Not for anything would he stay in San
Gaudenzio. His dream was to be gone. He would come back. The world was
not San Gaudenzio to Giovanni.
The old order, the order of Paolo and of Pietro di Paoli, the
aristocratic order of the supreme God, God the Father, the Lord, was
passing away from the beautiful little territory. The household no
longer receives its food, oil and wine and maize, from out of the earth
in the motion of fate. The earth is annulled, and money takes its place.
The landowner, who is the lieutenant of God and of Fate, like Abraham,
he, too, is annulled. There is now the order of the rich, which
supersedes the order of the Signoria.
It is passing away from Italy as it has passed from England. The peasant
is passing away, the workman is taking his place. The stability is gone.
Paolo is a ghost, Maria is the living body. And the new order means
sorrow for the Italian more even than it has meant for us. But he will
have the new order.
San Gaudenzio is already becoming a thing of the past. Below the house,
where the land drops in sharp slips to the sheer cliff's edge, over
which it is Maria's constant fear that Felicina will tumble, there are
the deserted lemon gardens of the little territory, snug down below.
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