XII

On the following morning at about eleven o’clock, the religious services began in the church. They were set for this late hour so as to allow for the arrival of a young priest from Nuoro, a friend of Priest Elias’s, who was to give a panegyric gratis to the people of Orlei. This panegyric was a great event, and in consequence, by ten o’clock the church overflowed with a gaily dressed throng of persons.

The building itself was painted in the most vivid colours⁠—pink walls relieved by stripes of bright blue; a yellow wooden pulpit; and rows of lusty saints with red cheeks and blond hair, simpering from their pink niches like so many Teutonic worthies. San Costantino, however, the Patron Saint, was clad in armour, and his face looked dark and stern. This ancient statue was believed to perform miracles, and, according to local tradition, had been carved by San Nicodemus himself.

Through the wide-open door came a flood of sunshine, which, pouring over the congregation, enveloped them in a cloud of golden dust. At the other end of the church, where the altar stood, it seemed quite dark, notwithstanding the large M of lighted tapers, looking, with their motionless flames, like so many arrowheads stuck on shafts of white wood.

Priest Elias was celebrating Mass; and close by stood his friend, wearing a lace alb, and with a small, dark face like that of a shrewd child; he was singing away at the top of his voice, and all wondered to hear the little priest sing so loud, knowing that he was to preach as well. Most of the people had, indeed, come expressly to hear this sermon, and were paying scant attention to the Mass, being taken up with whispering and staring about them. True, the heat was suffocating, and clouds of insects made devotion difficult, even for the most pious. At last Priest Elias, having finished chanting the gospel, turned his pale, ascetic face towards the people, and his lips were seen to move. Just then the figure of Giacobbe Dejas appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the vivid, blue background of the sky. His usual mocking expression was changed to one of self-satisfaction. Aware that the priest was speaking, he paused on the threshold to listen, holding his long black cap in his hand; then, finding that he could distinguish nothing, he stepped inside and whispered to an old man with a long yellow beard, who stood near the door, to know what had been said.

“I don’t know; I couldn’t hear him; they make as much racket as if they were out in the square,” said the old man querulously.

A tall, fresh-complexioned youth, with black hair and an aquiline nose, turned and stared at Giacobbe. Noting his unusual cleanliness, his new clothes, and general air of complacency, he grinned ill-naturedly.

“I think,” said he, “that Priest Elias said the other priest was going to begin the panegyric now.”

“Did you hear him say it?” asked the old man crossly.

“I didn’t hear him say anything at all,” replied the youth.

Giacobbe worked his way towards the front of the church, pushing in and out among the men, who turned to look at him as he pressed against them. Suddenly a silence fell on the crowd. The men all drew back against the walls, and the women sat down on the floor. In the centre of the church, where a stream of sunshine fell, was a sort of wooden bedstead, painted blue, and watched over by four little pink-cheeked cherubs, whose green, outstretched wings gave them the appearance of four emerald butterflies. On the bed, reposing with closed eyes upon brocade cushions, was a tiny Madonna. She was dressed entirely in white, with rings, necklaces, and earrings of gold⁠—it was the Assumption. The dark, shrewd face of the little priest now appeared above the edge of the pulpit. Giacobbe regarded him fixedly for a moment, and then turned his right ear towards him so as to hear better.

“People of Orlei, brothers, sisters⁠—” said the priest in a clear, childish treble⁠—“asked to preach you a little sermon on this solemn day⁠—” Giacobbe liked the opening, but finding that he could hear very well without paying strict attention, he turned and began to observe the people, talking all the while to himself, though without losing any of the discourse.

“There’s Isidoro Pane, the devil take him! if he hasn’t got on new clothes too; I wonder if he is also thinking of getting married. Eh, eh! That fresh-looking fellow down there by the door was laughing at me; he saw how happy and prosperous I looked, and thought of course that I must be going to get married. Well, and what if I am? Is it any business of yours, you puppy? Can’t I get married if I want to? I have a house of my own, and cattle too.10

“Eh, eh! my sister will die without heirs⁠—God bless her!⁠—there she is, looking like a pink, shiny, little wax doll. Who would ever suppose that she is older than I? She wants me to get a wife. Well, I am perfectly willing, but whom shall I get? I am not so easy to please, and then I’m afraid⁠—I’m afraid⁠—I’m afraid. With this new law⁠—the devil roast all the lawyers⁠—who in the world is one ever to trust? There’s that precious young master of mine; there he is at this very minute, with the stamp of mortal sin on him. What is he doing here? Why don’t they horsewhip him? Why don’t they drive him out like a dog? And his old bird-of-prey mother too? The old jade, there she is! Why don’t they drive both of them out?”

