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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Under the Shadow of Etna, by Giovanni Verga
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Under the Shadow of Etna
+       Sicilian Stories from the Italian of Giovanni Verga
+
+Author: Giovanni Verga
+
+Translator: Nathan Dole
+
+Release Date: November 11, 2011 [EBook #37979]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE SHADOW OF ETNA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved.  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
+  signs=.
+
+
+
+
+UNDER THE SHADOW OF ETNA
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: "UNDER THE SHADOW OF ETNA."]
+
+
+
+
+     UNDER THE SHADOW
+     OF ETNA
+
+     SICILIAN STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN OF
+     GIOVANNI VERGA
+
+     BY
+     NATHAN HASKELL DOLE
+
+     _ILLUSTRATED_
+
+     BOSTON
+     JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY
+     1896
+
+
+
+
+     COPYRIGHT, 1895,
+     BY JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY.
+
+     Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
+     Boston, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+     HOW PEPPA LOVED GRAMIGNA                        1
+
+     JELI, THE SHEPHERD                             23
+
+     RUSTIC CHIVALRY (_Cavalleria Rusticana_)      101
+
+     LA LUPA                                       117
+
+     THE STORY OF THE ST. JOSEPH'S ASS             131
+
+     THE BEREAVED                                  163
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                  PAGE
+
+     "UNDER THE SHADOW OF ETNA"         _Frontispiece_
+
+     JELI, THE SHEPHERD                             22
+
+     "LOLA USED TO GO OUT ON THE BALCONY
+        WITH HER HANDS CROSSED"                    104
+
+     THE DEATH OF THE ST. JOSEPH'S ASS             158
+
+
+
+
+_INTRODUCTION._
+
+
+_Giovanni Verga was born at Catania, in Sicily, in 1840. His youth was
+spent in Florence and Milan. He afterwards lived in Catania again,
+where he had an opportunity of studying those types of the Sicilian
+peasantry which he introduces so effectively, and with such dramatic
+suggestion, into many of his stories and sketches. After experiencing
+grievous family losses he returned to Milan, where he now resides._
+
+_In "L'Amante di Gramigna" Verga gives, in the form of a letter to his
+friend, the novelist, S. Farina, a sort of brief exposition of his
+literary Creed. Much of the drama is left to the imagination of the
+reader, who sees through the lines the action hinted at in a word or a
+phrase. Thus, in the story just mentioned, no definite time-limit is
+assigned. Months elapse, but only a passing expression gives the clue
+to it. It is amazing how definite is the idea left in the mind. It
+gives all the vividness of reality._
+
+_"Cavalleria Rusticana," or "Rustic Chivalry," has been known all over
+the world by its operatic setting by Mascagni. "La Lupa," which is
+scarcely less strong and vital, has been chosen by another Italian
+composer, Puccini, as the subject for a two-act opera. These two, as
+well as "L'amante di Gramigna" and "Jeli il Pastore," illustrate the
+deeper passions of the Sicilian peasantry. Verga's sardonic humor is
+shown in "Gli Orfani." How the sordid poverty of the people stands out
+in the comparison between the sorrow over the dying ass, and the
+utterly materialistic grief at the loss of the painstaking second
+wife!_
+
+_"La Storia dell' Asino di San Giuseppe," well illustrates the average
+treatment of the long-suffering, long-eared mules and asses which make
+so picturesque a part of the scenery of Italian and Spanish countries.
+It is a document for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
+Animals, and well deserves to be circulated together with "Black
+Beauty." What pathos in the sudden transfer of the poor little beast
+from comparative comfort, at least from the "dolce far niente" of its
+foalhood, to the grim realities of life, and its steady and fatal
+decline through all the gamut of wretchedness and degradation, to die
+at last under the weight of its burdens! And what side glances on the
+condition of those unfortunate Sicilians who live in what ought to be
+the very garden and Paradise of the world, and yet are so oppressed by
+unregulated Nature and too well regulated taxes!_
+
+_It is no land of the imagination into which we are brought by Verga;
+there is no fascinating glamour of the virtuous triumphing after many
+vicissitudes, and seeing at last the wicked adequately punished. Here
+it is grim reality. The poor and weak go relentlessly to the wall;
+innocence and humble ignorance are crushed by experienced vice, the
+butterfly is singed by the flame; there is little joy, little peace.
+The fleckless sky shines down brilliantly on wreck of home and
+fortune; the son must go to the army, and the daughter to her shame;
+the father's gray hairs must be crowned with dishonor, and despair
+must abide in the mother's breast. But yet the stories are not wholly
+pessimistic, nor do they give an utterly hopeless idea of the Sicilian
+peasant. He shows his capabilities; the woman her fiery zeal and
+faithfulness, even when on the wrong track. You see that education and
+a little real sympathy might make a great people out of Verga's
+"Turiddus" and "Alfios." There are dozens of others of Verga's short
+sketches which would repay translation, but the little collection of
+Sicilian pictures here presented is marked by quite wonderful variety
+and contrast. They well illustrate the author's genius at its best._
+
+     NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.
+
+     _"Hedgecote," Glen Road,
+     Jamaica Plain, June 19, 1895_.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+Some of the Italian titles applied to the characters in these stories
+are retained. They are untranslatable; to omit them takes away from
+the Sicilian flavor, which is their great charm. Thus the words
+_compare_ (_con_ and _padre_) and _comare_ (_con_ and _madre_),
+literally godfather and godmother, are used in almost the same way as
+"uncle" and "aunt" in our country districts, only they are applied to
+young as well as old; _gnà_ is a contraction for _signora_,
+corresponding somewhat to our _mis'_ for "Mrs." _Babbo_ is like our
+"dad" or "daddie." _Massaro_ is a farmer; _compagni d'armi_ are
+district policemen, not quite the same as _gens d'armes_;
+_Bersegliere_ is the member of a special division of the Italian
+army.
+
+
+
+
+HOW PEPPA LOVED GRAMIGNA.
+
+
+
+
+UNDER THE SHADOW OF ETNA.
+
+
+
+
+HOW PEPPA LOVED GRAMIGNA.
+
+
+Dear Farina, this is not a story, but the outline of a story.
+
+It will at least have the merit of being short, and of having fact for
+its foundation; it is a human document, as the phrase goes
+nowadays:--interesting perhaps for you and for all those who study the
+mighty book of the heart. I will tell it just as I found it among the
+country paths, and in almost the same simple and picturesque words
+that characterize the tales of the people; and really you will prefer
+to find yourself facing the bare and unadulterated fact rather than
+being obliged to read between the lines of the book through the
+author's spectacles.
+
+The simple truth of human life will always make us thoughtful; will
+always have the effectiveness of reality, of genuine tears, of the
+fevers and sensations that have inflicted the flesh. The mysterious
+processes whereby conflicting passions mingle, develop and mature,
+will long constitute the chief fascination in the study of that
+psychological phenomenon called the plot of a story, and which modern
+analysis tries to follow with scientific care, through the hidden
+paths of oftentimes apparently contradictory complications.
+
+Of the one that I am going to tell you to-day I shall only narrate the
+starting point and the ending, and that will suffice for you, as,
+perchance, some day it will suffice for all.
+
+We replace the artistic method to which we owe so many glorious
+masterpieces by a different method, more painstaking and more
+recondite; we willingly sacrifice the effect of the catastrophe, of
+the psychological result as it was seen through an almost divine
+intuition by the great artists of the past, and employ instead a
+logical development, inexorably necessary, less unexpected, less
+dramatic, but not less fatalistic; we are more modest, if not more
+humble; but the conquests that we make with our psychological verities
+will not be any less useful to the art of the future. Supposing such
+perfection in the study of the passions should be ever attained that
+it would be useless to go further in the study of the interior man,
+will the science of the human heart, the fruit of the new art, so far
+and so universally develop all the resources of the imagination that
+in the future the only romances written will be "Various Facts?"
+
+I have a firm belief that the triumph of the Novel, the completest and
+most human of all the works of art, will increase until the affinity
+and cohesion of all its parts will be so perfect, that the process of
+its creation will remain a mystery like the development of human
+passions; I have a firm belief that the harmony of its forms will be
+so absolute, the sincerity of its reality so evident, its method and
+justification so deeply rooted, that the artist's hand will remain
+absolutely invisible.
+
+Then the romance will seem to portray a real event, and the work of
+art will apparently have come about by itself, spontaneously springing
+into being and maturing like a natural fact, without any point of
+contact with its author. It will not have preserved in its living form
+any stamp of the mind in which it originated, any shade of the eye
+that beheld it, any trace of the lips that murmured the first words
+thereof as the creative fiat; it will exist by its own reason, by the
+mere fact that it is as it should be and must be, palpitating with
+life and as immutable as a statue of bronze, the author of which has
+had the divine courage of eclipsing himself and disappearing in his
+immortal work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few years ago, down by the Simeto, they were giving chase to a
+brigand, a certain Gramigna,[1] if I am not mistaken, a name as cursed
+as the weed that bears it. The man had left behind him, from one end
+of the province to the other, the terror of his evil reputation.
+Carabineers, _compagni d'armi_, and cavalry-men had been on his track
+for two months, without ever succeeding in putting their claws on him;
+he was alone, but was equal to ten, and the evil plant threatened to
+take firm root.
+
+  [1] Gramigna means dog's-tail-grass.
+
+Moreover the harvest-time was approaching, the crops already covered
+the fields, the ears bent over and were calling to the reapers, who
+indeed had their reaping-hooks in their hands, and yet not a single
+proprietor dared show his nose over the hedge of his estate, for fear
+of meeting Gramigna, who might be stretched out among the furrows
+with his carbine between his legs, ready to blow off the head of the
+first person who should venture to meddle with his affairs.
+
+Thus the complaints were general. Then the prefect summoned all those
+gentlemen of the district--carabineers and companies of armed men and
+told them two words of the kind that makes men prick up their ears.
+The next day an earthquake in every nook and corner:--patrols,
+squadrons, scouts for every ditch and behind every wall; they hunted
+him by day, by night, on foot, on horseback, by telegraph, as if he
+had been a wild beast! Gramigna eluded them every time, and replied
+with shots if they came too close on his track.
+
+In the fields, in the villages, among the factories, under the signs
+of country taverns, wherever people met, Gramigna was the only topic
+of conversation,--that wild chase, that desperate flight. The
+carabineers' horses returned dead-tired; the soldiers threw
+themselves down in utter weariness on the ground when they got back to
+the stables; the patrols slept wherever chance offered; Gramigna alone
+was never tired, never slept, kept always on the wing, climbed down
+precipices, slipped through the harvest-fields, crept on all fours
+among the prickly pear-trees,[2] made his way out of danger like a
+wolf by means of the hidden channels of the torrents.
+
+  [2] Fichidindia, also called Indian figs.
+
+The chief argument of every discourse at the cross roads, before the
+village entrances, was the devouring thirst from which the fugitive
+must suffer in the immense, barren plain, under the June sun. The lazy
+loungers opened wide their eyes.
+
+Peppa, one of the prettiest girls of Licodia, was expecting at that
+time soon to marry _compare_ Finu, called "_Candela di sego_" (the
+tallow-candle), who had landed property and a bay mule, and was a
+tall young man, handsome as the sun, who carried the standard of Santa
+Margherita without bending his back, as though he were a pillar.
+
+Peppa's mother shed tears of delight over the good fortune that had
+befallen her daughter, and spent her time in looking over and over the
+bride's effects in the trunk, all white linen and of the nicest
+quality, like a queen's, and earrings that would hang down to the
+shoulders and gold rings for all the ten fingers of both hands; more
+money than Santa Margherita could have ever had--and so they were to
+have been married on Santa Margherita's day, which would fall in June,
+after the hay had been harvested.
+
+"Candela di Sego," on his way back from the field, used every evening
+to leave his mule at Peppa's front door and go in to tell how the
+crops promised to be a veritable enchantment, unless Gramigna set them
+on fire, and the lattice over against the bed would not be large
+enough to hold all the grain, and that it seemed to him a thousand
+years off before he should carry home his bride on the crupper of his
+bay mule.
