Chapter 86: The Bandit: II
"He was a shepherd boy working on Count San-Felice’s farm, located between two small towns east of Rome. He was born in a little village called Pampinara and started working for the count when he was just five years old. His father was also a shepherd who owned a small flock and made his living selling wool and milk in Rome.
Even as a small child, Luigi showed unusual intelligence. When he was seven, he went to the local priest and asked to be taught to read. It was complicated since he couldn’t leave his flock, but the good priest had to walk through the area daily anyway to say mass at a tiny village too poor to afford its own church. The priest told Luigi he could meet him on his route and they’d have lessons, though they’d be short, so he’d need to pay close attention.
The kid accepted eagerly. Every day, Luigi would graze his flock along the road between the two towns. Every morning at nine, the priest and boy would sit on a roadside bank, and the little shepherd would study from the priest’s prayer book. After three months, he could read.
But that wasn’t enough, now he needed to learn to write. The priest had a writing teacher in Rome create three sets of alphabet samples, large, medium, and small, and showed Luigi how he could trace the letters on a flat stone using something sharp, teaching himself to write.
That same evening, after bringing the flock safely back to the farm, little Luigi rushed to the blacksmith in town. He took a large nail, heated it, sharpened it, and made himself a basic writing tool. The next morning he gathered an armful of flat stones and got to work. Three months later, he could write.
The priest, amazed by his intelligence and dedication, gave him pens, paper, and a penknife. This required new effort, but nothing compared to the first challenge. Within a week, he wrote just as well with the pen as he had with his homemade tool.
The priest told Count San-Felice about this remarkable boy. The count summoned the little shepherd, tested his reading and writing, then ordered his staff to let Luigi eat with the household servants and paid him two gold coins monthly. Luigi spent this money on books and art supplies.
He applied his natural talent to everything. Like the famous artists before him, as a young boy he sketched sheep, houses, and trees on his stones. Then he began carving objects from wood with his knife, the same way famous sculptors had started their careers.
There was a girl, six or seven years old, a bit younger than Luigi, who also tended sheep on a nearby farm. She was an orphan from another small town, named Teresa.
The two children met and quickly became inseparable. They’d sit together, let their flocks mingle, play, laugh, and talk for hours. In the evening they’d separate the count’s sheep from the baron’s sheep, then return to their respective farms, already promising to meet again the next morning. And they always kept that promise. This was how they grew up, together.
By the time Luigi was twelve and Teresa was eleven, their personalities had fully emerged. Beyond his artistic talents, which Luigi had developed as far as he could in isolation, he had an intense, complicated temperament, prone to sudden shifts between sadness and enthusiasm, often angry and unpredictable, and always sharp-tongued and sarcastic.
None of the other boys from the surrounding villages could influence him or even really become his friend. His personality, always demanding rather than compromising, kept everyone at a distance. Only Teresa could control this fierce character with just a look, a word, or a gesture. He yielded to her gentle touch in a way he never would have for any man, who might have broken him but never bent him.
Teresa was lively and cheerful, but also quite flirtatious and loved attention. The two gold coins Luigi received monthly from the count’s manager, plus all the money from selling his wood carvings in Rome, went toward buying Teresa earrings, necklaces, and fancy hair accessories. Thanks to his generosity, Teresa became the most beautiful and best-dressed young woman in the entire region.
The two children grew up together, spending all their time with each other, indulging the wild ideas that came from their different personalities. In their daydreams, Luigi saw himself as a ship captain, an army general, or a provincial governor. Teresa imagined herself wealthy, dressed in expensive clothes, attended by servants in uniform. After spending their days building these fantasies, they’d separate their flocks and descend from their dreams back to their humble reality.
One day the young shepherd told the count’s manager that he’d seen a wolf emerge from the nearby mountains and circle his flock. The manager gave him a gun, exactly what Luigi had been hoping for.
It was an excellent weapon with a precision barrel made in a famous Italian city, accurate enough to hit targets like an expert marksman’s rifle. The count had broken the wooden stock at some point and discarded the gun. But this was nothing to a skilled carver like Luigi. He examined the broken stock, calculated what modifications were needed, and carved a new one so beautifully it could have sold for fifteen or twenty gold coins, if he’d had any intention of selling it, which he absolutely didn’t.
A gun had been the young man’s greatest desire for a long time. In any country where people value their independence, the first thing a young man wants is a weapon, something that makes him capable of defending himself or attacking if necessary. Having a weapon makes you formidable, often feared.
From that moment, Luigi devoted all his free time to mastering his precious weapon. He bought gunpowder and ammunition. Everything became target practice, the trunk of some ancient, moss-covered olive tree growing on the mountainside, foxes leaving their dens on hunting expeditions, eagles soaring overhead. He soon became so skilled that Teresa overcame her initial fear of the loud noise and actually enjoyed watching him place his shots with pinpoint accuracy, as precisely as if he’d walked up and touched the target by hand.
One evening a wolf emerged from a pine forest near their usual spot. The wolf had barely gone ten yards before it was dead. Proud of this accomplishment, Luigi threw the dead animal over his shoulders and carried it back to the farm.
These achievements gave Luigi considerable reputation in the area. Talented people always find admirers, wherever they go. People spoke of him as the most skilled, strongest, and most courageous young man for miles around. And though Teresa was universally acknowledged as the most beautiful girl in the region, no one had ever spoken to her of love, because everyone knew she was Luigi’s.