The Old and the Young — Luigi Pirandello

THE rain, which had fallen in torrents during the night, had churnedinto a quagmire the long highroad that wound, in a succession oftwists and turns, as though in search of some less laborious ascent,some less abrupt slope, over the broken surface of the vast, desertedplain.The damage done by the storm appeared all the more depressing,inasmuch as there were already signs, here and there, of thedisregard, not to say the contempt, shewn for the labours of those whohad planned and constructed the road in order to give their fellow-menan easier passage over the natural obstacles of the country by meansof those bends and coils, erecting now a retaining wall, now a dyke.The retaining walls had fallen, the dykes had been trampled down,where short cuts had come into being. It was drizzling stillintermittently, in the pale dawn, between the icy gusts that blew overfrom the west. And at every gust, over that strip of countryside thatwas just beginning now to emerge from the wet blackness of a night ofstorm, a long shudder seemed to run from the town, a huddled mass ofyellowish houses, standing aloft and shrouded on its height, and topass over hill and dale, over the plain that bristled still withblackened stubble, to the boiling, crested sea beyond.Rain and wind seemed a ruthless act of cruelty on the part of the skythat overhung the desolation of those uttermost tracts of Sicily, uponwhich Girgenti, amid the piteous ruins of its primeval existence, rosea silent and awed survivor in the void of a time that would bring nochanges, in the abandonment of a misery beyond repair.The thickset hedges of prickly pear, or of withered brambles, or ofagave, and the occasiorial crumbling walls were interrupted here andthere by a pair of tottering pillars supporting a crooked rusty gate,or by a rude and squalid shrine which, in the motionless solitude,watched over by the shaggy boughs of the dripping trees, instead ofcomfort inspired a certain sense of terror, posted there as they wereto recall the Faith to wayfarers--for the most part field labourersand carters--who all too often, with overt or concealed ferocity, madeit plain that they did not recall it. A wretched stray bird or twohad come, fluttering timidly with drenched wings, to perch upon them;these kept watch and did not venture to titter so much as a note oflamentation in the midst of such desolation.For some time Placido Sciaralla's aged white mare had been ploughingand splashing along this road, under the friendly encouragement of herweary rider, who sat, his hands stiff and purple with the cold,cowering beneath the wind and rain, in the gay uniform of a Bourbonsoldier: red breeches and a blue greatcoat.Courage, Titina!And the tassel of his fisherman's cap, his fatigue uniform, hangingdown in front, swayed from side to side, as though beating time to thepoor animal's weary trot.Of the infrequent wayfarers who passed him by, on foot or mounted uponsluggardly donkeys, any who did not know that Principe Don IppolitoLaurentano, proud and unswerving in his loyalty to the late Governmentof the Two Sicilies, retained on his domain of Colimbetra (to whichever since 1860 he had banished himself in shame and disgust) abodyguard of five and twenty men in the Bourbon uniform, would turnround in amazement and stop for a while to gaze at this grotesquephantom emerging from the moist glimmer of daybreak, without knowingwhat to make of him.