+
+But Peppa one fine day said to him,--
+
+"Let your mule have a rest, for I do not wish to get married."
+
+The poor "Candela di Sego" was dumbfounded, and the old mother began
+to tear her hair when she heard that her daughter had refused the best
+match in the village.
+
+"I am in love with Gramigna," said the girl, "and he is the only one
+whom I will marry."
+
+"Ah!" screamed the mamma, and she stormed through the house, with her
+gray hair streaming so that she looked like a witch--"Ah! that demon
+has been here to bewitch my daughter!"
+
+"No," replied Peppa, with her eyes flashing like a sword--"no, he has
+not been here."
+
+"Where did you ever see him?"
+
+"I never saw him. I have only heard him spoken of. But I feel
+something here, that burns me."
+
+The report spread through the region, though they tried to keep it a
+secret. The women and girls who had envied Peppa the prosperous
+farming, the bay mule and the handsome youth who could bear the
+standard of Santa Margherita without bending his back, went around
+telling all sorts of unkind stories: how Gramigna had been to visit
+her one night in the kitchen, and how he had been seen hiding under
+the bed. The poor mother burnt a lamp for the souls in purgatory and
+even the curato went to Peppa's house to touch her heart with his
+stole, so as to drive out that devil of a Gramigna, who had got
+possession of it.
+
+But she persisted in her statement that she did not know the fellow by
+sight; but that she had seen him one night in a dream, and the
+following morning she had got up with her lips dry as if she had
+herself suffered from all the thirst which they reported him to be
+enduring.
+
+Then the old woman shut her up in the house, so that she might not
+hear another word about Gramigna, and she stopped up all the cracks of
+the door with images of the saints.
+
+Peppa heard all that was said in the street behind the sacred images,
+and she turned red and white, as if the devil had kindled all his
+fires in her face.
+
+Finally she heard it said that Gramigna had been located among the
+prickly pear-trees of Palagonia.
+
+"They have been firing for two hours," they said. "He has killed one
+carabineer and wounded more than three _compagni d'armi_. But they
+sent back such a hailstorm of shots that he must have been hit; there
+was a pool of blood where he had been."
+
+Then Peppa made the sign of the cross before the old mother's pillow,
+and made her escape out of the window.
+
+Gramigna was in the prickly pear-trees of Palagonia, and they were not
+able to find him in that stronghold of rabbits. He was ragged and
+covered with blood, pale after two days of fasting, burning with
+fever, and he had his carbine levelled. When he saw her coming,
+resolute, among the prickly pear bushes, in the dim light of the
+gloaming, he hesitated a moment whether to shoot or not:--
+
+"What do you want?" he demanded. "What are you coming here for?"
+
+"I am coming to stay with you," said she, looking straight at him.
+"Are you Gramigna?"
+
+"Yes, I am Gramigna. If you expect to get those twenty _oncie_[3] of
+reward, you are mightily mistaken."
+
+  [3] An onza is $2.55.
+
+"No, I have come to stay with you," she replied.
+
+"Go away!" said he. "You can't stay with me, and I don't want anyone
+with me. If you are after money, I tell you you have made a mistake.
+I haven't any, mind you! For two days I haven't had even a morsel of
+bread."
+
+"I can't go back home now," said she; "the place is all full of
+soldiers."
+
+"Go away! What is that to me? Each for himself."
+
+As she was turning away like a kicked dog, Gramigna called to her:
+
+"Say, go and get me a jug of water, down yonder in the brook. If you
+want to stay with me, you must risk your skin."
+
+Peppa went without saying a word, and when Gramigna heard the gunshots
+he began to laugh immoderately, and said to himself: "That was meant
+for me!"
+
+But when he saw her coming back a few minutes later with the jug in
+her hand, pale and bleeding, he said, before he sprang forward to
+snatch the jug from her, and then when he had drunk till it seemed as
+if he had no more breath:
+
+"You escaped, did you? How did you do it?"
+
+"The soldiers were on the other side, and there was a thick bush on
+this."
+
+"But they put a bullet through your skin. There's blood on your
+dress."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where were you hit?"
+
+"In the shoulder."
+
+"That's nothing. You can walk."
+
+So he allowed her to stay with him. She followed him, all in rags,
+shoeless, suffering from the fever caused by the wound, and yet she
+went foraging to procure for him a jug of water or a piece of bread,
+and if she came back with empty hands, escaping through the gunshots,
+her lover, devoured by hunger and thirst, would beat her. At last one
+night when the moon was shining in the prickly pears, Gramigna said to
+her,--
+
+"They are on us."
+
+And he obliged her to stand with her back to the rock far in the
+crevice; then he fled in another direction. Among the bushes were
+heard the frequent reports of the musketry, and the shadows were cut
+here and there by quick bright flashes. Suddenly Peppa heard the sound
+of steps near her and saw Gramigna coming back, dragging along a
+broken leg. He leaned against the prickly pear bushes to reload his
+carbine:
+
+"It's all over," he said to her. "Now they'll take me."
+
+And what froze the blood in her veins more than anything else was the
+light that shone in his eyes, as if he were a madman.
+
+Then when he fell on the dry branches like a log of wood, the soldiers
+were on him in an instant.
+
+The following day they dragged him through the village street on a
+cart, all in rags and covered with blood. The people who had crowded
+in to look at him began to laugh when they saw how small he was, how
+pale and ugly like a punchinello. And it was for him that Peppa had
+deserted _compare_ Finu, the "Candela di Sego!"
+
+The poor "Candela di Sego" went and hid from sight, as if it behoved
+him to be ashamed, and Peppa was led off, handcuffed by soldiers, as
+if she also were a thief,--she who had as much gold as Santa
+Margherita! Her poor mother was obliged to sell all the white linen
+stored in her trunk, and the gold earrings and the rings for the ten
+fingers, so as to pay the lawyers who defended her daughter and bring
+the girl home again,--poor, ill, in shame, ugly as Gramigna, and with
+Gramigna's child in her arms.
+
+But when at the end of the trial her daughter was restored to her, the
+poor old soul recited an "Ave Maria" in the bare and already dark jail
+among the soldiers of the guard; it seemed to her that they had given
+her back a treasure when she had nothing else in the world, and she
+wept like a fountain at this consolation.
+
+Peppa on the other hand seemed to have no tears to shed any more, and
+said nothing, and disappeared from sight; yet the two women went out
+every day to get their living by their own hands. People declared that
+Peppa had taken up "the trade" in the woods, and went on robbing
+expeditions at night. The truth of the matter was that she hid herself
+in the kitchen like a wild beast in its lair, and it was only when her
+old mother was dead of her privations, and the house had to be sold,
+that she left it.
+
+"See here!" said "Candela di Sego," who was as much in love with her
+as ever, "I could smash your head with two stones for the evil you
+have brought on yourself and others."
+
+"It's true," replied Peppa, "I know it. It was God's will."
+
+After her house and those few wretched pieces of furniture that were
+left to her were sold, she went away from the town by night, just as
+she had done before, without turning round to look at the roof under
+which she had slept so long, and she went to do God's will in the
+city, with her baby boy, near the prison in which Gramigna was
+incarcerated. She could see nothing else besides the black grated
+windows along the mighty silent façade, and the sentinels drove her
+away if she stopped to look where he might be. At last she was told
+that he had not been there for some time, that he had been taken away
+to the other side of the sea, manacled, and with a basket fastened
+over his shoulder.
+
+She said nothing. She did not go away; for she knew not where to go,
+and she had nothing more to expect. She made a shift to live, doing
+chores for the soldiers, for the prisoners, as if she herself made a
+part of that black and silent building; and she felt for the
+carabineers who had taken Gramigna in the thicket of prickly pears,
+and who had broken his leg with their shots, a sort of respectful
+tenderness, as it were a brute admiration of force.
+
+On holidays, when she saw them with their plumes and their glittering
+epaulettes, stiff and erect in their gala uniforms, she devoured them
+with her eyes, and she was always at the barracks cleaning the big
+rooms and polishing the boots, so that they called her "The
+Carabineers' dish-cloth."
+
+Only when she saw them load their guns at nightfall and march out, two
+and two, with their trousers turned up, revolver in belt, and when
+they mounted horse under the light that made the muskets flash, and
+heard the clattering of the horses' feet dying away in the darkness
+and the jingling of sabres, she always grew pale, and while she was
+closing the door of the stable she shivered; and when her youngster
+played with the other urchins on the glacis before the prison, running
+among the legs of the soldiers, and the urchins called him "Gramigna's
+son, Gramigna's son," she flew into a rage and chased them away with
+stones.
+
+
+
+
+JELI, THE SHEPHERD.
+
+
+  [Illustration: JELI, THE SHEPHERD.]
+
+
+
+
+JELI, THE SHEPHERD.
+
+
+Jeli, who had charge of the horses, was thirteen when he first became
+acquainted with the young gentleman, Don Alfonso. But he was so small
+that he did not come up to the belly of the old mare Bianca, who
+carried the big bell for the drove. Wherever his animals wandered for
+their pasturage, here and there, on the mountains and down in the
+plain, he was always to be found erect and motionless on some eminence
+or squatting on some big rock.
+
+His friend, Don Alfonso, while he was at his country seat, went to
+find him all the days that God sent to Tebidi, and shared with him his
+piece of chocolate and shepherd's barley-bread and the fruit stolen in
+the neighborhood.
+
+At first Jeli called the young nobleman _eccellenza_--your
+excellence--as is the custom in Sicily, but after they had had one
+good quarrel their friendship was established on a solid basis. Jeli
+taught his friend how to climb up to the magpies' nests on the tip-top
+of the walnut-trees, higher than the campanile of Licodia, to knock
+down a sparrow on the wing with a stone, and to mount with one spring
+on the bare backs of his half-wild animals, seizing by the mane the
+first that came within reach, without being frightened by the wrathful
+whinnyings and the desperate leaps of the untrained colts.
+
+Ah! the delightful gallops across the mown fields with their hair
+flying in the wind; the lovely April days when the wind billowed the
+green grass and the horses neighed in the pastures; the glorious
+summer noons when the whitening fields lay silent under the cloudy
+sky, and the crickets crackled among the clods as though the stubble
+were on fire; the bright wintry sky seen through the naked branches
+of the almond trees shivering under the north wind, and the narrow
+path sounding frozen under the horses' hoofs, and the larks singing on
+high in the warmth, in the azure; the delicious summer afternoons that
+passed slowly, slowly, like the clouds; the sweet odor of the hay in
+which they plunged their elbows, and the melancholy humming of the
+evening insects, and those two notes of Jeli's zufolo or whistle,
+always the same--iuh iuh!--making one think of distant things, of the
+feast of Saint John, of Christmas eve, of the dawn of the
+_scampagnata_,[4] of all those great events of the past which seemed
+sad, so distant were they, and made you look up with moistened eyes as
+if all the stars that were kindling in heaven poured showers into your
+heart and made it overflow!
+
+  [4] Pic-nic day.
+
+Jeli, himself, did not suffer from any such melancholy; he squatted on
+the side of the hill with puffed-out cheeks, quite intent on sounding
+his iuh! iuh! iuh! Then he would bring together his drove by dint of
+shouts and stones, and drive them into the stable beyond the "poggio
+alla Croce."[5]
+
+  [5] Hill with a cross on it.
+
+Out of breath he would mount the hillside beyond the valley, and
+sometimes shout to his friend Alfonso,--
+
+"Call the dog! ohè! Call the dog!" or "Fling a good-sized stone at the
+bay who's got the better of me and is slowly wandering away, dallying
+among the bushes of the valley," or "To-morrow bring me a big
+needle--one of _gnà_ Lia's."
+
+He could do all sorts of things with the needle, and he had a heap of
+odds and ends in his canvas bag, in case of need, to mend his trousers
+or the sleeves of his jacket; he also knew how to braid horsehairs,
+and with the clay in the valley he used to wash out his own
+handkerchief which he wore around his neck when it was cold. In fact,
+provided he had his bag with him, he needed nothing in the world,
+whether he were in the woods of Resecone, or lost in the depths of the
+plain of Caltagirone. _Gnà_ Lia used to say,--
+
+"Do you see Jeli, the shepherd? He is always alone in the fields, as
+if he himself had been born a colt, and that's why he knows how to
+make the cross with his two hands!"[6]
+
+  [6] _I.e._, a _lusus naturæ_, abnormal!
