From this moment his star shone brighter than ever.  Colonel della Rebbia, now living on half-pay at Pietranera, had to defend himself against covert and repeated attacks due to the pettifogging malignity of his enemy.  At one time he was summoned to pay for the damage his horse had done to the mayor’s fences, at another, the latter, under pretence of repairing the floor of the church, ordered the removal of a broken flagstone bearing the della Rebbia arms, which covered the grave of some member of the family.  If the village goats ate the colonel’s young plants, the mayor always protected their owners.  The grocer who kept the post-office at Pietranera, and the old maimed soldier who had been the village policeman—­both of them attached to the della Rebbia family—­were turned adrift, and their places filled by Barricini’s creatures.

The colonel’s wife died, and her last wish was that she might be buried in the middle of the little wood in which she had been fond of walking.  Forthwith the mayor declared she should be buried in the village cemetery, because he had no authority to permit burial in any other spot.  The colonel, in a fury, declared that until the permit came, his wife would be interred in the spot she had chosen.  He had her grave dug there.  The mayor, on his side, had another grave dug in the cemetery, and sent for the police, that the law, so he declared, might be duly enforced.  On the day of the funeral, the two parties came face to face, and, for a moment, there was reason to fear a struggle might ensue for the possession of Signora della Rebbia’s corpse.  Some forty well-armed peasants, mustered by the dead woman’s relatives, forced the priest, when he issued from the church, to take the road to the wood.  On the other hand, the mayor, at the head of his two sons, his dependents, and the gendarmes, advanced to oppose their march.  When he appeared, and called on the procession to turn back, he was greeted with howls and threats.  The advantage of numbers was with his opponents, and they seemed thoroughly determined.  At sight of him several guns were loaded, and one shepherd is even said to have levelled his musket at him, but the colonel knocked up the barrel, and said, “Let no man fire without my orders!” The mayor, who, like Panurge, had “a natural fear of blows,” refused to give battle, and retired, with his escort.  Then the funeral procession started, carefully choosing the longest way, so as to pass in front of the mayor’s house.  As it was filing by, an idiot, who had joined its ranks, took it into his head to shout, “Vive l’Empereur!” Two or three voices answered him, and the Rebbianites, growing hotter, proposed killing one of the mayor’s oxen, which chanced to bar their way.  Fortunately the colonel stopped this act of violence.

It is hardly necessary to mention that an official statement was at once drawn up, or that the mayor sent the prefect a report, in his sublimest style, describing the manner in which all laws, human and divine, had been trodden under foot—­how the majesty of himself, the mayor, and of the priest had been flouted and insulted, and how Colonel della Rebbia had put himself at the head of a Bonapartist plot, to change the order of succession to the throne, and to excite peaceful citizens to take arms against one another—­crimes provided against by Articles 86 and 91 of the Penal Code.