shyly, reassured himself, tried to get lost. And so, one by one, they rose up, freed themselves from the laces, looking around, suspicious and trembling at every mildest noise; they lifted up the prince who seemed unleashed, put him inside the sedan and resumed the road, in the dark, in silence, at first adagio, almost in tiptoe, then in haste, as for fear of being chased.

The next day, just before midday, Fr.Raimondo, prayed by a pressing letter of the prince, rushed to the palace Iraci. He found the prince in bed, almost yellow for a bile transfer, and with an appearance that frightened him.

"Well?" he thoughtfully asked him, "What have you got?"

"I beg your pardon if I made you uncomfortable, but as you can see, I can't move... Tonight, sir, I was attacked and beaten... and you didn't see a round!"

"Adviled?"

"Yeah, on the flag road... Your lordship has been elected Vicar General against evildoers; I denounce the outrage of which I have been the victim and ask for satisfaction. My peers can demand from the government a guarantee of their people and the decorum of their house."

He spoke harshly, and heard the accent that the bile stifled him; the duke, with his eyebrows frowned upon, answered with cold haughtiness:

"Is it the friend of your house you called or the Vicar General? The friend may condolence on what happened to you and make himself available to you, but the Vicar General, Mr. Prince, does not receive complaints and complaints in his office, and responds as he believes.

The prince blushed, turned back the bile, answered without humility and without repentance:

"He's right... he's fine. I will tell you that the attack came to me from the Beati Paoli, and that they were sent by Mr Blasco from Castiglione, who was protected by your lordship!"

"The Beati Paoli? Blasco da Castiglione?" repeated Don Raimondo by opening his eyes; "Beati Paoli? Blasco from Castiglione? But are you sure?"

"Would you like to question him, finding me as he finds me?"

"And what can Blasco have in common from Castiglione with the Beati Paoli?"

"This I don't know, and you should know it in your capacity as Vicar General: I know that they themselves have formally and clearly told me."

The duke was amazed and didn't know what to say: And he looked upon the prince of Iraki, and upon the bed as a dreamer, saying to himself, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I hope" added the little prince with the same ironic and frantic tone of desire for revenge; "I hope that the Vicar General will avenge me, and avenge in me the nobility all of all, offended by an adventurer and by the wretches who form his gang..."

But Don Raimondo followed with his mind a thought, which was born to him at that moment. Unable to question the words of the prince of Iraci, unfortunately confirmed by the obvious fact of his conditions and therefore forced not to discuss a secret relationship between Blasco da Castiglione and the sect of the Beati Paoli, he wondered if the disappearance of the profit, in the attack of Via Lattarini, had not been the work of the Beati Paoli, and how he had managed to put himself under their protection. And thinking of the abrupt and sudden way in which Blasco had moved away from his home, where he had received him precisely for his personal defense, he still wondered if that departure had not been an effect of the new condition, in which the bastard of his blood was found, or if the relationship had been born after his departure from the house of Motta. His magistrate detective eye tried to penetrate this new Mystery, in which he presented a new danger to himself. He promised the prince that he would push his investigation to come to the head of everything, but that it was necessary to know from him other news, (and accentuated these words) about the attempted or consumed assassination of Blasco from Castiglione; there was also some mystery that perhaps the prince could thin.

"This, if it is a bit the Vicar General who asks, is the Duke of Motta your friend and almost a bit of a relative, who will listen to him."

The little princess got red and looked a little insolent.

"I don't know anything about that. If, as I understood to say, they tried to assassinate that young man, it must have been for revenge of some of his bullies... An adventurer like him..."

"It will be," the Duke murmured, "but the truth could come out of the trial, if the tax attorney has a good nose; and then, dear prince, you will find that your answer is not enough to..."

"What do you think your lordship?"

"Oh, me?... nothing that doesn't fit into the ordinary facts of life, dear young friend! But maybe we'll talk about it; I'll try to make the trial go a long way, to take care of what happened to you..."

"That is not only an offense to me;" the young man interrupted, repeating an already manifested idea, but on which he believed to insist "is an offense and a threat to the nobility..."

Unfortunately, Fr. Raimondo also knew that, coming out of the room of the young gentleman, he came across the prince father and the princess, who, with a resentment that caused the cause of the event up to the king, asked for satisfaction.

"Bitch! The Iraki house is not that of any ordinary civilian, and such confrontations do not tolerate them. I will bring the militias of my feuds!..."

Don Raimondo is indisposed within himself while apparently preserving a dignified and restrained attitude. If those lords had known the war which he had fought against the sect, they would not have shouted so much and so loudly; but they would have seen the bitterness that overflowed from his soul.

That event stirred him up against all the patriotic; if a shot of rifle or a storehouse had laid the prince dead on the ground, he would have, yes, invoked revenge from justice, but the fact would have had nothing dishonorable for the nobility. The beatings, on the other hand, subverted every class order, were like a usurpation of prerogatives, which put the nobility below and at the mercy of the people; which constituted a crime so grave that every claim and claim of satisfaction, however vehemently, was always inadequate.

Don Raimondo therefore saw himself vexed by reproofs and solicitations and the same captain of justice that he had seen, not without jealousy, entrusted to him the exceptional power to cleanse the kingdom from the evildoers, which, in a certain way, was a decrease in his powers, the same captain of justice went to resent, and to declare that, if Don Raimondo did not come to give satisfaction to the house Iraki, he would be inseparable from the order of the king, and he would defeat the sect.

The duke couldn't take it anymore.

"I'm marvelous!" he said: "I wonder that only now do you feel able to eradicate the Beati Paoli, when for several years they are masters of the city! I, at least, have been able and able to get my hands on some of them, and find out the tracks of the leaders. Which you cannot say."

Towards evening he had a visit from Matteo Lo Vecchio. The birro merely said these words:

"Tonight, big hunt. I need about twenty soldiers; I don't trust birri."

Don Raimondo had a flash of joy and asked him:

"I'll give you forty: But tell me something more..."

The birrus stood a little bit in perhaps; then looking around, he said:

"Your Excellency, allow me to say it in your ear."

And when the duke bowed down, he whispered to him more than he said:

"I think I discovered a great secret of the sect and I lured Don Girolamo Ammirata and Andrea into a trap. They will not be able to escape."

The Duke could not master the concussion.

"What secret?" he asked.

"I cannot tell you this now; I will tell you when I have in my hands the admired and his companion. Your Excellency, have some patience and wait. Your Excellency, do not doubt."

Matteo Lo Vecchio had such a firm confidence in what he said and promised, that Don Raimondo, when he was alone, felt the need to abandon himself to his joy.

"Ah, finally!"