+
+Indeed, it is true that Jeli needed nothing, but everybody connected
+with the estate would have gladly helped him in any way because he was
+a serviceable lad, and there was always a chance of getting something
+from him. _Gnà_ Lia baked bread for him out of neighborly love, and he
+showed his gratitude by making her osier baskets for her eggs, reels
+of reeds, and other little things.
+
+"Let us do as his animals do," said _gnà_ Lia, "they scratch each
+other's backs."
+
+At Tebidi every one had known him since he was a baby; there was no
+time when he wasn't seen among the tails of the horses pasturing in
+the "field of the _lettighiere_" and he had grown up, so to speak,
+under their eyes, though really no one ever saw him very much, for he
+was forever here and there, roaming about with his drove.
+
+"He had rained down from heaven and the earth had taken him up," as
+the proverb has it; he was just one of those who have neither home nor
+relatives. His _mamma_ was out at service at Vizzini, and he never saw
+her more than once a year when he went with his colts to the fair of
+San Giovanni; and the day that she died they came to call him--it was
+one Saturday evening--and on the following Monday Jeli was back with
+his drove, so that the _contadino_ who had taken his place in looking
+after the horses might not lose a day's work; but the poor lad came
+back so upset that he kept letting the colts get into the ploughed
+land.
+
+"Ohè! Jeli!" cried _massaro_ Agrippino, from the threshing-floor.
+"You want to have a taste of the rope's end, do you, you son of a
+dog?"
+
+Jeli started to run after his stray colts, and drove them mechanically
+toward the hill; but always before his eyes he saw his mamma with her
+head done up in the white handkerchief. She would never speak to him
+more!
+
+His father was a cow-herd at Ragoleti, beyond Licodia, "where the
+malaria could be harvested," as the peasants of that region say,
+meaning to signify its density; but in the malarious lands the
+pasturage is fat and cows do not catch the fever. Jeli for that reason
+stayed in the fields all the year long, either at Don Ferrante's, or
+in the enclosure of la Commenda, or in the valley of il Jacitano, and
+the hunters or travellers who took cross-cut over the country saw him
+in this place or in that, like a dog without a master.
+
+He did not suffer from this state of things because he was accustomed
+to be with his horses, as they moved about leisurely nibbling the
+clover, and with the birds who flew around him in bevies, while the
+sun accomplished his daily journey, slowly, slowly, until the shadows
+grew long and then vanished; he had time to watch the clouds pile up
+on the horizon, one behind another, and imagine them mountains and
+valleys; he knew how the wind blew when it brought thunder-showers,
+and what color the clouds were when it was going to snow. Everything
+had its aspect and significance, and his eyes and ears were kept on
+the alert all day long. In the same way when toward sunset the young
+herdsman began to play his alder-whistle, the brown mare would come
+up, lazily cropping the clover, and also stand looking with great,
+pensive eyes.
+
+The only place where he suffered a little from melancholy was in the
+desert lands of Passanitello, where not a grass-blade or a shrub is to
+be seen, and during the hot months not a bird flies. The horses there
+would cluster together with drooping heads to shade one another, and
+during the long days of the threshing that mighty silent radiance
+rained down without mitigation for sixteen hours. Wherever pasturage
+was abundant and the horses liked to loiter, the lad busied himself
+with something else--he would make reed-cages for the crickets, or
+carved pipes and little baskets of bulrushes; with four branches he
+could set up a shelter for himself when the North wind drove the long
+lines of crows through the valley, or, when the cicadæ fluttered their
+wings in the broiling sun over the parched stubble; he would roast
+acorns in the coals of his sumach fire and imagine they were
+chestnuts, or toast his thick slice of bread when it began to grow
+musty, because, when he was at Passanitello in winter, the roads were
+so bad that sometimes a fortnight would elapse without a single soul
+passing.
+
+Don Alfonso, who had been kept in cotton by his parents, envied his
+friend Jeli the canvas bag in which he stored his effects,--his
+bread, his onions, his bottle of wine, his neckerchief for cold
+weather, his little hoard of rags and thread and needles, his little
+tin food-box and his flint; he envied him especially that superb
+spotted mare, that animal with rough forelock and wicked eyes,
+swelling her indignant nostrils like a fierce mastiff when anyone
+tried to mount her. Sometimes she would allow Jeli to get on her back
+and scratch her ears; she was jealous of him, and would come smelling
+round to find out what he was saying.
+
+"Let the _vajata_ be," Jeli would say, "She isn't ugly, but she
+doesn't know you."
+
+After Scordu from Bucchiere took away the Calabrian which he had
+bought at San Giovanni's Fair, under agreement to keep her in the
+drove until vintage time, _Zaino_, the bay colt, orphaned, refused to
+be comforted and galloped over the mountain precipices with long,
+lamenting neighings, and its nose in the wind. Jeli ran behind it,
+calling to it with loud shouts, and the colt paused to listen with its
+head in the air, and its ears pricking back and forth, and switching
+its flanks with its tail.
+
+"It's because they have carried off his mother, and he doesn't know
+what to make of it," observed the herdsman. "Now we must keep him in
+sight, for he would be capable of jumping over the precipice. That was
+the way I felt when my mamma died; I couldn't see with my eyes."
+
+Then, after the colt began to try the clover and to make believe
+bite:--
+
+"See! he is gradually beginning to forget.... But this one will be
+sold, too. Horses are made to be sold, just as lambs are born to go to
+the butcher, and the clouds to bring the rain. Only the birds have
+nothing else to do but sing and fly all day."
+
+These ideas did not come to him clear cut and in sequence one after
+the other, for it was rarely that he had anyone to talk with, and,
+therefore, he had no cause for haste in starting them up and
+disentangling them in the depths of his brain, where he was accustomed
+to let them sprout and grow gradually, as the twigs burgeon under the
+sun.
+
+"Even the birds," he added, "have to hunt for food, and when the snow
+covers the ground they perish."
+
+Then he pondered for a moment,--"You are like the birds; but when
+winter comes you can sit by the fire and do nothing."
+
+But Don Alfonso replied that he too went to school and had to study.
+Jeli opened his eyes wide and was all ears, while the signorino began
+to read, and he looked at the book and at the young master himself
+with a suspicious air, listening with that slight winking of the
+eyelids which indicates intensity of attention in beasts little
+accustomed to mankind.
+
+He was delighted with the poetry that caressed his ears with the
+harmony of an incomprehensible song, and occasionally he frowned,
+drew up his chin, and made it evident that a great mental operation
+was taking place within him; then he nodded "yes, yes," with a crafty
+smile, and scratched his head. Then when the signorino started to
+write so as to show how many things he knew how to do, Jeli could have
+staid whole days watching him; and suddenly he would look round
+suspiciously. He could not be persuaded that the words that were said
+either by him or by Don Alfonso could possibly be repeated on paper,
+and still more--those things that had not proceeded from their mouths,
+and he ended with that shrewd smile.
+
+Every new idea which knocked for entrance at his head made him
+suspicious; he seemed to try it with the wild diffidence of his
+_vajata_. But he expressed no wonder at anything in the world; he
+might have been told that in cities horses rode in carriages,--he
+would have kept on that mask of oriental indifference which is the
+dignity of a Sicilian peasant. It would seem as if he intrenched
+himself instinctively in his ignorance, as if it were the force of
+poverty. Every time that he remained short of arguments he would
+repeat,--
+
+"I do not know at all. I am poor," with that obstinate smile that was
+intended to be shrewd.
+
+He had asked his friend Alfonso to write for him the name of Mara on a
+piece of paper that he had found somewhere, because it was his habit
+to pick up whatever he saw lying about and put into his packet of odds
+and ends. One day, after being rather quiet and looking round
+anxiously, he said, very gravely,--
+
+"I'm in love with some one."
+
+Alfonso, though he knew how to read, opened his eyes in astonishment.
+
+"Yes," continued Jeli, "_massaro_ Agrippino's daughter Mara, who used
+to be here; but now they're at Marineo, in that great house in the
+plain that you can see from the 'plain of the _lettighiere_' yonder."
+
+"O you're going to get married, then?"
+
+"Yes, when I'm grown up and have six _onze_ a year wages. Mara knows
+nothing about it."
+
+"Why, haven't you told her?"
+
+Jeli shook his head and reflected. Then he opened his hoard and
+unfolded the paper which bore the written name.
+
+"It must be that it says 'Mara'; Don Gesualdo, the _campiere_,[7] has
+read it; and _fra_ Cola, when he came down here begging for beans."
+
+  [7] Field guard.
+
+"He who knows how to write," he went on saying, "is like one who
+preserves words in his tinder-box and can carry them in his pocket,
+and even send them this way and that."
+
+"Now what are you going to do with that piece of paper that you can't
+read?" asked Alfonso.
+
+Jeli shrugged his shoulders, but kept on carefully folding his written
+leaf to put away in his heap of odds and ends.
+
+He had known la Mara ever since she was a little girl. Their
+acquaintance had begun in a pitched battle once when they met down in
+the valley, both of them after blackberries. The little girl, knowing
+that she was "within her rights," had seized Jeli by the neck as if he
+were a thief. For awhile they exchanged blows on the slope--"You one,
+I one,"--as the cooper does on the hoops of his barrels; but when they
+got tired of it they gradually calmed down, though they still had each
+other by the hair.
+
+"Who are you?" demanded Mara.
+
+And when Jeli with less breeding refused to tell who he was,--
+
+"I am Mara, the daughter of _Massaro_ Agrippino, who is the keeper of
+all these fields here."
+
+Jeli then let his grasp relax, and the little girl set to work to pick
+up the blackberries that had fallen during their struggle, now and
+then glancing with curiosity at her antagonist.
+
+"Just beyond the bridge, on the edge of the orchard, there are lots
+of big berries," suggested the little maid, "and the hens are eating
+them."
+
+Jeli meantime was creeping off stealthily, and Mara, after standing on
+tip-toe to watch him disappearing in the grove, turned her back and
+ran home as fast as her legs would carry her.
+
+But from that day forth they began to be friends. Mara went with her
+hemp to spin on to the parapet of the little bridge, and Jeli would
+slowly drive his cattle toward the slopes of the _poggio del Bandito_.
+At first he kept at a distance, roving around and looking from afar,
+with suspicion in his face, but he kept gradually edging near, with
+the watchful gait of a dog used to stones. When at last he joined her,
+they remained long hours without speaking a word, Jeli attentively
+watching the intricate work of the stockings which Mara's mamma had
+hung round her neck, or she looking on while he carved his pretty
+zig-zags on the almond sticks. Then they would separate, he going one
+way, she the other, without saying a word, and the little girl as soon
+as she was in sight of her house would start to run, kicking high her
+petticoat with her little red legs.
+
+When the prickly pears were ripe they would settle down in the thick
+of the bushes, peeling the figs all the live-long day. They would
+wander together under the immemorial walnuts, and Jeli would beat so
+many of the walnuts that they would shower down thick as hail, and the
+girl would tire herself out picking them up with jubilant shouts--more
+than she could carry; and then she would scamper away nimbly, holding
+up the two corners of her apron, bobbing like a little old woman.
+
+During the winter time, Mara dared not put her nose out of doors, it
+was so cold. Sometimes toward evening could be seen the smoke of
+Jeli's fires of sumach wood, which he built on the _Piano del
+lettighiere_, or on the _Poggio di Macca_, so as not to perish of the
+cold, like the tomtits which he sometimes found in the morning behind
+some rock, or in the shelter of a clod. The horses also found pleasure
+in dangling their tails around the fire, and they would cuddle close
+together so as to be warmer.
+
+In March, the larks came back to the plain, the sparrows to the roofs,
+the leaves and the nests to the hedges. Mara took up her habit of
+going about with Jeli in the soft grass among the flowering bushes
+under the still bare trees which were just beginning to show tender
+points of green. Jeli would make his way through the brambles like a
+bloodhound, so as to discover the nests of the blackbirds which would
+look up to him in astonishment with their little keen eyes; the two
+children would carry, cuddled in their hearts, little wee rabbits just
+born, almost without fur, but already quick to move their long ears.
