So when we left S. Cristoforo it
was not the old church, nor the frescoes, but the name of the idle
fellow who had scratched his name "Battista . . . 1485," that we
carried away with us. A little bit of old world life and entire
want of earnestness, preserved as though it were a smile in amber.
In the Val Sesia, several years ago, I bought some tobacco that was
wrapped up for me in a yellow old MS. which I in due course
examined. It was dated 1797, and was a leaf from the book in which
a tanner used to enter the skins which his customers brought him to
be tanned.
"October 24," he writes, "I received from Signora Silvestre, called
the widow, the skin of a goat branded in the neck.--(I am not to
give it up unless they give me proof that she is the rightful
owner.) Mem. I delivered it to Mr. Peter Job (Signor Pietro
Giobbe).
"October 27.--I receive two small skins of a goat, very thin and
branded in the neck, from Giuseppe Gianote of Campertogno.
"October 29.--I receive three skins of a chamois from Signor
Antonio Cinere of Alagna, branded in the neck." Then there is a
subsequent entry written small. "I receive also a little gray
marmot's skin weighing thirty ounces."
I am sorry I did not get a sheet with the tanner's name. I am sure
he was an excellent person, and might have been trusted with any
number of skins, branded or unbranded. It is nearly a hundred
years ago since that little gray marmot's skin was tanned in the
Val Sesia; but the wretch will not lie quiet in his grave; he
walks, and has haunted me once a month or so any time this ten
years past.
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