The Argosy — page 307: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4 ‘ 2G0 A Freak of Foriune. ; We never, as I have said, saw the five hogsheads of wine ; but then events in the Zuccone family wound themselves up very rapidly. Money worries, quarrels, and all kind of annoyances came down likean armed force on poor, foolisn Zuccone, who fell that same autumn into fever, which carried him off in three days. On the last afternoon of his life, after Fra Eustacio had administered extreme unction, poor little Pépina, who had now been some days from the convent, was betrothed to good Giacomo. The Cavaliere was now dead and buried. You have seen his tomb in the church with its pompous Latin inscription, in which the visit of his Holiness is not omitted. The busts of himself and his wife were never put into marble ; they remain, however, in their places of honour each on their respective pedestal, under the famous marble —_— which ennobles the saloon. The Signora Mariana again washed her own linen, fed es fowls, and let the principal rooms in her house to forestiere ; and, finally might once more be heard singing under the vine-covered pergalk She had now good reason to be contented, for the family vineyards were again well cultivated. Giacomo Fioretti, to the comfort of her heart, under- took the stewardship. Belisario, influenced by the one good seed sown in his mind during his short and humiliating experience in the Roman college, went for a few years to study the improved management ot the vine in Tuscany. He returned with a practical knowledge which soon made the vmeyards of Zuccone and Fioretti; now well-fed and middle-aged men ; the most famous onthe southern side of Rome: and for which, I am told, only this last year, in the competition ween | the vinegrowers obtained no less than two gold medals. It is now twenty years since the important event occurred which made the greatness and the downfall of Zuccone the elder; but Holy Father still remembers, with no little merriment, this Freak of Fortune. Only on the last festa of St. Peter and St. Paul, when-I went to the Vatican to offer my homage to the great successor of St. Peter, he said to me, with that dry little laugh which all his familiars know so well : ‘Ah, poor Cavaliere Tomaso! Let us hope we shall find him in Paradiso !” i Gomicbooks:.Gcom |