+
+They would scour the fields in pursuit of the drove of horses,
+entering the plains behind the hay-gatherers, step for step with the
+herd, pausing every time that a mare stopped to pluck a mouthful of
+grass. At evening, when they got back to the bridge, they separated,
+he going in one direction, she in another, without saying good-by.
+
+Thus they passed the whole summer. When the sun began to go down
+behind the _Poggio alla Croce_, the robin red-breasts also went toward
+the mountain, as it grew dark, following the light among the clumps of
+prickly pears. The crickets and cicadæ were no longer heard, and at
+that hour a great melancholy spread through the air.
+
+About that time, to Jeli's tumble-down hovel came his father, the
+cowherd, who had caught the malaria at Ragoleti, and could scarcely
+dismount from the ass which brought him. Jeli started a fire quickly,
+and ran to "the hall" for some hen's eggs.
+
+"Put a little straw down in front of the fire as soon as you can,"
+said his father, "for I feel the fever returning."
+
+The chill of the fever was so severe that _compare_ Menu buried under
+his thick cloak, the saddle-bags of the ass and Jeli's sacks shook as
+the leaves do in November, in spite of the great blaze of branches
+which made his face white as a corpse.
+
+The contadini of the farm came to ask him,--
+
+"How do you think you feel, _compare_ Menu?"
+
+The poor man could only answer with a whine like a sucking puppy.
+
+"It's a kind of malaria that kills more surely than a rifle bullet,"
+said his friends, as they warmed their hands at the fire.
+
+The doctor was called, but it was money thrown away, because the
+disease is one of those clear and evident ones which even a boy would
+know how to cure; unless the fever happens to be so severe that it
+will kill at any rate, a little quinine cures it quickly.
+
+_Compare_ Menu spent the eyes of his head for quinine but it was as
+good as thrown down a well.
+
+"Take a good dose of _ecalibbiso_ tea, which does not cost anything,"
+suggested _massaro_ Agrippino, "and if it doesn't work as well as
+quinine it doesn't ruin you by its cost."
+
+So he took the decoction of eucaliptus, but the fever returned all the
+same, and even more violently. Jeli attended to his father the best he
+knew how. Every morning before he went off with his colts, he left him
+his medicine all prepared in a drinking cup, his bundle of dry
+branches within reach, his eggs in the hot ashes, and he came back as
+early as he could in the afternoon with more wood for the night, and
+the bottle of wine and a little piece of mutton, which he had gone as
+far as Licodia to buy for him. The poor lad did everything as handily
+as a clever maiden would have done, and his father, following him with
+weary eyes in his operations about the hovel, sometimes smiled to
+think that the boy would be able to do for himself in case he were
+left alone in the world.
+
+On days when the fever left him for a few hours, _compare_ Menu would
+get up, all feeble as he was, and with his head wrapped in his
+handkerchief, would stagger out to the door to wait for Jeli while the
+sun was still warm. When Jeli dropped the bundle of wood at the
+door-steps, and placed the bottle and the eggs on the table, he would
+say to him,--
+
+"Put the _ecalibbiso_ to boiling for to-night," or, "Remember that
+your aunt Agata has charge of your mother's money, when I shall be no
+more."
+
+Jeli would nod "yes" with his head.
+
+"It is hopeless," said _massaro_ Agrippino, every time he came to see
+_compare_ Menu and his fever. "His blood is all diseased by this
+time."
+
+_Compare_ Menu listened without winking, with his face whiter than his
+night-cap.
+
+He now no longer got up. Jeli began to weep when he found himself not
+strong enough to help him turn from one side to the other; shortly
+after _compare_ Menu lay perfectly still. The last words that he
+spoke to his boy were,--
+
+"When I am dead, go to the owner of the cows at Ragoleti and let him
+give you the three _onze_ and the twelve _tumoli_ of corn, which are
+my due from March till now."
+
+"No," replied Jeli, "it's only two _onze_ and a half, because you left
+the cows more than a month ago, and one must be fair to one's
+_padrone_."
+
+"True!" agreed _compare_ Menu, closing his eyes.
+
+"Now I am quite alone in the world, like a lost colt which the wolves
+may eat!" said Jeli to himself, when his father had been carried off
+to the cemetery of Licodia.
+
+Mara had been one of those who came to see the dead man's house with
+that morbid curiosity which is excited by horrible things.
+
+"Do you see how I am left?" asked Jeli, but the girl drew back so
+frightened that he could not induce her to step inside the house where
+the dead man had been.
+
+Jeli went to receive the money due his father, and then he started off
+with his drove for Passanitello, where the grass was already tall on
+the fallow-land, and the fodder was abundant; therefore, the colts
+remained there for some time in pasture.
+
+Meantime Jeli had been growing into a big lad, and Mara also must be
+grown tall, he often thought to himself, while he played on his
+_zufalo_; and when he returned to Tebidi after some little time,
+slowly driving forward the mares through the dangerous paths of "Uncle
+Cosimo's Fountain," he scanned the little bridge down in the valley,
+and the hovel in the _Valle del Jacitano_, and the roof of "the Hall"
+where the pigeons were always flying.
+
+But at that time the _padrone_ had dismissed _massaro_ Agrippino, and
+all Mara's family were just on the point of moving away.
+
+Jeli found the girl, who had grown tall and very pretty, standing at
+the entrance of the yard watching the furniture and things, which
+they were loading on the cart. The empty room seemed to him more
+gloomy and smoky than ever before. The table, the commode and the
+images of the Virgin and of Saint John, and even the nails for hanging
+up the gourds for seed had left on the walls the marks where they had
+been for so many years.
+
+"We are going away," said Mara, when she saw him looking around. "We
+are going down to Marineo, where the great house stands in the plain."
+
+Jeli took hold and helped _massaro_ Agrippino and _la gnà Lia_ load up
+the cart, and when there was nothing else to carry out of the room he
+went and sat down with Mara on the edge of the watering-trough.
+
+"Even houses," he remarked, when he saw the last hamper piled on,
+"even houses, when anything is taken away from them, do not any longer
+seem the same."
+
+"At Marineo," replied Mara, "we shall have much better rooms, mamma
+says, and large as the cheese house."
+
+"Now that you are going away, I shall not want to come here any more;
+it seems to me as if winter had come back--to see that door closed."
+
+"At Marineo we shall find other friends, Pudda _la rossa_ and the
+_campiere's_ daughter; it will be jolly there; they have more than
+eighty harvesters in the season, and the bag-pipes, and they dance on
+the threshing-floor."
+
+_Massaro_ Agrippino and his wife had gone off with the cart. Mara ran
+behind them, full of joyous excitement, carrying the baskets with the
+pigeons. Jeli was going to accompany her as far as the little bridge;
+and when Mara was just on the point of disappearing down the valley he
+called after her, "Mara! oh! Mara!"
+
+"What do you want?" demanded Mara.
+
+He knew not what he wanted.
+
+"Oh! what will you do here all alone?" asked the girl.
+
+"I shall stay with the colts."
+
+Mara ran skipping away, and he stood there as if rooted to the spot
+so as to catch the last sounds of the cart rattling over the stones.
+
+The sun was just resting on the high rocks of the _Poggio alla Croce_,
+the gray crests of the olive trees were shading into the twilight and
+over the vast campagna far away, nothing was heard except the tinkling
+bell of "Bianca" in the gathering stillness.
+
+Mara, now that she was in the midst of new faces and amid all the
+bustle of the grape gathering, forgot about Jeli; but he was always
+thinking about her, because he had nothing else to do in the long days
+that he spent looking at the horses' tails. There was now no special
+reason for him to go down into the valley beyond the bridge, and no
+one ever saw him any more at the farm.
+
+Thus it was that he was for some time ignorant that Mara had become
+betrothed--so much water had run and run under the bridge. The only
+time that he saw the girl was on the day of Saint John's _Festa_,
+when he went to the fair with his colts to sell; a festa which changed
+everything for him into poison, and caused the bread to fall out of
+his mouth by reason of an accident that befell one of the _padrone's_
+colts--the Lord deliver us!
+
+On the day of the fair, the factor waited for the colts ever since
+dawn, walking impatiently up and down in his well-polished boots
+behind the groups of horses and mules that came filing in along the
+highway from this direction and that. It was almost time for the fair
+to close, and still Jeli with his animals was not in sight beyond the
+turn made by the highway. On the parched slopes of _Calvario_ and the
+_Mulino a vento_--the Wind-Mill Mountain--there remained only a few
+droves of sheep gathered in a circle, with noses drooping and weary
+eyes, and a few yoke of oxen with long hair--of the kind that are sold
+to satisfy unpaid rent, waiting motionless under the boiling sun.
+
+Yonder toward the valley, the bell of San Giovanni's was ringing for
+High Mass, accompanied by the long crackling of the fireworks.
+
+Then the fair grounds seemed to spring up, and there ran a prolonged
+cry among the shops of the green grocers, clustered in the place
+called _salita dei Galli_, spreading through the country roads and
+seeming to return from the valley where the church stood.
+
+"Viva San Giovanni!"
+
+"_Santo diavolone!_" screamed the factor. "That assassin of a Jeli
+will make me lose the fair!"
+
+The sheep lifted their heads in astonishment and began to bleat all at
+once, and the cattle also made a step or two, slowly looking around
+with their great, calm eyes.
+
+The factor was in a rage because he was expected that day to pay the
+rent due for the large enclosures--as the contract expressed it, "when
+Saint John arrived under the elm;" and to make up the full sum, the
+profits on the sale of the colts was necessary. Meantime the colts and
+horses and mules were coming in such numbers as the good Lord had seen
+fit to make, all curried and shining and adorned with tassels and
+cockades and bells; and they were switching their tails to while away
+their tedium, and turning their heads toward every one who passed, and
+evidently waiting for some charitable soul willing to buy them.
+
+"He must have gone to sleep on the way, the assassin!" yelled the
+factor, "and so made me lose the sale of my colts."
+
+In reality, Jeli had travelled all night so that the colts might reach
+the fair fresh, and get a good position on their arrival; and he had
+reached the _piano del Corvo_, and the "three kings" had not yet set,
+but were shining over _monte Arturo_. There was a continuous
+procession of carts passing along the road, and people mounted on
+horses or mules going to the _festa_. Therefore, the young fellow
+kept his eyes open so that the colts, frightened by the unusual
+commotion, might not get away, but that he might keep them together
+along the ridge of the road behind _la bianca_, the white mare, who
+with the bell around her neck, always travelled straight ahead without
+minding anything.
+
+From time to time, when the road ran over the crest of the hills, the
+bell of Saint John's could be heard in the distance, and in the
+darkness and silence of the plain the rumor of the _festa_ was
+distinguishable, and along the whole road far away, wherever there
+were people on foot or on horseback going to Vizzini, were heard
+shouts of "_Viva San Giovanni!_" And the rockets rose up high in the
+air and brilliant behind the mountains of la Canzaria, like the rain
+of meteors in August.
+
+"It is like Christmas Eve!" Jeli kept saying to the boy, who was
+helping him drive the herd. "And in every place there is feasting and
+light, and throughout the whole campagna you can see fireworks."
+
+The boy was half asleep as he forced one leg after the other, and he
+made no response; but Jeli, who felt his blood stir within him at the
+sound of that bell, could not keep quiet, as if each one of those
+rockets that left their silent shining trails on the darkness behind
+the mountains burst forth from his soul.
+
+"Mara also must be going to the _festa_ of Saint John," he said,
+"because she goes every year."
+
+And without caring because the boy made no reply,--
+
+"Don't you know? Mara is now so big that she must be taller than her
+mother, and when I saw her last I couldn't believe that it was the
+very same girl with whom I used to go after prickly pears and knock
+off the nuts."
+
+And he began to sing at the top of his voice all the songs that he
+knew.
+
+"Oh Alfio, why do you sleep?" he cried, when he was through with
+them. "Look out that you keep _la bianca_ always behind you, look
+out!"
+
+"No, I am not asleep," replied Alfio, with a hoarse voice.
