costume, dance the Tarantella and the Saltarella, and with music and flowers go into the church to hang votive pictures to the Madonna, one suspending the shoe which he wore when Our Blessed Lady saved him from drowning; and another, the cap of the child whom the Holy Virgin raised from sickness; and another, the necklace which her lover gave her when he went to the wars, from which he returned safely; the Marquis di Sangrido does not come, nor look out of those gloomy windows, nor send wine and money. But often in the midst of the festival a fear falls upon the peasants, like a cloud-shadow upon a waving, glittering rye-field; they look furtively at the sullen yellow palace, which watches them in malicious silence; a sudden horror seizes them all, as if they expected the great gates to swing open, creaking upon rusty hinges, and a black procession of death and despair to issue forth and chill the summer day.
It is in vain that the servants of the Marquis di Sangrido endeavor to be friendly and sociable with the people of Rieti. They are regarded as parts of that gloom and mystery which envelop the palace and its master. Their most cheerful smile is suspected; their jokes make the people shudder, for they believe them to be magic spells in grinning masks. They move in a circle of solitude, for every inhabitant of the town instinctively withdraws, until the servants, too, gradually grow sardonic and gloomy; and when they appear it is as if the yellow old palace were taking a walk, and sullenly cursing the little cowering town of Rieti, that hides upon the plain beyond the Campagna.
Twice a year the great gate of the palace opens. Then the people shrink into their houses and peer through the windows and doors; for the heavy lumbering state-carriage of the Marquis di Sangrido rolls clumsily out, with a flaring chasseur riding before, and a dozen servants on horseback grouped behind and around like a body-guard. The doors are closed; the blinds are drawn up; nothing is seen within the carriage; but the people of Rieti know that the Marquis is sitting there, alone, in the shadow; and their terrified and bewitched imaginations enter and sit beside him, and try to see the expression of that face, and to conceive the grimness of his smile, and the demoniacal horror of his frown. But not even their imaginations can
