Free Stories Toto Told Me (Valancourt Classics) by Barón Corvo, Frederick Rolfe Page A

mother told him that she would on no account consent to be left alone in the house with la Signora Pucci, because she perceived that something most astonishing was to happen. The doctor replied that he would not stay, because he could not; and that if my mother was not there to assist the sick woman in her trouble, she might die. But my mother would by no means be persuaded, and in the end she conquered; and the doctor stayed, and they waited all through the night, and the next morning at noon there came a new baby into that house; and la Signora Pucci was so astonished that she really nearly died, and as for the baby, he did die after a half-hour of this world.
      Then the sick woman became mad, and cried in delirium that she would not have it known to the respectable man, her husband, that a new baby had come into that house; so my mother went for the Fra Guardiano of these Cappuccini, telling him all that she knew, how she had baptized the baby herself, by the name Angelo, seeing that he was at the point of death, and that therefore he must be buried in the churchyard; and how his mother, la Signora Pucci, demanded that this should be done secretly, and that the grave should be made with Padre Guilhelmo, of whom I have told you before, who was a saint that any person might be glad to be buried with. Upon which the Fra Guardiano replied that this was as easy as eating; and he directed my mother, having put the dead baby into a box, to take the box under her cloak at midnight to the grave of Padre Guilhelmo. So she did as she was told, putting the dead baby Angelo into a wooden box in which rice had been, and cutting a cross upon the lid so that San Michele Arcangiolo should know there was a Christian inside; and at midnight she was there at the grave of Padre Guilhelmo. And, of course, I need not tell you that there was a naked boy hidden in a cedar tree, over her head, lying flat upon his face upon a thick branch which he held between his thighs and with his arms, and looking right down upon the grave. Then there came out of the convent Fra Giovannone, Fra Lorenzo, Fra Sebastiano, and Fra Guilhelmo. And if I had not remembered that a naked boy in a cedar-tree was not one of the things which you are unable to do without at a midnight funeral, I should have laughed, because these friars, coming out of their convent without candles, fell over the crosses on the graves, and said things which friars do not say in their offices. They brought two spades and a bucket of holy water, and when they came to the grave of the Jesuit Padre, Fra Sebastiano and Fra Guilhelmo dug about three feet of a hole there; then my mother gave them the box from under her cloak, and they put it in the earth; and having sprinkled it with holy water, they covered it up, made the grave look as it had looked before, as best they could in that dim light, and then returned to their convent, all the time saying no word aloud.
      Then my mother went back to the house of la Signora Pucci, and a boy without clothes followed her there. For one hour after I ran backwards and forwards secretly from the convent to the house of the respectable man, but finding that nothing else happened I went to my bed.
      About the end of the day after this my mother returned to her house, and said that the doctor had brought a nurse to la Signora Pucci, and that the respectable man her husband also was coming back, so there was nothing more for her to do. Then she swooned with weariness, for she was tired to death; but having rested some days while I and my sisters and my brothers kept the house clean and tidy, she recovered herself.
      And that is all the tale, sir.
      And I think you will see that these Cappuccini, unless indeed they are entirely fools of the most stupid, and that they may be, have been urged on by envy of the Jesuit fathers to lay the beginnings of a plot which some day will cause a great scandal. You must see that they could not help the coming of the new