“Ah,” he thought presently, “that is true, though; if they turned everyone out who did wrong, the church would soon be empty. But those two people, I hate them; I’d like to flog them till the blood came. I’m not bad, though; didn’t I stay up at the folds only today, working to repair the damage made by yesterday’s storm? Then, when I came down, there was Giovanna getting dinner all by herself. She was dirty, and ill, and unhappy. No holiday for her! The mother and son go off together, and she, the maid-servant, stays at home and does the work. Well, it serves her right⁠—a bad woman! And yet, I do feel sorry for her sometimes. There, God help me, I do feel sorry for her. When I said something ugly to her just now, she never answered a word. After all, when you come to think of it, she’s the mistress, and I’m the servant. But is it my fault if I can’t help pitching into you sometimes, little spring bird? I can’t bear the sight of you, and all the same I’m sorry for you, and that’s the way it is. Now, we must listen to what the priest has to tell us. He’s just like a sparrow; that’s it, a sparrow singing in its nest.”

“Brothers, sisters, beloved⁠—” cried the little preacher in the soft Loguedorese dialect, which sounds almost like Spanish, and waving his small white hands in the air⁠—“the faith of Our Lady is the most ideal, the most sublime of all faiths. She, the gentle woman, daughter, wife, and Mother of Our Lord, mounted to heaven all radiant and fragrant as a chaplet of roses, and took her seat in glory amongst the angels and seraphim⁠—”

“There’s Priest Elias,” thought Giacobbe, turning his little squint-eyes, which shone like metal in the bright light, towards the altar. “Yes, with his hands folded together, a boiled-milk priest, who can’t preach anything except goodness and forgiveness, and all the time he has the Holy Books, and could strike right and left among the people if he chose to. Ah, if he had only threatened Giovanna Era⁠—! He always looks as if he were in a dream, anyhow.”

“No one,” continued the little preacher, standing erect in the yellow pulpit, “no one has ever been able to say that he failed to get anything he asked in true faith from Our Most Holy Lady. She, the Lily of the Valley, the Mystical Rose of Jericho⁠—”

But the audience was growing weary. The women, seated on the floor like beds of ranunculuses and poppies, were beginning to stir uneasily, and had ceased to listen. The young priest understood, and brought his discourse to a close, with a general benediction, which included the entire gathering of persons who, while ostensibly listening to the word of God, were, for the most part, wholly taken up with their own and their neighbours’ affairs.

Priest Elias, arousing from his dream, resumed the celebration of the Mass. He alone, with possibly Isidoro Pane, had listened to the sermon, and the latter, so soon as the Mass was concluded, began to sing the lauds, his clear, sweet voice flowing out like a stream of limpid water rippling among rocks and flowering moss.

The young stranger listened with ecstasy to those liquid tones; the old fisherman’s venerable figure, his long, flowing beard, and gentle eyes, and the bone rosary clasped between his knotted fingers, recalling certain pilgrims he had seen in Rome.

He wanted to meet the old man, and Priest Elias, accordingly, stopped him at the church door. Giacobbe, who was watching, was almost consumed with envy at the sight of the fisherman standing in friendly conversation with the two priests.

“What the thunder were they saying to you?” he demanded as the other came up.

“They wanted me to dine with them,” said Isidoro, with some show of importance.

“Oh! they wanted you to dine with them, did they? So, my little spring bird, you are getting to be somebody, it seems. Well, you come along with me.”

“To the Dejases’? Not I!” exclaimed Isidoro in a tone of horror.

“No, no; I’m not going to eat with those children of the devil today. I’m going home, so come along.”

It was past midday as the two men set off for Aunt Anna-Rosa’s house. The sun, pouring down on the narrow streets, had dried the mud, and the moisture on the trees. In all directions people could be seen dispersing to their homes, and the heavy tread of the shepherds resounded on the stone pavements. Children, dressed in their Sunday-best, peeped from over tumble-down walls, and through open doors glimpses could be caught of dark interiors, with here and there a copper saucepan shining from a wall like some huge medal suspended there. Thin curls of smoke floated up through the clear atmosphere, and the music of a mouth-organ, issuing from a usually deserted courtyard, sounded as though it were coming from the bowels of the earth, where some melancholy old Fate was solacing herself.

