It was one of those things that usually come out in the tabloid papers. If it didn't, the reason was that certain ramifications of the affair induced the village people to pretend to have seen and heard nothing.

It was the afternoon of December 31, and everywhere people were preparing to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. Those who weren't at home were out going from shop to shop or else just loitering in the square. Children had been dashing madly about all day long, whiling away the hours before the climactic noise-making with the explosion of an occasional firecracker.

In the Rotti farmyard there was a big band of boys shooting off firecrackers in this way, in spite of their elders' admonitions. But when it was time to lead the animals out of the stable to water, old man Rotti came into the yard and said that if he heard as much as a squeak he'd give the whole lot of them a beating. The boys quieted down, and the animals enjoyed their drink. But just when Togo reached the trough an unfortunate firecracker rose up from behind the fence, whistled across the yard and landed on his nose.

Togo was a Carnation-type bull, a Sherman tank of such massive proportions that the very sight of him was intimidating. With a single leap he broke away from the cowherd, smashed the bars of the gate and rushed out onto the road. The Rotti farm was hardly outside the village; fifty yards away the road became a village street, leading in a few hundred feet to the square. And by the time the Rottis had recovered from their surprise and started to pursue him, this was where Togo had arrived, or rather erupted. It was a confused scene, and one of only a few minutes' duration. Togo started to vent his wrath on a group of hysterical women, who squeezed themselves into the narrow space between a wall and two big trucks, while the sergeant of the carabinieri appeared from nowhere and stood in the way with a pistol in his hand.

The sergeant's shot grazed the bull's side and only intensified his anger. It looked as if both the sergeant and the little group of shrieking women were in danger of being trampled down. Only a volley of machine gun bullets into Togo's brain could have stopped him in his mad course. And, just in the nick of time, there was just such a volley. No one knew where it came from, but it hit the target, and the bull collapsed at the sergeant's feet. He put his pistol back in the holster, took off his cap and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, looking down all the while at the great carcass of the bull.

People all around him were making a racket, and the women were shrieking just as loudly as if the bull were still charging upon them, but in the sergeant's ears there rang only the rattle of the machine gun. The gun was silent now, but he felt sure that he had only to turn around and look up in order to pick out the window from which it had been fired. This was the real reason for his sweating. He knew that he ought to turn and look but he didn't have the courage to do so.

The sergeant's paralysis was broken by a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"Good for you, sergeant!" said Don Camillo. "These people owe you their lives."

"He's a very brave fellow," wheezed an old crone who was standing nearby, "but if it hadn't been for..."

She meant to say, "for the fellow who fired the machine gun," but she never finished the sentence because someone stepped on her foot so hard that she almost fainted away, and a moment later the gathering crowd absorbed her.

"Good for you, sergeant!" everyone was shouting.

Don Camillo went back to the rectory and waited for the sergeant to turn up. After an hour he did free himself and turn up, as expected.

"Father," he said, "you're the only person to whom I can say what's on my mind. Will you listen to me?"

"That's why I'm here," said Don Camillo, seating him in front of the fire.

"Father, did you see exactly what happened?" the sergeant asked him after a few seconds had gone by.

"Yes, I was just coming out of the tobacconist's, where I had gone to buy some stamps, and I saw the whole thing. I saw you throw yourself in front of the bull and shoot him down."

The sergeant smiled and shook his head.

"Did you see me shoot at him with a pistol and bring him down with a machine gun?"

Don Camillo threw out his arms.

"Sergeant, I'm not an arms expert. I know you had a firearm of some sort in your hand, but I couldn't swear to what it was."

"Do you mean that you can't tell the difference between a pistol shot and the crackle of a machine gun?"

"It's not taught in the seminary, sergeant."

"But it's taught at the public schools, I can tell you. And so I can't help knowing that the animal at which I shot my pistol was killed by a volley from a machine gun."

"Sergeant, if you say so, I can't contradict you. I repeat, that's not my specialty. The main thing is that the bull was killed before it could gore the life out of you and those poor women who were huddling behind you. I don't see any point to a discussion of ballistics."

"Yes, the machine gun volley did save the lives of quite a few people. The only trouble is that it had to come from a machine gun."

Don Camillo shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm no expert, as I've said twice before," he insisted. "But I may say that what you call a 'machine gun volley' might just as easily have come from a shotgun. I don't see how your higher-ups could find anything wrong with that."

"If it were just a matter of explaining to the higher-ups, that's a plausible story," said the sergeant. "But how am I to justify it to myself? You see, Father, a carabiniere is never alone; there is always another carabiniere on watch inside of him."

The carabiniere touched his breast, and Don Camillo smiled.

"If you were dead, would he be dead too?"

"Exactly. But I'm not dead, and the carabiniere inside me says: 'Someone in the village has a machine gun, in perfect working order. This is against the law, so you must proceed against him.'"

Don Camillo lit and puffed at the butt of his cigar.

"There's no use talking in riddles," he said. "Say what you have on your mind. If you suspect me, I am at your disposition. You and your double can proceed against me."

