"Your excellencies permit it?" asked the host.
"Pardieu!" cried Albert, "you are not a preacher, to remain standing!"
The host sat down, after having made each of them a respectful bow, which meant that he was ready to tell them all they wished to know concerning Luigi Vampa.
"You tell me," said Franz, at the moment Signor Pastrini was about to open his mouth, "that you knew Luigi Vampa when he was a child—he is still a young man, then?"
"A young man? he is only two and twenty;—he will gain himself a reputation."
"What do you think of that, Albert?—at two and twenty to be thus famous?"
"Yes, and at his age, Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, who have all made some noise in the world, were quite behind him."
"So," continued Franz, "the hero of this history is only two and twenty?"
"Scarcely so much."
"Is he tall or short?"
"Of the middle height—about the same stature as his excellency," returned the host, pointing to Albert.
"Thanks for the comparison," said Albert, with a bow.
"Go on, Signor Pastrini," continued Franz, smiling at his friend's susceptibility. "To what class of society does he belong?"
"He was a shepherd-boy attached to the farm of the Count of San-Felice, situated between Palestrina and the lake of Gabri; he was born at Pampinara, and entered the count's service when he was five years old; his father was also a shepherd, who owned a small flock, and lived by the wool and the milk, which he sold at Rome.
When quite a child, the little Vampa displayed a most extraordinary precocity.
One day, when he was seven years old, he came to the curate of Palestrina, and asked to be taught to read; it was somewhat difficult, for he could not quit his flock; but the good curate went every day to say mass at a little hamlet too poor to pay a priest and which, having no other name, was called Borgo; he told Luigi that he might meet him on his return, and that then he would give him a lesson, warning him that it would be short, and that he must profit as much as possible by it.
The child accepted joyfully.
Every day Luigi led his flock to graze on the road that leads from Palestrina to Borgo; every day, at nine o'clock in the morning, the priest and the boy sat down on a bank by the wayside, and the little shepherd took his lesson out of the priest's breviary.
At the end of three months he had learned to read.
This was not enough—he must now learn to write.
The priest had a writing teacher at Rome make three alphabets—one large, one middling, and one small; and pointed out to him that by the help of a sharp instrument he could trace the letters on a slate, and thus learn to write.
The same evening, when the flock was safe at the farm, the little Luigi hastened to the smith at Palestrina, took a large nail, heated and sharpened it, and formed a sort of stylus.
The next morning he gathered an armful of pieces of slate and began.
At the end of three months he had learned to write.
The curate, astonished at his quickness and intelligence, made him a present of pens, paper, and a penknife.
This demanded new effort, but nothing compared to the first; at the end of a week he wrote as well with this pen as with the stylus.
The curate related the incident to the Count of San-Felice, who sent for the little shepherd, made him read and write before him, ordered his attendant to let him eat with the domestics, and to give him two piastres a month.
With this, Luigi purchased books and pencils.
He applied his imitative powers to everything, and, like Giotto, when young, he drew on his slate sheep, houses, and trees.
Then, with his knife, he began to carve all sorts of objects in wood; it was thus that Pinelli, the famous sculptor, had commenced.
"A girl of six or seven—that is, a little younger than Vampa—tended sheep on a farm near Palestrina; she was an orphan, born at Valmontone and was named Teresa.
The two children met, sat down near each other, let their flocks mingle together, played, laughed, and conversed together; in the evening they separated the Count of San-Felice's flock from those of Baron Cervetri, and the children returned to their respective farms, promising to meet the next morning.
The next day they kept their word, and thus they grew up together.
Vampa was twelve, and Teresa eleven.
And yet their natural disposition revealed itself.
Beside his taste for the fine arts, which Luigi had carried as far as he could in his solitude, he was given to alternating fits of sadness and enthusiasm, was often angry and capricious, and always sarcastic.
None of the lads of Pampinara, Palestrina, or Valmontone had been able to gain any influence over him or even to become his companion.
His disposition (always inclined to exact concessions rather than to make them) kept him aloof from all friendships.
Teresa alone ruled by a look, a word, a gesture, this impetuous character, which yielded beneath the hand of a woman, and which beneath the hand of a man might have broken, but could never have been bended.
Teresa was lively and gay, but coquettish to excess. The two piastres that Luigi received every month from the Count of San-Felice's steward, and the price of all the little carvings in wood he sold at Rome, were expended in ear-rings, necklaces, and gold hairpins.
So that, thanks to her friend's generosity, Teresa was the most beautiful and the best-attired peasant near Rome.
The two children grew up together, passing all their time with each other, and giving themselves up to the wild ideas of their different characters.
Thus, in all their dreams, their wishes, and their conversations, Vampa saw himself the captain of a vessel, general of an army, or governor of a province. Teresa saw herself rich, superbly attired, and attended by a train of liveried domestics.
Then, when they had thus passed the day in building castles in the air, they separated their flocks, and descended from the elevation of their dreams to the reality of their humble position.
"One day the young shepherd told the count's steward that he had seen a wolf come out of the Sabine mountains, and prowl around his flock.
The steward gave him a gun; this was what Vampa longed for.
This gun had an excellent barrel, made at Breschia, and carrying a ball with the precision of an English rifle; but one day the count broke the stock, and had then cast the gun aside.
This, however, was nothing to a sculptor like Vampa; he examined the broken stock, calculated what change it would require to adapt the gun to his shoulder, and made a fresh stock, so beautifully carved that it would have fetched fifteen or twenty piastres, had he chosen to sell it.
But nothing could be farther from his thoughts. For a long time a gun had been the young man's greatest ambition.
In every country where independence has taken the place of liberty, the first desire of a manly heart is to possess a weapon, which at once renders him capable of defence or attack, and, by rendering its owner terrible, often makes him feared.