The entire village wore an unaccustomed air of gaiety, and yet this very festal look, the wide-open doors, the wreaths of smoke, the children, so ill at ease at their holiday attire, the sound of the mouth-organ, the bare, unshaded houses exposed to the full glare of the noontide sun⁠—all combined to produce an effect of profound melancholy. Giacobbe led the way to his sister’s house, and they all three dined together. The little woman, herself widowed and childless, adored her brother, and still referred to him as “my little brother.” But then she loved all her kind, without distinction, and her eyes, slightly crossed, of no colour in particular, and as pure and liquid as two tiny lakes illuminated by the moon, were as innocent as the eyes of a nursing child. She knew that evil existed, but was frightened merely at the thought of men committing sin. One of the great sorrows of her life had been Giovanna’s divorce and re-marriage⁠—her own foster-child, as it were! And to think that she had actually lent them the money for the wedding outfit⁠—!

Giacobbe dearly loved to tease her.

“Here’s our friend Isidoro,” he cried, as the party seated themselves at table. “He is thinking of getting married, and has come to consult you.”

“Bless me, Isidoro Pane, and are you really going to be married?”

“Oh! go along, go along,” said the fisherman good-humouredly.

“So you don’t care about marrying?” cried Giacobbe, holding a piece of roast meat in both hands, and tearing it apart with teeth that were still sound and strong. “Well, you are a dirty beast. Do you know, sister, he has lovers, all the same.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true, though; take me to heaven if it’s not. Yes, he has lovers who suck his blood.”

The others laughed like two children at this humourous allusion to Isidoro’s leeches. Giacobbe began to cut his meat with a sharp knife, holding it between his teeth and left hand, and muttering that it was as tough as the devil’s ear, while his sister and the guest, having once begun, were ready to laugh at everything. Giacobbe’s mood, however, suddenly changed, and for some reason which he himself was at a loss to explain, his good spirits of a few hours before deserted him.

“When we have finished, I’ll take you to see my ‘palace,’ ” he said. “It will be done in a few days now, and if I wanted to I could rent it right away, but I don’t want to; I intend to live in it myself.”

“Then you are not going to hire out any more?”

“No, not after a little while; I have worked enough. I have been working for forty years; do you take that in? Yes, it’s forty years. No one can say I stole the money I have laid away for my old age.”

“And you are going to marry?”

“Poh! Who is there to marry me? I should despise any young woman who was willing to, and I won’t have an old one, not I. Take something more to drink, Isidoro Pane.”

“You must want to make me tipsy!⁠—well, as it’s a holiday⁠—here’s to the bride and groom!”

“What bride and groom?”

“Giacobbe Dejas and Bachissia Era!” said the fisherman, who was waxing merry.

Giacobbe made a quick movement as though to throw himself upon him.

“I’ll knock out your brains!” he cried, his eyes flashing with anger.

“Ah, you murderer!” laughed the other.

“Hush, hush! One should not say such things,” said Aunt Anna-Rosa.

Giacobbe drank off a couple of glasses of wine, and then laughed in rather a forced way, looking sideways at his sister and the fisherman. “See here,” he said suddenly; “why don’t you two get married? Isidoro Pane, my sister is rich, and you see how fresh she is, just like the hip of a wild rose. You’d think she had found some magic herb and made an ointment to preserve her skin.”

“God bless you! How queer you are sometimes!” exclaimed the little woman.

“Yes; you two had better marry; I wish it. My sister is rich; all my property will go to her, because I am going to die first. Somehow, I don’t quite know why, but I feel as though I were going to die soon; I feel as though I were going to be killed⁠—”

“Oh, nonsense! If it happens today, it will come from drinking too much.”

“Dear little brother, what on earth are you talking about? In the name of the wretched souls in purgatory, don’t say such things,” said his sister, greatly distressed.

“You have no enemies,” said Isidoro. “And besides, only those perish by the sword who have used the sword.”

“Well, I have slaughtered many and many an innocent, unoffending fellow-creature,” replied Giacobbe seriously, burying his mouth in a slice of watermelon. “You don’t believe me? Sheep and lambs without number!” and he lifted his face, streaming with the pink juice, and laughed.

Dinner over, the two men went off to look at the new house.

Its two stories⁠—the ground-floor and one above it⁠—were divided into four large bedrooms, a kitchen, and a stable; these accommodations being deemed sufficient to earn for it the title of “palace,” not alone from Giacobbe, but from the entire neighbourhood as well.