"Father, let's drop the joking. I know who shot the machine gun and so do you, because you saw it."

"You've come to the wrong place," said Don Camillo harshly, looking him straight in the eyes. "I'm the last person in the world to give out such information. And, if you like, you can summon me for failing to cooperate with the law. I haven't another carabiniere inside me, but I have my conscience, and there is a lot that the both of you could learn from that."

"There's one thing it couldn't teach us! A private citizen, who is the local leader of a movement in favor of revolution and mob rule, has no right to own a machine gun!"

"I don't care about revolutions and their local leaders," said Don Camillo. "I only want to tell you that I'm neither a spy nor an informer."

"You've misunderstood me," said the sergeant, shaking his head. "I only came to ask you how an honest man can report and turn in someone who has just saved a number of lives, including his own. And how can an honest man not report and turn in the owner of a weapon which is a menace to the community?"

Don Camillo was somewhat pacified.

"Sergeant," he said, "as you've just put it, the weapon is the menace, not its owner. There's been entirely too much melodrama, for strictly political reasons, over machine guns. They're certainly lethal arms, but not everyone that has one in his possession is a criminal. The owner of a hammer or a kitchen knife may be just as much of a threat to society. When a man has been through the war, his machine gun may be a sentimental reminder of an honorable past, of days of faith, hope and self-sacrifice."

"I see," the sergeant interrupted. "Just a well-oiled little souvenir that can fell the biggest bull for miles around!"

"And save the lives of several citizens, including a sergeant of the carabinieri."

"Father," said the sergeant, rising from his chair, "I can look, successfully or unsuccessfully, for the machine gun's owner. But I simply must find the gun."

"You'll find it," said Don Camillo, rising in his turn to bid his guest good-by. "I'll bring it to you myself."

~~~

Once the sergeant had gone, Don Camillo hurried over to the house of Peppone.

"You did a good job, killing the bull," he told him. "Now come across with that machine gun."

"Is this a free show?" asked Peppone.

"Peppone, the sergeant knows that you shot the gun. Even if you saved his life, it's his duty to report you for the possession of a concealed weapon."

"The sergeant must be crazy. He can't know anything of the kind. I don't own a machine gun, and I never, even in my wildest dreams, killed a bull."

"Peppone, stop joking. You shot the bull; I saw you with my own eyes."

"Then go tell the sergeant. Why come to me?"

"I'm not a spy, I'm a minister of God, and God doesn't need me to tell Him anything."

"You're a minister of the Vatican and the USA," Peppone retorted; "that's why you want to make trouble for honest men."

Don Camillo had resolved not to let himself be drawn into an argument, and so he did not answer, but merely sought to convince Peppone of the gravity of the sergeant's dilemma. But Peppone jeered at all his supplications.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "All these machine guns, bulls and sergeants have nothing to do with me. You'd better knock at some other door. Better luck next time! You might try the parish priest. See if he doesn't come up with a machine gun!"

Don Camillo was disconsolate as he left Peppone's house. From the door he fired this parting shot:

"I shan't mind if you're called up by the police. It's no more than you deserve. But I am sorry for the sergeant because he'd never choose to repay you in this fashion for saving his life and the daily bread of his children."

"Don't worry about me," sneered Peppone. "If I'd had this machine gun you're talking about, I'd have shot the sergeant, not the bull !"

~~~

When he got back to the rectory Don Camillo paced restlessly up and down the hall. At last he came to a decision and went precipitately upstairs. The dusty attic was pitch-black, but he needed no light to find what he was looking for. Immediately he located the brick which had only to be pushed at one end to open out at the other. He removed this from the wall and stuck his arm into the opening until his fingers caught hold of a nail with a wire wrapped around it. He unhooked the wire and pulled until a long, narrow box came out of the wall. Then he took out the contents of the box and went to his second-floor bedroom in order to see if it was in good condition. After that he put on his coat and left the house, making his way first through the hedge and then across the open fields. When he came to the area of underbrush near the canal he waited for midnight to arrive. As the bells rang and firecrackers and guns began to pop, he contributed a salvo of his own. Then he made straight for the headquarters of the carabinieri. The sergeant was still there and Don Camillo said at once:

"Here's what you called a machine gun. Don't ask me where it came from or who gave it to me."

"I'm not asking anything," answered the sergeant. "I'm simply thanking you for your cooperation, and wishing you a Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year to you, and to the other carabiniere inside you!" muttered Don Camillo, wrapping his coat about him and hurrying away.

Ten minutes later the sergeant's doorbell rang again, and when he went to open the door a heavy object which had been leaning up against it fell onto the floor. Attached to it by a wire was a piece of cardboard, on which someone had pasted letters cut out from newspaper headlines. These bore the message: "A machine gun guilty of having saved the life of a police sargint."

"By their spelling, ye shall know them," the sergeant said, laughing to himself.

Then having laid the object beside the one brought in a few minutes before by Don Camillo, he threw out his arms and exclaimed (contrary, perhaps, to the feelings of Togo, the bull):

"Thanks, all too many thanks, to Saint Anthony Abbot, patron saint of the lost-and-found!"