+
+"Do you see _la puddara_[8] which stands winking down at us yonder, as
+if they were firing up rockets also at Santa Domenica? It is almost
+sunrise; we shall reach the fair in time to secure a good position.
+Ah! _morellino bello_! you pretty little brownie! You shall have a new
+halter, that you shall, with red cockades for the fair; and so shall
+you, _stellato_!"[9]
+
+  [8] La puddara is the Sicilian name for Ursa Major,--the Big Bear.
+
+  [9] Stellato, starred, said of a horse with a white spot in his
+  forehead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus he went on, talking to one and another of his colts so that they
+might be encouraged hearing his voice in the darkness. But it grieved
+him to think that the _stellato_ and the _morellino_ were going to the
+fair to be sold.
+
+"When they are sold, they'll go off with a new master, and we shan't
+see them any more in the herd, just as it was with Mara after she went
+to Marineo.
+
+"Her father is well-to-do down there at Marineo, and when I was there,
+found myself, poor fellow that I was, sitting down to bread and wine
+and cheese, and everything good that God gives, and as if he were the
+factor himself, and he has the keys to everything, and I could eat up
+the whole place if I had wanted. Mara scarcely knew me, it had been so
+long since we had seen each other, and she cried out,--'Oh, look!
+there's Jeli the guardian of the horses, from Tebidi. He is like one
+who comes home from abroad, who only at the sight of the distant
+mountain-top is quick enough to recognize the country where he grew
+up.' _Gnà_ Lia didn't want me to speak to her daughter with the _thee_
+and the _thou_, because Mara had grown to be so big, and the people
+who don't know about things easily gossip. But Mara only laughed, and
+looked as if she had only just that minute been baking the bread, so
+rosy her face was; she was getting the dinner ready, and she was
+unfolding the table-cloth, and she seemed different. 'Oh, have you
+forgotten Tebidi?' I asked her as soon as _gnà_ Lia went out to broach
+a fresh cask of wine. 'No, no, I haven't forgotten' said she. 'At
+Tebidi there was a bell with a campanile looking like the handle of a
+salt-cellar, and there used to be two stone cats which stood at the
+entrance of the garden.' I felt all through me those things that she
+was saying. Mara looked at me from head to heels, with her eyes wide
+open, and then she said,--'How tall you've grown!' and then she began
+to laugh, and then she patted me on the head--here!"
+
+In this way Jeli, the guardian of the horses, came to lose his place;
+for just at that instant there suddenly appeared a coach, which had
+given no sign of its approach, because it had been slowly climbing
+the steep ascent, but started off at full speed as soon as it reached
+the level ground at the top, with a great cracking of whips and
+jingling of bells, as if it were carried by the devil himself. The
+colts, in alarm, galloped off quicker than a flash, as if there had
+been an earthquake, and all the shouts and cries and _ohi! ohi!
+ohi's!_ of Jeli and the boy scarcely sufficed to collect them again
+around _la bianca_, who in spite of her gravity had shied away
+desperately with the bell around her neck.
+
+When Jeli had counted over his animals he discovered that _stellato_
+was missing, and he buried his hands in his hair, because at that
+place the road ran along side a deep ravine, and it was down in that
+ravine that _stellato_ broke his back--a colt worth a dozen _onze_,
+like a dozen angels from Paradise! Weeping and shouting he went
+calling the colt _ahu! ahu!_ It was too dark to see it. At last
+_stellato_ replied from the bottom of the ravine with a melancholy
+neigh, as if it had human speech, poor creature!
+
+"Oh, mamma mia!" cried Jeli and the boy, as they went to it. "Oh, what
+bad luck! mamma mia!"
+
+The travellers on their way to the _festa_, hearing such a lamentation
+in the darkness, asked what they had lost, and then when they learned
+what had happened, went on their way.
+
+The _stellato_ remained motionless where it had fallen, with its legs
+in the air, and while Jeli was feeling it all over, weeping and
+talking to it as if he could make it understand, the poor creature
+stretched out its neck painfully and turned its head toward him, and
+then could be heard its breathing, cut short by its agony.
+
+"Something must be broken!" mourned Jeli in despair, because nothing
+could be seen in the darkness; and the colt, inert as a rock, let its
+head fall back. Alfio, who remained on the road above in charge of the
+drove, had begun to view the matter more calmly, and had taken out his
+bread from his bag.
+
+The sky by this time was beginning to grow pale, and the mountains all
+around seemed to be blossoming out, one after another, dark and high.
+From the bend in the road the country round about began to stand out,
+with _monte del Calvario_ and _monte del Mulino a vento_--the Windmill
+Mountain--outlined against the dawn. They were still in shadow, but
+the flocks of sheep made white blurs, and as the herds of cattle
+grazing along the ridge of the mountains wandered hither and thither
+against the azure sky, it seemed as if the profile of the mountain
+itself were alive and full of motion.
+
+The bell from the depths of the valley was no longer heard; travellers
+were growing less numerous, and those who passed along were in haste
+to reach the fair. Poor Jeli knew not what saint to call on in that
+solitude. Alfio himself could not help him in any way; so the boy
+continued breaking off the morsels of his loaf leisurely.
+
+At last the factor was seen coming along mounted, cursing and swearing
+as he came, at seeing his animals stopped on the road. When Alfio saw
+him he ran off down the hill. But Jeli did not stir from the side of
+the _stellato_. The factor left his mule by the roadside, and climbed
+down into the ravine. He tried to help the colt to rise; he pulled him
+by the tail.
+
+"Let him be," said Jeli, as white in the face as if it were himself
+whose back was broken. "Let him be! Don't you see that he can't move,
+poor creature."
+
+The _stellato_, in fact, at every movement and at every attempt made
+to help him, set up a screech that seemed human. The factor fell on
+Jeli tooth and nail, and gave him as many kicks as there are angels
+and saints in Paradise. By this time Alfio had got his courage back,
+and had returned to the road, so that the animals might not be without
+a guardian, and he tried to excuse himself, saying, "'T wasn't my
+fault. I was on ahead with the _bianca_."
+
+"There's nothing more to be done," said the factor at last, having
+persuaded himself that it was all time lost. "Nothing can be done with
+this colt but to take his pelt; that's good for something."
+
+Jeli began to tremble like a leaf when he saw the factor go and fetch
+his gun from the mule's pack.
+
+"Get off of him, good-for-nothing!" shouted the factor. "I don't know
+what keeps me from laying you out beside this colt, which is worth
+more than you, in spite of the swine's baptism which that thief of a
+priest gave you!"
+
+The _stellato_, unable to move, turned its head, with its big, steady
+eyes, as if it understood every word, and its skin crisped in waves
+along the back-bone as if a chill ran over it.
+
+In that way, the factor killed the _stellato_ on the spot, so as at
+least to save his pelt, and the dull noise which the gun held at short
+range made, as the charge pierced the living flesh, Jeli thought he
+felt in his own heart.
+
+"Now if you want a piece of advice from me," said the factor, as he
+left him there, "I'd not let the master lay eyes on you, in spite of
+that bit of wages due you, for you may be sure, he'd give it to you
+with a vengeance!"
+
+The factor went off together with Alfio, taking along the other colts,
+which did not once turn round to see what had become of the
+_stellato_, but proceeded cropping the grass along the ridge. The poor
+_stellato_ was left alone in the ravine waiting for the knacker to
+flay him, its eyes were still wide open, and its four legs stretched
+into the air, for to stretch them up was the only thing it could do.
+
+Jeli, now that he had seen how the factor had been able to aim at the
+colt, as it painfully lifted its head in fear, and had been courageous
+enough to fire off the gun at it, no longer wept, but remained sitting
+on a rock looking at the _stellato_ till the men came to take off the
+pelt. Now he might go at his own pleasure and enjoy the _festa_, or
+stand in the square all day long and see the gentlemen in the _café_,
+as best pleased him, for now he no longer had bread or a shelter, and
+it behooved him to find a new _padrone_, if any one would take him
+after the misfortune of the _stellato_.
+
+Thus go things in this world:--While Jeli was seeking a new employer,
+walking about with his bag over his shoulder and his staff in his
+hand, the band was playing gayly in the square, with plumes in their
+caps, and surrounded by a merry throng of white hats thick as flies,
+and the gentlemen were enjoying themselves as they sat at their
+coffee. All the people were dressed in holiday attire like the animals
+of the fair, and in one corner of the square was a lady, with a short
+gown and flesh-colored stockings, making her appear bare-legged, and
+she was pounding on a great box before a great painted sheet on which
+appeared a slaughter of Christians with blood flowing in torrents,
+and, there among the throng, gazing with open mouth, was _massaro_
+Cola, whom he used to know when he was at Passanitello, and he told
+him that he would find him an employer, because _compare_ Isidoro
+Macca was in want of a herdsman for his hogs.
+
+"But I wouldn't say anything about _stellato_," recommended _massaro_
+Cola. "A misfortune like that might happen to any one in the world.
+But it is best not to talk about it."
+
+So they went in search of _compare_ Macca, who was at the ball, and
+while _massaro_ Cola went to plead his cause, Jeli waited outside in
+the street in the midst of the throng, who were gazing in at the door
+of the hall. In the big room, there was a world of people jumping
+about enjoying themselves, all flushed and perspiring, and making a
+great trampling on the floor, while above all was heard the _ron ron_
+of the double bass, and as soon as one piece of music, costing a
+_grano_,[10] was finished they would all lift their fingers to
+signify that they wanted another; and the man of the double bass
+would make a cross with a piece of charcoal on the wall, to keep
+account to the last, and then begin over again.
+
+  [10] A fraction of a soldo, or cent.
+
+"Those in there spend without thought," said Jeli, to himself. "That
+means that they have their pockets full and are not in trouble as I
+am, for lack of an employer, and if they sweat and tire themselves out
+in dancing, it is for their own pleasure, as if they were paid by the
+day."
+
+_Massaro_ Cola came back saying that _compare_ Macca needed no one.
+
+Then Jeli turned away, and walked off gloomily, gloomily.
+
+Mara's home was toward Sant'Antonio, where the houses climb up the
+mountainside, facing the valley of la Canziria, all green with prickly
+pears, and with the mill-wheels churning the water into foam in the
+lowlands by the stream. But Jeli hadn't the courage to go in that
+direction, now that they needed no one to watch the swine; and,
+making his way amid the throng which jostled him and pushed him
+without any thought of him, he seemed more alone than ever he had been
+when he was with his colts in the plains of Passanitello, and he felt
+like weeping.
+
+At last _massaro_ Agrippino, wandering about with his arms swinging,
+and enjoying the _festa_, fell in with him in the square, and shouted
+to him,--
+
+"Oh! Jeli! oh!" and took him home.
+
+Mara was in gala dress, with such long ear-rings that they hung down
+to her cheeks, and she was standing on the threshold with her hands
+folded, loaded with rings, waiting till it should grow dark, so as to
+go and see the fireworks.
+
+"Oh!" said Mara to him, "so you have come also for the _festa_ of
+Saint John!"
+
+Jeli did not want to go in because he was shabbily dressed, but
+_massaro_ Agrippino forced him in saying that it was not the first
+time they had ever seen each other, and that he knew that he had come
+to the fair with his employer's colts. _Gnà_ Lia poured him out a good
+generous glass of wine, and wanted to take him with them to see the
+illuminations, together with the _comari_ and their other neighbors.
+
+When they reached the square Jeli stood with open mouth, wondering at
+the spectacle; the whole square seemed a sea of fire as when the
+steppes are burning, and the reason was the great number of torches
+which the devout lighted under the eyes of the saint, who stood
+enjoying it all at the entrance of _il Rosario_--all black under his
+silver baldachin. The acolytes were coming and going amid the flames
+like so many demons, and there was, moreover, a woman in loose attire
+and with dishevelled hair, and with her eyes staring out of her head,
+also engaged in lighting the candles, and a priest in a black soutane
+and without a hat, like one rendered crazy by religion.
