 | The Virgin Widow ; or, A Sicilian Summer |  |
Scene III.
—The Farmstead at Malespina.—Ruggiero alone.Ruggiero.
Comes not so like a bridegroom from his bed,
And nature greets him with a changing cheek:
That shrank before but swells to meet them now;
The plane-tree leaf is piebald with black blots;
Upon the snowberry-bush the big drops bead;
And the goose plants starr'd patterns of her foot
In the moist clay. Swift, changeful year, pass on;
Sweet was the savour of thy prime, and sweet
Thy fruitage should be; but it strews the earth.
Good-morrow, friend; the air has some taste now of
the sharpness of the season.
Osporco.
Ay, Sir; the cat sits in the sunniest
windowpane and the bees have left the rosier for the ivy. Well,
every man his own sunshine, is what I say; and your
friend that left us at shearing-time .... Ah! he was a
friendly-hearted gentleman—and very noble, Sir, very
noble; you would have thought yourself at court; he
would hand a chair to my wife as though she were the
Queen of the land: and when he went away, my
daughters wept like waterspouts—I thought some of them
would have died of it, and I have but thirteen. My Lady
at the Castle (God be good to her!) often asks me about
him, and I tell her if I were a Countess I would give him
one hundred ducats a year to sit over against me at
mealtimes, just to look at.
Ruggiero.
Then might she forget her food and be
famished unawares. I think I know whither our friend
is gone; and, barring accidents of the road and the
hazards of long journeyings in foreign parts, it may not
be long ere we see him.
Osporco.
Tell that to my youngest daughter and you
shall see her quiver again with joy like the tail of a lamb
that sucks. But I forget my errand. There is an old
man at the cottage, Sir, which cannot be persuaded but
that you can make him young again if you please, he has
heard so much of your skill in curing divers diseases;
and there is a young woman that has a quandary.
Ruggiero.
A what?
Osporco.
A quandary, she calls it; but, indeed, I think
it is a crack somewhere. And Gambo, the grazier, hath
brought you his wife that hath the ringworm on her
finger and the rattlesnake in her tongue, and prays you
would take and cure her: but, indeed, if you cure her he
cares not that you should take her, and if you take her
he cares not that you should cure her.
Ruggiero.
You are merry, my friend.
Osporco.
The frosty air, Sir. But, to speak soberly,
there are at the cottage no fewer than fifteen men,
women, and children, which think you can cure anything,
and have come to be cured of their simplicities.
Ruggiero.
I wlll attend them. I have said often and
I say it again, that my doctor's lore is but the scattered
lights that came across me in my studies and
meditations. But if they can reach no better skill, they may
command mine.
| The Virgin Widow ; or, A Sicilian Summer | |