It is a beautiful evening. The autumn air blows clear and cool from the mountains, and the stars must be shining. I have been sitting here for a long time at the window, watching the numerous fires. Now I too shall go to rest.
It is strange that I who can see the fires which are so far away cannot perceive the stars. I have never been able to. My eyes are not like others’ but there is nothing the matter with them, for I can distinguish everything on earth very clearly.
I OFTEN think about Boccarossa. I can picture him, huge, nearly gigantic, with his pockmarked face, his animal jaw, and that gaze in the depths of his eyes. And the lion’s mask on his breastplate, the grinning beast of prey sticking out its tongue at everything.
Our troops have come fleeing into the town after an engagement which was fought just outside the ramparts. It was a gory battle which cost us many hundred dead, not to mention the wounded who crawled in through the city gates or were dragged in by women who are said to have gone out to seek their sons and husbands on the battlefield.
Our soldiers were in a lamentable condition when they finally gave up and withdrew within the walls. Since their arrival there has been confusion in the town which is crammed to bursting, far too full of warriors, wounded and myriads of refugees from the countryside. Everything is one huge muddle, and the atmosphere is deplorable. People sleep in the streets though the nights are beginning to be chilly, and even in the daytime one can stumble over exhausted slumberers and over the wounded whom nobody has any time to attend to, though they may have had their hurts bandaged. The whole thing is hopeless, and the thought of the coming siege now that the enemy has completely surrounded the city does not help to disperse the utter despondency.
Is it worth while trying to resist somebody like Boccarossa? Personally, I never anticipated any success in this war.
But they say that the city is to be defended to the last drop of blood, and also that it is strongly fortified and can ho’d out for a long time, even that it is impregnable. But so are all cities until they are taken. I have my own opinion of its impregnability.
The Prince has awakened and has begun to assume the leadership of the defense. He is unpopular and meets with no applause when he shows himself. Folk think that the murder of Montanza and his people was the act of a lunatic and can lead to nothing but more war and misery.
The Princess is up and about again and has begun to eat a little, but she is not at all herself. She has become much thinner and the skin of her erstwhile plump face is dry and gray. She really is completely altered. Her clothes hang on her as though they had been made for someone else. She goes dressed in black. When she speaks it is in a low almost whispering voice. Her mouth is still withered and her thinness has changed the expression of her face, the eye sockets are sunken and dark about the unnaturally burning eyes.
She kneels for hours in prayer before the crucifix, until her knees are so stiff and painful that she can scarcely rise. I have of course no idea what her prayers are about, but they cannot be answered since she goes on day after day.
She never leaves her room.
MAESTRO BERNARDO is said to be helping the Prince to strengthen the fortifications and inventing all kinds of ingenious arrangements for the defense of the town. Report says that the work is pursued with energy and goes on night and day.
I have great confidence in Maestro Bernardo’s art and skill, but I do not think that he has much chance against Boccarossa. The old master is a great spirit, and his thoughts and knowledge comprehend nearly everything; indisputably he has great powers at his disposal which he has conquered from nature and which really obey him, presumably against their will. But Boccarossa seems to me as though he himself were one of those powers, as though they served him as a matter of course, and much more willingly. I think he is nearer nature.
Bernardo is a changed person, his haughty noble features always fill me with misgiving.
I think that it will be an unequal struggle.
If one saw them side by side, Bernardo with his philosopher’s brow and Boccarossa with his powerful leonine jaw, there would be no doubt as to which were the stronger.
FOOD IS beginning to run short in the town. Of course we do not notice it at the court, but they say the people are starving. Nor is that peculiar, with all the superfluous inhabitants who have no business to be here. The refugees are more and more disliked, being regarded, and rightly so, as the cause of the food shortage. They are a burden to the citizens. Most unpopular of all are their whining dirty children who go begging all over the place and are even said to steal when they get the chance. Bread is doled out twice a week but very little, for no preparations had been made for a siege and the stores are small. Soon they will come to an end. The refugees who had a cow or goat with them and lived on the milk have now slaughtered their emaciated beasts who were already nearly dead of starvation, and kept themselves alive with the meat which they could also exchange for flour and other necessities. Now they have nothing left and the townspeople affirm that they have hidden their meat and are better off than themselves, but I do not believe it, for they do not look like that. They are thin and seem very undernourished. This does not mean that I have any sympathy for these people; I share the town dwellers’ aversion to them. They are stupid like all peasants, and spend most of their time sitting and staring. They have no intercourse with outsiders, but have divided themselves up according to their different villages and keep together in their dirty camps, the little bit of the square where they keep their old rags and which they seem to regard as a kind of home. In the evening they sit around their fires, if they have been able to procure any fuel, and talk in their imbecile language, of which scarcely a word is comprehensible. Nor would it be worth listening to if it were.
The filth and stench from all these people camping in the squares and streets is appalling. All this foulness is unbearable to me who am scrupulously clean about my person and very sensitive to any unpleasant features in my surroundings. Many consider that I am unduly susceptible in my detestation of human excrement and its smell. These primitive creatures are like the cattle with which they associate, and relieve themselves anywhere. It is too swinish for words. The air stinks of it and I find the condition of the streets and squares so disgusting that I try to avoid going into the town. I do not have to carry so many messages now since the Princess’ extraordinary change and Don Riccardo’s timely death.
All these homeless people sleep in the open at night and cannot be too snug in their rags now that an unusually hard winter has set in. They say that some have been found frozen to death in the morning, that some scarecrow who remained prone when all the others had got up proved on closer examination to be dead. But they die more of their privations than of the actual cold, and then only the old folk who lack stamina and natural bodily warmth. Nobody minds their dying; they are only a burden to the others, and there are far too many people here in the town.
Boccarossa’s men lack nothing. The whole country is at their disposal for plunder, and they make longer and longer forays into the interior to provide for their needs. They burn the villages as soon as they have taken what they want, and one can often see the reflection of distant fires in the sky at night. The surrounding district has long been completely devastated.
Oddly enough they have not yet attempted to storm the town. This surprises me, for it would have been an easy prey. Maybe they think that it is easier to starve it out; they have nothing against a siege when they can simultaneously pillage the countryside.