+
+"There's the son of _massaro_ Neri, the factor of Saloni, and he is
+spending more than ten _lire_ for rockets," said _gnà_ Lia, pointing
+to a young man who was going round through the square holding two
+rockets in each hand, just like candles, so that all the women
+devoured him with their eyes, and cried to him: "_Viva San Giovanni!_"
+
+"His father is rich and owns more than twenty head of cattle," added
+_massaro_ Agrippino.
+
+Mara also knew well that he had carried the great banner in the
+procession, and held it as straight as a pillar--such a strong and
+handsome youth was he.
+
+_Massaro_ Neri's son seemed to have heard them, and he set off his
+rockets for Mara, making the wheel of fire before her, and after this
+part of the fireworks was over, he joined them, and took them to the
+ball and to the cosmorama, where the new world and the old world were
+to be seen depicted, and he paid for them all, even for Jeli, who
+followed behind the others like a masterless cur, to see _massaro_
+Neri's son dancing with Mara, who whirled round and crouched down
+like a dove on a roof, and held daintily up the corner of her apron,
+and _massaro_ Neri's son gamboling like a colt, so that _gnà_ Lia wept
+like a child at the consolation of the sight, and _massaro_ Agrippino
+nodded with his head to signify that all was going to his mind.
+
+At last when they were all tired, they went out where the people were
+promenading, and they were carried away by the crowd as if they were
+in the midst of a torrent, and there they saw the transparencies
+lighted where the decapitation of Saint John was represented with such
+faithfulness that it would have moved the heart of a Turk, and the
+saint kicked out his legs like a goat under the hatchet. Near by the
+band was playing under a great wooden umbrella, all lighted up, and in
+the square there was such a crowd that one would have said never
+before had so many Christians come to the fair.
+
+Mara went holding _massaro_ Neri's son's arm, as if she were a fine
+lady, and she whispered into his ear and laughed, as if she were
+having a fine time. Jeli was utterly tired out, and actually went to
+sleep sitting on the sidewalk till the first bombs of the fireworks
+were sent up. At that moment Mara was still by the side of _massaro_
+Neri's son, leaning against him with her hands clasped on his
+shoulder, and in the different-colored lights from the fireworks she
+seemed now all white and now all rosy. When the last sparks died away
+in the darkness of the sky, _massaro_ Neri's son turned toward her,
+with green light on his face, and gave her a kiss.
+
+Jeli said nothing, but at that instant all that he had enjoyed till
+then changed into poison, and he began once more to think of his
+misfortunes, which he had for the moment forgotten--that he was
+without an employer--and knew not what to do, nor where to go, that he
+had no food or shelter; that the dogs might eat him as they were
+eating the poor _stellato_ left down in the bottom of the ravine,
+skinned to the hoofs!
+
+Meantime, around him the people were still making merry in the
+darkness that had ensued; Mara, with her companions, was dancing and
+singing through the rock-paved streets as they turned homeward.
+
+"Good-night! Good-night--_buona notte_!" shouted the people to one
+another, as they were left at their own doors. Mara shouted
+"good-night--_buona notte_!" in her musical voice, and it expressed
+her happiness, and _massaro_ Neri's son did not see fit to leave her
+while _massaro_ Agrippino and _gnà_ Lia were disputing about the
+opening of the house door. No one gave Jeli a thought, till at last
+_massaro_ Agrippino remembered him, and said,--
+
+"And where are you going?"
+
+"I don't know," said Jeli.
+
+"Come and see me to-morrow and I will help you find a place. For
+to-night, go back to the square where we have been hearing the band
+play. You'll find a spot on some bench, and sleep out doors; you must
+be used to that."
+
+Jeli was used to that, but what pained him was that Mara said nothing
+to him, but left him there at the door as if he were a beggar; and the
+next day when he came back to see _massaro_ Agrippino, he was hardly
+alone with the girl before he said to her,--
+
+"Oh, _gnà_ Mara! How you forget old friends!"
+
+"Oh, is that you, Jeli?" replied Mara. "No, I haven't forgotten you.
+But I was so tired after the fireworks!"
+
+"You're in love with him aren't you--_massaro_ Neri's son?" demanded
+Jeli, twirling his staff in his hands.
+
+"What are you saying?" abruptly interposed _gnà_ Mara. "My mother is
+there and hears everything you say."
+
+_Massaro_ Agrippino found him a place as shepherd at la Salonia, where
+_massaro_ Neri was factor, but as Jeli was not very much skilled in
+taking care of sheep, he had to be content with far smaller wages
+than he had been having.
+
+Now he attended faithfully to his flocks, and strove to learn how
+cheese is made--the ricotta and the _caciocavallo_, and all the other
+products of the flocks; but in the gossip that went on at eventide in
+the yard, among the shepherds and _contadini_, while the women were
+preparing the beans for the soup, if ever _massaro_ Neri's son was
+mentioned as soon to marry _massaro_ Agrippino's Mara, Jeli said not a
+word, and never dared open his mouth.
+
+One time when the keeper insulted him, by saying, jestingly, that Mara
+refused to have anything more to do with him, after every one had
+declared that they were to be husband and wife, Jeli, as he went to
+the pot where the milk was boiling, replied, as he slowly shook in the
+rennet,--
+
+"Now Mara has grown to be so pretty, she seems like a lady."
+
+But as he was patient and laborious, and quickly got hold of the
+secrets of the business, even better than one who had been born to
+it, and as he was accustomed to be with animals, he came to love his
+sheep as if they were his own, and for this reason the distemper--_il
+male_--did not do so much damage at la Salonia, and the flock
+prospered, so that it was a delight for _massaro_ Neri every time that
+he came to the estate, and the next year it was no great trouble to
+induce the _padrone_ to increase Jeli's wages, so that he came to have
+as much as he got in looking out for the horses. And it was money well
+spent, for Jeli never thought of reckoning up the miles and miles that
+he travelled in search of the best pasturage for his flock, and if the
+sheep were with young or were sick, he would take them to his
+saddle-bags and carry the lambs in his arms, and they would lick his
+face, thrusting their noses out of his pocket, and they would even
+suck his ears.
+
+In the famous snow storm of Santa Lucia's night, the snow fell four
+handbreadths deep in the _lago morto_ at la Salonia, and all around
+for miles and miles there was nothing else to be seen when day came,
+and nothing would have been left of the sheep but the ears, had not
+Jeli got up three or four times in the course of the night to drive
+the sheep into the yard, so that the poor beasts shook the snow from
+their backs and did not remain, as it were buried, as was the case in
+so many of the neighboring flocks--at least so _massaro_ Agrippino
+said when he came to give a look to a field of beans which he had at
+la Salonia, and he also said that that story of _massaro_ Neri's son
+marrying his daughter Mara was a lie made up of whole cloth--that Mara
+had some one else in mind.
+
+"It was said they were to be married at Christmas," said Jeli.
+
+"Nothing of the sort; they aren't to marry at all; it's all the gossip
+of envious folks who meddle with others' business," replied _massaro_
+Agrippino.
+
+But the keeper, who had known about it for some time, having heard it
+talked about in town when he was there on Sunday, told the story as it
+really was, after _massaro_ Agrippino had gone away.
+
+"The engagement was broken because _massaro_ Neri's son had learned
+that _massaro_ Agrippino's Mara was keeping company with Don Alfonso,
+the signorino, who had known Mara from a little girl; and _massaro_
+Neri had declared that his son was to be a man respected as his father
+was, and the only horns he wanted in his house should be those of his
+oxen."
+
+Jeli was present at this conversation, sitting with the others in the
+circle at breakfast, and at that instant was cutting his bread. He
+still said nothing, but his appetite left him for that day.
+
+While he was driving his sheep out to pasture he began to think of
+Mara, as she had been when she was a little girl, when they were
+together all day long wandering through the _valle del Jacitano_ and
+over the _poggio alla Croce_, and how she stood looking at him, with
+her chin in the air, while he climbed up to the tree-tops after the
+birds' nests; and he thought also of Don Alfonso, who used to come and
+see him from the neighboring villa, and how they would stretch
+themselves out on their bellies, stirring up crickets' nests with
+straws. All these things he considered and reconsidered for hours and
+hours, as he sat on the edge of the brook, holding his knees between
+his arms, and thinking of the tall walnuts of Tebidi, and the thick
+bushes in the valleys and the slopes of the hills, green with sumachs,
+and the gray olive trees spreading through the valley like a fog, and
+the red-tiled roof of the house, and the campanile that looked like "a
+handle of a salt cellar" among the oranges of the garden.
+
+Here the campagna stretched away naked, desert, speckled with dried
+grass, blending silently with the distant horizon.
+
+In Spring the bean pods had begun to fill out when Mara came to la
+Salonia with her father and mother and the boy and the ass, to pick
+the beans, and they all came together to sleep at the farm for two or
+three days during the picking.
+
+In this way Jeli saw the girl morning and evening, and they would sit
+together on the wall of the sheep-fold and talk, while the boy looked
+after the sheep.
+
+"It seems as if I were at Tebidi again," said Mara, "when we were
+little things, and used to stand on the foot bridge."
+
+Jeli also remembered everything, though he said little, being always a
+judicious youth, and of few words.
+
+When the harvest was over, and the eve of parting had come, Mara went
+out to talk with the young man, just as he was making "ricotto
+cheese," and he was wholly intent in skimming the whey with his ladle.
+
+"Now I'll say _addio_," said she, "for to-morrow we return to
+Vizzini."
+
+"How have the beans gone?"
+
+"Bad! _la lupa_[11] has eaten them all this year."
+
+  [11] A parasitic disease.
+
+"It depends on the rain which has been scarce," said Jeli. "We have
+had to kill even the lambs because there hasn't been enough feed for
+them. Over all of la Salonia there hasn't been three inches of grass."
+
+"But that doesn't affect you. You always have your wages, good year or
+bad."
+
+"Yes, that's so," said he. "But it disgusts me to give those poor
+creatures to the butcher."
+
+"Do you remember when you came for the _festa_ of Saint John, and were
+left without a _padrone_?"
+
+"Yes, I remember."
+
+"It was my father who got you a place here with _massaro_ Neri."
+
+"And why didn't you marry _massaro_ Neri's son?"
+
+"Because it wasn't the will of God. My father has been unlucky," she
+continued, after a brief pause. "Since we came to Marineo, everything
+has gone ill with us. The beans, the corn, that piece of vineyard
+that we have yonder. Then my brother went off to the army, and we lost
+a mule that was worth forty _onze_."
+
+"I know," said Jeli, "the bay mule."
+
+"Now, that we have lost all our property, who would want to marry me?"
+
+Mara was breaking up a twig of briar while she said this, with her
+chin in her bosom, and, with her elbow, she gently nudged Jeli's elbow
+without appearing to mean it. But Jeli, with his eyes on the churn,
+also made no response, and she went on,--
+
+"At Tebidi they used to say that you and I would be husband and wife,
+do you remember?"
+
+"Yes," said Jeli, and he laid his ladle on the top of the churn. "But
+I am a poor shepherd, and I can not pretend to a _massaro's_ daughter
+like you."
+
+La Mara remained silent for a little while, and then she said, "If you
+want me, I will willingly be yours."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yes, really."
+
+"And what will _massaro_ Agrippino say to it?"
+
+"My father says that now that you know your trade, and since you are
+not one of those who waste their wages, but make one _soldo_ into two,
+and do not eat to consume bread, in time you will come to have flocks
+of your own, and will be rich."
+
+"If that is so," said Jeli, in conclusion, "I will gladly take you."
+
+"There," said Mara, as soon as it had grown dark and the sheep were
+relapsing into silence, "if you want a kiss, I will give you one,
+because we are going to be husband and wife."
+
+Jeli took one in "holy peace," and not knowing what to say, added, "I
+have always loved you, even when you were going to desert me for the
+son of _massaro_ Neri."
+
+But he had not the heart to speak of the other one.
+
+"Don't you see? We were meant for one another," said Mara, in
+conclusion.
+
+_Massaro_ Agrippino, in fact, said "Yes," and _gnà_ Lia put on a new
+gown, and she had a pair of velvet trousers made for their son-in-law.
