White Serpent, The

THE WHITE SERPENT. [1]

MY STORY is also of a husband and wife, but they were peasants, and lived outside the gates.

               'It is so cold to-night,' said the husband to the wife, as they went to bed, 'we shall freeze if we have another night like it. We must contrive to wake before it is light, and go and get some wood somewhere before we go to work, to make a fire to-morrow night.'

               So they woke very early, before it was light, and went out to get wood. [2] The husband stood up in the tree, and the wife down below in a ditch, or hole. As she stood there she saw a great white serpent glide past her. 'Look, look!' she cried to her husband; 'see that great white serpent; surely there is something unnatural about it!'

               'A white serpent!' answered her husband; 'what nonsense! Who ever heard of such a thing as a white serpent!'

               'There it goes, then,' said the wife; 'you can see it for yourself.'

               'I see nothing of the kind,' said the husband. 'There are no serpents about Rome this many a long year; and as for a white one, such a thing doesn't exist.'

               While he spoke the serpent went through a hole in the ground. As the husband was so positive, the wife said no more, but they gathered up the wood and went home.

               In the night, however, the wife had a dream. She saw an Augustinian friar, long since dead, standing before her, who said 'Angela! (that was indeed her name) if you would do me a favour listen to me. Did you see a white serpent this morning?'

               'Yes,' she answered; 'that I did, though my husband said there was no such thing as a white serpent in existence.'

               'Well, if you would do me a pleasure, go back to the place where you saw the white serpent go in--not where he came out, but where you saw him go into the earth. Dig about that place, and, when you have dug a pretty good hole, a dead man will start up; [3] but don't be afraid, he can't hurt you, and won't want to hurt you. Take no notice of him, and go on digging, and no harm will come to you; you have nothing to be afraid of. If you dig on you will come to a heap of money. Take some of the biggest pieces of gold and carry them to St. Peter's, and take some of the smaller pieces and carry them to S. Agostino, [4] and let masses be said for that dead man. But you must tell no one alive anything about it.'

               The woman was much too frightened to do what the friar had said, but she managed to keep the story to herself, though it made her look so anxious her husband could not help noticing something.

               The next night the friar came again, and said the same words, only he added: 'If you are so frightened, Angela, you may take with you for company a little boy, but he must not be over seven, nor under six; and what you do you must tell no one. But you have nothing to fear, for if you do as I have said no one can harm you.'

               For all his assurances, however, she could not make up her mind to go, nor this day could she even keep the story from her husband, for it weighed upon her mind. When he heard the story he said, 'I'll go with you.'

               'Ah! if you'll go, then I don't mind,' she said. 'But how will it be? The friar was so particular that I should tell no one, evil may happen if I take another with me.'

               'If there is nothing in the story, there's nothing to fear,' said the husband; 'and, if the story is true, there is a heap of money to reward one for a little fear; so let's go. Besides, if you think any harm will happen to you for taking me, I can stand on the top of the bank while you go down to the hole, and it can't be said properly that I'm there, while I shall yet be by to give you courage and help you if anything happens.'

               'That way, I don't mind it,' answered the wife; and they went out together to the place, the husband, as he had said, standing by on a bank, and the wife creeping down into a hole. They took also two donkeys with them to bring away the treasure.

               At the first stroke of the woman's spade there came such lugubrious cries that she was frightened into running away.

               'Don't be afraid,' said the husband; 'cries don't hurt!' So the woman began digging again, and then there came out cries again worse than before, and the noise of rattling of chains, dreadful to hear. So terrified was the woman that she swooned away.

               The husband then went down into the hole with what water he could find to bring her to herself, but the moment he got into the hole the spirits set upon him and beat him so that he had great livid marks all over.

               After that neither of them had the heart to go back to try it again.

               But the woman was in the habit of going to confession to one of the Augustinian fathers, and she told him all. The fathers sent and had the place dug up all about, and thought they had proved there was nothing there; but for all that, it generally happens that when a thing like that has to be done, it must be done by the person who is sent, and anybody else but that person trying it proves nothing at all.

               One thing is certain, that when those horrid assassins [5] hide a heap of money they put a dead man's body at the entrance of the hole where they hide it, and say to it, 'Thou be on guard till one of such a name, be it Teresa, be it Angela, be it Pietro, comes;' and no one else going can be of any use, for it may be a hundred years before the coincidence can happen of a person just of the right name lighting on the spot--perhaps never.

               'Yes, yes! that's a fact; that is not old wives' nonsense,' [6] was the chorus which greeted this enunciation. [7]