“Do you see this? Have you noticed that?” Giacobbe kept calling out, drawing attention to every detail and corner of his property; his clean-shaven face, devoid even of eyebrows, growing, meanwhile, almost youthful in its enthusiasm.

“You had better marry my sister,” he said presently. “This house will be hers some day.”

“You are making fun of me,” replied the other. “Because I am poor, you think you can laugh at me as much as you like.”

The wooden floors filled the simple soul with awe, and he hardly dared to walk on them. Giacobbe, on the contrary, seemed to enjoy stamping about in his great hobnailed boots, and making as much noise as he could in the big, empty rooms, all redolent of fresh plaster.

The two men paused for a moment at an open window, whose stone sill, baked by the sun, felt hot to the touch. The house stood high, and below them, in black shadow, lay the village, looking like a heap of charcoal beneath the green veil of trees. All about stretched the yellow plain, and, beyond, the great violet-grey sphinxes reared themselves against a cloudless sky. The bell of the little church, clamouring insistently, broke in on the noontide heat and stillness, and the sound was like metal striking against stone, as though far off, in the rocky heart of those huge sphinxes, a drowsy giant were wielding his pick. “Why don’t you want to marry my sister?” said Giacobbe again. “This house will belong to her, and this will be her bedroom; here at this very window you could smoke your pipe⁠—”

“I never smoke; do let me be,” said the fisherman impatiently. The other’s talk began to annoy him.

“I’m not joking, you old lizard,” retorted Giacobbe. “Only you are such a dull beggar that you can’t even tell that I’m not.”

“Listen,” said Isidoro. “You have given me my dinner today, and so you think you have a right to make game of me. Now, I tell you this, if you want me to be grateful for it, you had better leave me alone.”

Giacobbe stared at him for a moment; then he burst into a loud laugh.

“Come on,” he cried; “let’s have something to drink.”

They went out, and Giacobbe led the way to the tavern, but the other refused to enter, saying that it was time for him to be getting back to the church.

In the tavern Giacobbe found Brontu and a number of others playing morra, their arms flung out in tense attitudes, and all shouting the numbers at the tops of their lungs.

Before five o’clock, the hour set for the procession, they were all quite tipsy, Giacobbe more so than anyone: notwithstanding which fact he insisted upon grasping his master by the arm, being firmly under the impression that without his aid, the other would not be able to walk. He then invited the whole company to adjourn to his “palace” to view the procession. A little later, accordingly, the big, empty rooms echoed to the sound of hoarse voices, bursts of aimless laughter, and uncertain footsteps. The windows were all thrown wide open, and quickly filled with wild, bearded faces.

Giacobbe and Brontu were standing at the same window where the old fisherman had been shortly before. By this time the sun had left it, but the sill was still warm, while below them and beyond, the village, and the plain, and the mountains were striped with long bars of ever lengthening shadows.

“Cu, cu!” shouted Brontu, staring out with round eyes. This was so intensely humourous that the others all began imitating him, each one making as much noise as possible. The house resounded with the uproar; a crowd gathered in the street below, and presently the drunkards within and those without began to exchange abusive epithets, followed by spitting and stone-throwing.

On a sudden, however, complete silence fell; a sound of low, mournful chanting was heard approaching, and immediately after a double line of white, phantom-like figures appeared at the end of the street, preceded by a silver cross held aloft against the blue background of the sky. The men in the street fell back against the walls, the heads at the windows were lowered, and every one uncovered.

One of the white-robed brotherhood, boys for the most part who, when the ceremonies were over, would receive three soldi each and a slice of watermelon, knocked at the door of the new house as he passed, and the others followed his example.

“Curse you!” yelled Giacobbe furiously, leaning far out of the window. “Boors! walking in the procession, are you?” and he was about to spit on them, but Brontu prevented him, telling him it would not do.

Now came the green brocade standard, with its hundred variegated ribbons and gilded staff; and next the Madonna of the Assumption, extended with closed eyes on her portable couch, covered with necklaces and rings that looked like relics of the bronze age, and watched over by the four green cherubs.

On each of the four sides, walking beside the bearers, was a man wearing a white tunic and carrying in his arms a child dressed as an angel. They were charming little creatures, two blond and two brunette, and they chattered gaily with one another, shouting to make themselves heard. One of them, tickled under the knee by the man who carried him, squirmed and wriggled, one wing hanging limply down.