+Mara was as lovely and fresh as a rose, with her white mantellina,
+reminding you of the Paschal lamb, and that amber necklace which made
+her neck look so white; so, when Jeli walked through the street at her
+side, he marched stiffly and erect, dressed in his new cloth and
+velvet suit, and he did not dare even blow his nose with his red silk
+handkerchief, lest he should make a fool of himself; and the neighbors
+and all who knew the story of Don Alfonso laughed in his face.
+
+When Mara said "_sissignore_," and the priest made her Jeli's wife
+with a grand sign of the cross, Jeli took her home, and it seemed to
+him as if they had given him all the gold of the Madonna, and all the
+lands that he had seen with his eyes.
+
+"Now that we are husband and wife," said he, when they reached their
+house, as he was sitting in front of her, and trying to appear very
+humble, "now that we are husband and wife, I may tell you that it does
+not seem to me true as you pretended--you might have had ever so many
+better husbands than I--so beautiful and gracious you are."
+
+The poor fellow could not find anything else to say, and he could not
+contain his delight to see Mara setting and arranging everything
+through the house, and playing _la padrona_. He found it impossible to
+tear himself away to return to la Salonia; when he started Monday, he
+was very slow in arranging in the pack of the ass, his saddle-bags,
+and his cloak, and his umbrella.
+
+"You ought to come to la Salonia, yourself," he said to his wife, who
+was watching him from the door-step. "You ought to come with me."
+
+But the young woman began to laugh, and replied that she was not born
+to look after sheep, and had no reason to go to la Salonia.
+
+Truly, Mara was not born for tending sheep, and she was not
+accustomed to the January tramontana wind, which stiffens the hand on
+the staff, and it seems as if your fingers would drop off, or to
+furious storms that come, when the water penetrates to your very
+bones, and again, when the dust drives choking through the streets,
+when the sheep travel under the boiling sun, or to the hard bed on the
+ground, and the mouldy bread, and the long, silent, solitary days,
+when through the arid fields nothing else is seen in the distance but
+occasionally some sun-burned peasant driving his ass silently along
+over the white, interminable road.
+
+Jeli knew at least that Mara was warm and comfortable under the
+quilts, or was spinning in front of the fire, talking with the women
+of the neighborhood, or was enjoying the sun on the balcony, while he
+was returning from the pasture tired and thirsty, or wet through with
+the rain, or when the wind drifted the snow back of his hut and put
+out his fire of branches.
+
+Every month Mara went to receive the wages from the _padrone_, and
+they lacked neither eggs nor fowls, nor oil in the lamp, nor wine in
+the jug. Twice a month Jeli came home to see her, and she would stand
+on the balcony looking for him with her spindle in her hand, and after
+he had left the ass in the stable and removed his pack and filled the
+rack with oats, and placed the wood under the shed in the yard, or
+whatever he brought into the kitchen, Mara would help him hang his
+cloak on the nail and take off his leather leggings before the hearth,
+and pour him out a glass of wine, and set to work to boil the soup and
+get the table ready, quiet and thoughtful, like a good housewife,
+while talking of this thing and that,--of the brooding hen that was
+setting, of the cloth that was on the loom, of the calf which they
+were raising, never forgetting anything of what she had been doing.
+
+Jeli, when he found himself at home, felt that he was more important
+than the pope.
+
+But on the eve of Santa Barbara he came home unexpectedly late, when
+all the lights were out in the street and the town clock was striking
+midnight. He came in because the mare which the _padrone_ had left out
+at pasture had been suddenly taken sick, and he saw that it was a case
+that required the services of the farrier quickly, and he had wanted
+to bring him to town in spite of the rain that was falling like a
+torrent, and the muddy roads into which he sunk half up to his knees.
+
+Knock and call as loud as he might behind the door, he had to wait
+half an hour under the eaves, while the water ran out at his heels. At
+last his wife came to open for him, and began to scold worse than if
+it had been herself who had been obliged to wander across country in
+such a tempest.
+
+"Oh, what's the matter?" she demanded. "How you frightened me coming
+at this time o' night! Does it seem to you a proper Christian time to
+come? To-morrow I shall be ill!"
+
+"Go back to bed, I will start up a fire."
+
+"No, I'll have to go and get some wood."
+
+"I'll go."
+
+"No, I say."
+
+When Mara returned with the wood in her arms Jeli said to her, "Why
+did you leave the door to the yard open? Was there not enough wood in
+the kitchen?"
+
+"No, I went to get it under the shed."
+
+She let him kiss her, coldly, coldly, and turned her head in another
+direction.
+
+"His wife lets him wait at the door," said the neighbors, "when there
+is another bird in the nest."
+
+But Jeli knew nothing about the fact that his wife was untrue to him,
+nor did any one care to tell him, because it could surely be of no
+consequence, for he had taken the woman with a damaged reputation
+after _massaro_ Neri's son had jilted her, because he knew of the
+story of Don Alfonso. But Jeli seemed to live happy and contented in
+the shame of it, and grew as fat as a pig; for the proverb has it
+"horns are lean but they make the house fat." At last, one time, the
+herdman's boy told it to him in his face, while they were scuffling
+about the pieces of cheese that had been stolen.
+
+"Now that Don Alfonso has taken your wife you consider yourself his
+brother-in-law, and you are proud enough to be a crowned king with
+those horns on your head."
+
+The factor and the keeper expected to see blood flow for those
+insulting words, but on the contrary Jeli stood stupefied, as if he
+had not heard, or as if it concerned him not, wearing the dull face of
+an ox whose horns really fitted him.
+
+Now that Easter was at hand the factor sent all the men of the estate
+to confession, with the hope that through the fear of God they would
+not do any more stealing. Jeli also went, and at the church entrance
+sought for the boy with whom he had exchanged those hot words, and he
+threw his arms around his neck, saying,--
+
+"The confessor has bade me pardon you; but I am not angry with you for
+such gossip; and if you will not steal any more of the cheese from me,
+I will not take any further notice of what you said to me in passion."
+
+It was from that moment that they nicknamed him _Corno d'ore_--"Gold
+horns"--and the nickname stuck to him and all his, even after he had
+washed his horns in blood.
+
+La Mara also went to confession and returned from the church all
+wrapped up in her mantellina, and with her eyes cast down, so that she
+seemed a genuine _Santa Maria Maddelena_. Jeli, who was silently
+waiting for her on the balcony, when he saw her coming in that way,
+seeming as if she had the Holy Presence in her heart, kept looking at
+her,--pale, pale from his foot to his head as if he saw her for the
+first time, or as if his Mara had been changed for him, and he seemed
+hardly to dare to lift his eyes to her while she was shaking the cloth
+and setting the table, calm and neat as ever.
+
+Then after long thinking he put the question to her: "Is it true that
+you keep company with Don Alfonso?"
+
+Mara looked him full in the face with those black eyes of hers and
+made the sign of the cross.
+
+"Why do you want to make me commit a sin on this day?" she demanded.
+
+"I did not believe it, because Don Alfonso and I were always together
+when we were boys, and there never passed a day that he did not come
+to Tebidi when he was in the country there; and then he is rich, and
+has bushels of money, and if he wanted women he might get married, nor
+would he lack anything, either clothes to wear, or bread to eat."
+
+But Mara was really angry, and she began to scold so that the poor
+fellow did not dare lift his nose from his plate.
+
+At last, so that that gift of God which they were eating might not
+turn into poison, Mara changed the conversation, and asked him if he
+had thought of weeding that little plot of flax which they had sowed
+in the bean field.
+
+"Yes," replied Jeli, "and the flax will do well."
+
+"If that is so," said Mara, "this spring I will make you two new
+shirts which will keep you warm."
+
+In truth Jeli did not realize what "cuckold" meant, and he did not
+know what jealousy was. Every new thing found difficulty in getting
+into his head, and this became so great that, in making its way in, it
+played devilish work, especially when he saw his Mara before him so
+beautiful and white and neat, and how she had herself chosen him, and
+how he had thought about her so many years, and so many years, ever
+since he was a young boy, so that the day when they told him that she
+was going to marry some one else, he had had no heart to eat anything
+or to drink all day long.
+
+Then again he thought of Don Alfonso, who had been his companion so
+many times, and how he had always brought him strange feeling within
+his heart. Don Alfonso had grown so tall that he no longer seemed the
+same person, and now he had a full beard, curly like his hair, and a
+velvet coat and a gold chain across his waistcoat. But he recognized
+Jeli, and patted him on the shoulder in salutation. He had come with
+the _padrone_ of the estate and a number of friends to have a
+jollification while the sheep-shearing was in progress, and Mara also
+came unexpectedly, under the pretext that she was pregnant, and longed
+for some fresh ricotto.
+
+It was a beautiful warm day in the pale fields, with the grain in
+flower and the long green rows of the vines; the sheep were gamboling
+and bleating for delight, at feeling themselves freed from all that
+weight of wool, and in the kitchen, the women had made a great fire to
+cook all the provisions that the _padrone_ had brought for the dinner.
+
+The gentlemen, while they were waiting, had sat down in the shade
+under the carob-trees, and were playing tambourines and bag-pipes,
+and dancing with the girls of the estate, as if they were all of the
+same class.
+
+Jeli, meantime, went on with his work shearing the sheep, and felt
+something within him, without knowing what, like a thorn, like a nail,
+like a pair of shears, working within him, slowly, slowly, like a
+poison.
+
+The _padrone_ had ordered that they should kill a couple of goats, and
+the yearling sheep, and some chickens, and a turkey cock. In fact, he
+was going to do things on a grand scale, and lavishly, so as to do
+honor to his friends; and while all those creatures were squealing
+under the death-agony, and the goats were screaming under the knife,
+Jeli felt his knees tremble, and little by little, it seemed to him
+that the wool that he was shearing, and the grass in which the sheep
+were leaping, were stained with blood.
+
+"Don't go," he said to Mara, when Don Alfonso called her to come and
+dance with the rest. "Don't go, Mara."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't want you to go. Do not go."
+
+"I hear them calling me."
+
+He uttered not another intelligible word while he stayed with the
+sheep that he was shearing. Mara shrugged her shoulders, and went to
+dance. She was blushing with delight, and her two black eyes shone
+like two stars, and she smiled so that there was a gleam of white
+teeth, and all the gold ornaments tossed and scintillated on her
+wrists and on her bosom, so that she seemed like the Madonna herself.
+
+Jeli had arisen to his full height, with the long shears in his hand,
+and white in face, as white as once he had seen his father, the
+cowherd, when he was trembling with fever in front of the fire in the
+hovel.
+
+Suddenly, when he saw how Don Alfonso, with his curling beard and his
+velvet coat, and the gold chain at his waistcoat, took Mara by the
+hand to dance--then--only at that moment that he touched her did he
+fling himself on him and cut his throat with one stroke, as if he had
+been a goat.
+
+Later, while they were leading him off to the judge, bound, wholly
+unmanned, without daring to make the least resistance,--
+
+"How," said he, "should I not have killed him. He robbed me of my
+Mara!"
+
+
+
+
+RUSTIC CHIVALRY.
+
+(_Cavalleria Rusticana._)
+
+  [Illustration: "LOLA USED TO GO OUT ON THE BALCONY WITH HER HANDS
+  CROSSED."]
+
+
+
+
+RUSTIC CHIVALRY.
+
+(_Cavalleria Rusticana._)
+
+
+Turiddu Macca, _gnà_ Nunzia's son, after returning from the army, used
+every Sunday to strut like a peacock through the square in his
+bersegliere uniform and red cap, looking like the fortune-teller as he
+sets up his stand with his cage of canaries. The girls on their way to
+Mass gave stolen glances at him from behind their mantellinas, and the
+urchins buzzed round him like flies.
+
+He had brought back with him, also, a pipe with the king on horseback
+carved so naturally that it seemed actually alive, and he scratched
+his matches on the seat of his trousers, lifting his leg as if he were
+going to give a kick.
+
+But in spite of all this, Lola, the daughter of _massaro_ Angelo, had
+not shown herself either at Mass or on the balcony, for the reason
+that she was going to wed a man from Licodia, a carter who had four
+Sortino mules in his stable.
+
+At first, when Turiddu heard about it, _santo diavolone!_ he
+threatened to disembowel him, threatened to kill him--that fellow from
+Licodia! But he did nothing of the sort; he contented himself with
+going under the fair one's window, and singing all the spiteful songs
+he knew.
