ed my calling; but Orte was of
another way of thinking. Orte flocked to see me, having heard of
Pipistrello, its own Pipistrello, who had plagued it with his childish
tricks, having grown into fame amongst the cities and villages as the
strongest man in all Italy. For indeed I was that; and my mother, with
dim, tear-laden eyes, looked at me and said, "You are the image of your
father. Oh, my dear, my love! take care."

She, poor soul! saw nothing but the fall she had seen that day at Genoa
of a strong man who dropped like a stone. But I fear to weary you. Well!
I had left my spangled dress and all insignia of my calling with my
comrades at the wine-shop, fearing to harass my mother by sight of all
those things which would be so full of bitter recollection and dread to
her. But Orte clamored for me to show it my powers--Orte, which was more
than half asleep by Tiber's side, like that nymph Canens whom I used to
read of in my Latin school-books--Orte, which had no earthly thing to do
this long and lazy day in the drought of a rainless June.

I could not afford to baulk the popular will, and I was proud to show
them all I could do--I, Pipistrello, whom they had cuffed and kicked so
often in the old time for climbing their walnut trees and their pear
trees, their house-roofs and their church-towers. So, when the day
cooled I drew a circle with a red rope round myself and my men on a
piece of waste ground outside the town, and all Orte flocked out there
as the sun went down, shouting and cheering for me as though Pipistrello
were a king or a hero. The populace is always thus--the giddiest-pated
fool that ever screamed, as loud and as ignorant as a parrot, as
changeful as the wind in March, as base as the cuckoo. The same people
threw stones at me when they brought me to this prison--the same people
that feasted and applauded me then, that first day of my return to Orte.
To-day, indeed, some women weep, and the little child brings me half a
pomegranate. That is more remembrance than some fallen idols get, for
the populace is cruel: it is a beast that fawns and slavers, then tears.

It was a rainless June, as I say. It was very warm that evening; the low
west was vermilion and the higher sky was violet; bars of gold parted
the two colors; the crickets were hooting, the bats were wheeling, great
night-moths were abroad. I felt very happy that night. With us Italians
pain rarely stays long. We feel sharply, but it soon passes.