The sight of these children touched some finer emotion in Brontu, Giacobbe, and the others, and bending their knees, they crossed themselves devoutly. The children, for their part, gazed up at the windows, and one of them, recognising an uncle in the group, flung a red confetto at him, which, missing fire, fell back into the road.

Priest Elias and the little stranger from Nuoro came next, wearing brocade and lace robes, pale and handsome in their bravery. They walked with clasped hands and rapt faces, chanting in Latin.

“The devil!” exclaimed Giacobbe suddenly. “If there isn’t that dirty old Isidoro Pane! You’d suppose he was running the whole procession; I’m going to spit on him.”

“No, you’re not,” commanded Brontu.

Giacobbe coughed to attract the fisherman’s attention, but the other did not so much as raise his eyes, continuing to intone the prayers to which the people responded as with a single voice.

The surging, vari-coloured crowd had flowed together behind the procession, and above the sea of heads could still be seen the swaying silver cross. The men had all uncovered⁠—bald heads, shining with perspiration, mops of thick black hair, rough, curly pates⁠—and then the gay head-kerchiefs of the women, some with black grounds and yellow squares, others striped with red, or covered with green spots⁠—all surmounting flushed faces, flashing eyes, white bodices crossed on the breast, red, gesticulating hands. Gradually the crowd thinned; an old cripple came limping along, then a woman with two children hanging to her skirts, then three old women⁠—a child with a yellow flower in its mouth⁠—the street grew empty and silent; the noise, and movement, and colour receding in waves, and growing ever fainter as the low, melancholy cadence of the chanted invocations died away in the distance.

As the last sounds ceased, two cat’s paws appeared on the wall opposite Giacobbe’s house, followed by a little, white face, with wide startled eyes, then the animal leaped on the wall, and sat staring intently down into the street.

“Too late!” cried Brontu, waving a salute.

The others shouted with laughter, and when Giacobbe presently told them it was time to be off, they refused to go. The host, thereupon, seizing a lath covered with plaster, tried to drive them out, and the entire troop of rough, bearded men began to run from room to room, pushing one another by the shoulders, yelling, tumbling over each other, and shrieking with laughter like so many schoolboys. Driven forth at length, they continued their horseplay in the street, until Giacobbe, having locked the door and put the key in his pocket, led the way back to the tavern. At dusk Brontu and the herdsman, supporting one another, appeared at the white house.

Aunt Martina was sitting on the portico with her hands beneath her apron, reciting the rosary. When her eyes fell on the two men she remained perfectly still and silent, but her lips tightened, and she shook her head ever so slightly, as though to say: “Truly, a fine sight!”

“Where is Giovanna?” demanded Brontu.

“She went to her mother’s.”

“Oh! she went to her mother’s, the old harpy’s? Well, she’s always going there, curse her.”

“Don’t shout so, my son.”

“I will; I’ll shout as much as I like; I’m in my own house,” and turning towards the common, he began to call at the top of his voice:

“Giovanna! Giovanna!”

Giovanna appeared at the door of the cottage, and started to cross the common hastily with an alarmed air; as she drew near, however, her expression changed to one of annoyance and disgust. Pausing in front of the two men, she regarded them with a look of undisguised scorn. Giacobbe laughed, but Brontu reddened to the tips of his ears with anger.

“Well,” she demanded; “what is the matter? Have you got the colic?”

“He would have got it pretty soon if you hadn’t come,” said Giacobbe.

Brontu opened his mouth and his lips moved, but no sounds came forth, and his anger presently died away as senselessly as it had come.

“Well⁠—” he stammered. “I wanted you. We have hardly seen each other all day. What were you doing at your mother’s? Who was there?”

“Who was there?” she repeated, in a tone of intense bitterness. “Why, no one. Who would you expect to find at our house?”

“Why, San Costantino might come⁠—t⁠—o⁠—o⁠—gi⁠—i⁠—i⁠—ve you⁠—u a po⁠—em⁠—” sang Giacobbe thickly. “Have you ever seen San Costantino? Well, there’s Isidoro Pane⁠—he’s perfectly crazy⁠—he doesn’t like you; no, indeed, he doesn’t, and⁠—and⁠—”

“Shut up; hold your tongue!” said Aunt Martina. “And the sheepfolds left all this time to take care of themselves! That’s the way you attend to your master’s business! You’re all alike, accursed thieves!”

Giacobbe sprang forward, erect and livid; and Giovanna, fearing that he was really going to strike the old woman, stepped quickly between them. He turned, however, without saying a word, and sat down, but with so lowering an expression that Giovanna remained near her mother-in-law in an attitude of protection.

Brontu, on the contrary, was struck with the idea that his mother deserved a rebuke.

“What sort of manners are these?” he demanded in a tone that was intended to be severe. “Why, you treat people as though⁠—as though⁠—as though they were beasts⁠—everybody! Today⁠—today⁠—no, yesterday was a holiday. If he chose to get drunk, what business was that of yours?”

“I got drunk on poison,” remarked Giacobbe.

“Yes, poison,” agreed Brontu. “And I did too. And there’s another thing. I’m tired of all this, mother and wife⁠—and the whole business. So there! I’m going away. I’m going to spend the night with him in his palace. After all, we are relations, and⁠—and⁠—”

“Say it right out!” shouted Giacobbe. “You may be my heir; that’s what you mean! Ha, ha, ha!”

He laughed boisterously, emitting sounds that were more like the howls of a wild beast than human laughter. Brontu, trying to imitate him, only succeeded in producing a noise like the cry of some happy animal in the springtime.

Giovanna felt herself grow sick with dread; she was afraid of the rapidly approaching darkness, of the solitude that enwrapped the common, of the presence of these two men whom wine had turned into quarrelsome beasts. “The excommunication,” she thought, “has fallen on us all: on this servant, who dares to defy his master; on the son, who upbraids his mother; on me, Giovanna, who loathe and despise them one and all!”

Aunt Martina arose, went into the kitchen, and lit the candle. Giovanna followed her and set about preparing the supper. When it was ready they all sat down together, and for a little while everything went well. Presently Brontu began to tell of how they had watched the procession from the windows of Giacobbe’s “palace,” his account of their foolish doings bringing a smile to his mother’s lips. Then he tried to put his arm around his wife, but Giovanna’s heart was full of gall. For her the holiday had been, if anything, sadder than an ordinary day; she had worked hard, she had not been to church, she had not so much as changed her dress; and yet, the moment she had allowed herself to go for a little recreation to the cottage⁠—the scene alike of her greatest misery and of her most intense happiness⁠—she had been ordered back as peremptorily as a dog is told to return to its kennel. Consequently, she was in no mood for endearments, and repulsed Brontu’s proffered caress, telling him he was drunk.

Giacobbe, thereupon, laughed delightedly, which irritated Giovanna as much as it angered Brontu.

“What are you laughing at, you mangy cur?” demanded the latter.

“I might say I am not as mangy as you are yourself. But then, I⁠—I want to say that⁠—that⁠—well, I’m laughing because I choose to.”

“Eh! I can laugh too.”

“Fools!” said Giovanna scornfully. “You make me sick, both of you.”

At this Brontu, quite beside himself, suddenly turned on her:

“What is the matter with you, anyhow?” he demanded in a hard voice. “One would really like to know. Here you are, living on me, and when I offer to kiss you you fly out at me. You ought to be thankful to kiss the very ground under my feet; do you hear me?”

Giovanna grew livid. “What!” she hissed. “Am I treated any better than a servant in this house?”

“Well, a servant; all right, you can just stay one. What else should you be, woman?”

Giacobbe’s squint-eyes sparkled at this, but Giovanna, rising to her feet, proceeded to pour out all the concentrated bitterness of the past months. Addressing her husband and mother-in-law, she called them slave-drivers and tyrants; threatened to go away, to kill herself; cursed the hour she had entered that house, and, in the transport of her rage, even revealed the debt to Giacobbe’s sister.

At this, the herdsman fell to laughing softly to himself, murmuring words of half-mocking reproach addressed to Aunt Anna-Rosa. On a sudden, however, his face grew black; the sombre figure of Aunt Bachissia appeared in the doorway; she had heard her daughter’s angry voice resounding through the stillness of the evening, and had come at once.

“Here,” said Aunt Martina, perfectly unmoved, “is your daughter, gone mad to all appearances.”

Brontu, completely sobered, was signing urgently to his mother-in-law to come forward and try to calm the furious woman, and Aunt Bachissia was about to do so when Giacobbe suddenly leaped to his feet and threw himself in front of her with an ugly scowl.

“Get out of here!” he ordered, pointing to the door.

“And are you the master?” asked Aunt Bachissia ironically.

“Get out, I tell you,” he repeated, and, as she continued to advance, he laid hold of her.

She shook him off, and he went out himself instead, and, sitting down on the portico, tried to laugh; but, odd to relate, instead of laughter, he presently found himself shaking all over with dry, convulsive sobs.