+
+"Has _gnà_ Nunzia's Turiddu nothing else to do," asked the neighbors,
+"except spending his nights singing like a lone sparrow?"
+
+At length, he met Lola on her way back from the pilgrimage to the
+Madonna del Pericolo, and when she saw him, she turned neither red nor
+white, just as if it were none of her affair at all.
+
+"Oh, _compare_ Turiddu, I was told that you returned the first of the
+month."
+
+"But I have been told of something quite different!" replied the
+other. "Is it true that you are to marry _compare_ Alfio, the
+carter?"
+
+"Such is God's will," replied Lola, drawing the two ends of her
+handkerchief under her chin.
+
+"God's will in your case is done with a snap and a spring; to suit
+yourself! And it was God's will, was it, that I should return from so
+far to find this fine state of things, _gnà_ Lola!"
+
+The poor fellow still tried to bluster, but his voice grew hoarse, and
+he followed the girl, tossing his head so that the tassel of his cap
+swung from side to side on his shoulders. To tell the truth, she felt
+really sorry to see him wearing such a long face, but she had not the
+heart to deceive him with fine speeches.
+
+"Listen, _compare_ Turiddu," she said to him at last, "Let me join my
+friends. What would be said in town if I were seen with you?"
+
+"You are right," replied Turiddu, "Now that you are going to marry
+_compare_ Alfio, who has four mules in his stable, it is best not to
+let people's tongues wag about you. But my mother, poor soul, was
+obliged to sell our bay mule, and that little plot of vineyard on the
+highway while I was off in the army. The time 'when Berta spun,' is
+over and gone, and you no longer think of the time when we used to
+talk together from the window looking into the yard, and you gave me
+that handkerchief before I went away, and God knows how many tears I
+shed into it at going so far that even the name of our place is lost!
+So good-by, _gnà_ Lola,--Let's pretend it's rained and cleared off,
+and our friendship is ended."[12]
+
+  [12] _Facemu cuntu ca chioppi e scampau e la nostra amicizia finiu._
+
+_Gnà_ Lola married the carter, and on Sundays used to go out on the
+balcony with her hands crossed on her stomach, to show off all the
+heavy gold rings that her husband gave to her. Turiddu kept up his
+habit of going back and forth through the street with his pipe in his
+mouth, his hands in his pockets, and an air of unconcern, and
+ogling the girls; but it gnawed his heart that Lola's husband had so
+much money, and that she pretended not to see him when he passed.
+
+"I'll get even with her, under her very eyes; the vile beast," he
+muttered.
+
+Opposite _compare_ Alfio lived _massaro_ Cola, the vinedresser, who
+was as rich as a pig, and had one daughter at home. Turiddu said and
+did all he could to become _massaro_ Cola's workman, and he began to
+frequent the house, and make sweet speeches to the girl.
+
+"Why don't you go and say sweet things to _gnà_ Lola?" asked Santa.
+
+"_Gnà_ Lola is a fine lady. _Gnà_ Lola has married a crowned king
+now!"
+
+"I don't deserve crowned kings!"
+
+"You are worth a hundred Lolas, and I know some one who wouldn't look
+at _la gnà_ Lola or her saint when you are by, for _gnà_ Lola isn't
+worthy to wear your shoes, no, she isn't!"
+
+"The fox when he couldn't get at the grapes said, 'How beautiful you
+are, _racinedda mia_,' my little grape!"
+
+"Ohè! hands off, _compare_ Turiddu!"
+
+"Are you afraid that I will eat you?"
+
+"I'm not afraid of you or of your God."
+
+"Eh! your mother was from Licodia, we all know that! You have
+quarrelsome blood. Uh! How I could eat you with my eyes!"
+
+"Eat me then with your eyes, for we should not have a crumb left, but
+meantime help me up with this bundle."
+
+"I would lift up the whole house for you, yes, I would!"
+
+She, so as not to blush, threw at him a stick of wood which was within
+reach, and by a miracle didn't hit him.
+
+"Let's have done, for chattering never picked grapes."
+
+"If I were rich I should try to get a wife like you, _gnà_ Santa."
+
+"I shall never marry a crowned king like _gnà_ Lola, but I have my
+dowry as well as she, whenever the Lord shall send me anyone."
+
+"We know you are rich, we know it."
+
+"If you know it, say no more, for father is coming, and I shouldn't
+like to have him find me in the court-yard."
+
+The old father began to turn up his nose, but the girl pretended not
+to notice it, because the tassel of the bersegliere's cap had set her
+heart to fluttering, and was constantly dancing before her eyes. When
+the _babbo_ put Turiddu out of the house, his daughter opened the
+window for him, and stood chatting with him all the evening long, so
+that the whole neighborhood talked of nothing else.
+
+"I'm madly in love with you," said Turiddu, "and I am losing my sleep
+and my appetite."
+
+"How absurd!"
+
+"I wish I were Victor Emmanuel's son, so as to marry you."
+
+"How absurd!"
+
+"By the Madonna, I would eat you like bread!"
+
+"How absurd!"
+
+"Ah! on my honor!"
+
+"Ah! _mamma mia!_"
+
+Lola, who was listening every evening, hidden behind the vase of
+basil, and turning red and white, one day called Turiddu:--
+
+"And so, _compare_ Turiddu, old friends don't speak to each other any
+more?"
+
+"_Ma!_" sighed the young man, "blessed is he who can speak to you."
+
+"If you have any desire to speak to me, you know where I live,"
+replied Lola.
+
+Turiddu went to see her so frequently that Santa noticed it, and shut
+the window in his face. The neighbors looked at him with a smile or
+with a shake of the head when the bersegliere passed. Lola's husband
+was making a round of the fairs with his mules.
+
+"Sunday I am going to confession, for last night I dreamed of black
+grapes," said Lola.
+
+"Put it off, put it off" begged Turiddu.
+
+"No, Easter is coming, and my husband will want to know why I haven't
+been to confession."
+
+"Ah," murmured _massaro_ Cola's Santa, as she was waiting on her knees
+before the confessional for her turn, while Lola was making a clean
+breast of her sins. "On my soul, I will not send you to Rome for your
+punishment!"
+
+_Compare_ Alfio came home with his mules; he was loaded with money,
+and he brought to his wife for a present, a handsome new dress for the
+holidays.
+
+"You are right to bring her gifts," said his neighbor Santa, "because
+while you are away your wife adorns your house for you."
+
+_Compare_ Alfio was one of those carters who wear their hats over one
+ear, and when he heard his wife spoken of in such a way he changed
+color as if he had been knifed.
+
+"_Santo diavolone!_" he exclaimed, "if you haven't seen aright, I will
+not leave you eyes to weep with, you or your whole family."
+
+"I am not used to weeping!" replied Santa, "I did not weep even when
+I saw with these eyes _gnà_ Nunzia's Turiddu going into your wife's
+house at night!"
+
+"It is well," replied _compare_ Alfio, "many thanks!"
+
+Turiddu, now that the cat was at home, no longer went out on the
+street by day, and he whiled away the tedium at the inn with his
+friends; and on Easter eve they had on the table a dish of sausages.
+
+When _compare_ Alfio came in, Turiddu realized, merely by the way in
+which he fixed his eyes on him, that he had come to settle that
+affair, and he laid his fork on the plate.
+
+"Have you any commands for me, _compare_ Alfio?" he asked.
+
+"No favors to ask, _compare_ Turiddu; it's some time since I have seen
+you, and I wanted to speak concerning something you know about."
+
+Turiddu at first had offered him a glass, but _compare_ Alfio refused
+it with a wave of his hand. Then Turiddu got up and said to him,--
+
+"Here I am, _compare_ Alfio."
+
+The carter threw his arms around his neck.
+
+"If to-morrow morning you will come to the prickly pears of la
+Canziria, we can talk that matter over, _compare_."
+
+"Wait for me on the street at daybreak, and we will go together."
+
+With these words they exchanged the kiss of defiance. Turiddu bit the
+carter's ear, and thus made the solemn oath not to fail him.
+
+The friends had silently left the sausages, and accompanied Turiddu to
+his home. _Gnà_ Nunzia, poor creature, waited for him till late every
+evening.
+
+"Mamma," said Turiddu, "do you remember when I went as a soldier, that
+you thought I should never come back any more? Give me a good kiss as
+you did then, for to-morrow morning I am going far away."
+
+Before daybreak he got his spring-knife, which he had hidden under the
+hay, when he had gone to serve his time in the army, and started for
+the prickly-pear trees of la Canziria.
+
+"Oh, Gesummaria! where are you going in such haste!" cried Lola in
+great apprehension, while her husband was getting ready to go out.
+
+"I am not going far," replied _compare_ Alfio. "But it would be better
+for you if I never came back."
+
+Lola in her nightdress was praying at the foot of the bed, and
+pressing to her lips the rosary which Fra Bernardino had brought to
+her from the Holy places, and reciting all the Ave Marias that she
+could say.
+
+"_Compare_ Alfio," began Turiddu, after he had gone a little distance
+by the side of his companion, who walked in silence with his cap down
+over his eyes, "as God is true I know that I have done wrong, and I
+should let myself be killed. But before I came out, I saw my old
+mother, who got up to see me off, under the pretence of tending the
+hens. Her heart had a presentiment, and as the Lord is true, I will
+kill you like a dog, so that my poor old mother may not weep."
+
+"All right," replied _compare_ Alfio, stripping off his waistcoat.
+"Then we will both of us hit hard."
+
+Both of them were skilful fencers. Turiddu was first struck, and was
+quick enough to receive it in the arm. When he returned it, he
+returned it well, and wounded the other in the groin.
+
+"Ah, _compare_ Turiddu! so you really intend to kill me, do you?"
+
+"Yes, I gave you fair warning; since I saw my old mother in the
+hen-yard, it seems to me I have her all the time before my eyes."
+
+"Keep them well open, those eyes of yours," cried _compare_ Alfio,
+"for I am going to give you back good measure."
+
+As he stood on guard, all doubled up, so as to keep his left hand on
+his wound, which pained him, and almost trailing his elbow on the
+ground, he swiftly picked up a handful of dust, and flung it into his
+adversary's eyes.
+
+"Ah!" screamed Turiddu, blinded, "I am dead."
+
+He tried to save himself, by making desperate leaps backwards, but
+_compare_ Alfio overtook him with another thrust in the stomach, and a
+third in the throat.
+
+"And that makes three! that is for the house which you have adorned
+for me! Now your mother will let the hens alone."
+
+Turiddu staggered a short distance among the prickly pears, and then
+fell like a stone. The blood foaming, gurgled in his throat, and he
+could not even cry, "_Ah! mamma mia!_"
+
+
+
+
+LA LUPA.
+
+
+She was tall and lean; but she had a firm, full bust, and yet she was
+no longer young; her complexion was brunette, but pallid as if she had
+always suffered from malaria, and this pallor set forth two big eyes
+and fresh rosy lips that seemed to eat you.
+
+In the village she was called _la Lupa_--the She-Wolf--because she was
+never satisfied. Women made the sign of the cross when they saw her
+pass, always alone like a big ugly hound, with the vagabond and
+suspicious gait of a famished wolf; she would bewitch their sons and
+their husbands in the twinkling of an eye with her red lips and she
+made them fall in love with her merely by looking at them out of those
+big Satanic eyes of hers, even if they were before Santa Agrippina's
+altar.
+
+Fortunately _la Lupa_ never came to church at Easter or at Christmas,
+nor to hear Mass or to make confession. _Padre_ Angiolino of Santa
+Maria di Gesù, a true servant of God, had lost his soul on her
+account.
+
+Maricchia,--poor girl, pretty and clever she was,--secretly wept
+because she was _la Lupa's_ daughter, and no one had offered to marry
+her though she had nice clothes in her bureau, and her own little
+piece of land in the sun, like every other girl of the village.
+
+One time _la Lupa_ fell in love with a handsome youth who had just
+served out his time in the army, and had come home and was helping to
+reap the notary's harvest with her; for surely it means to be in love
+when she felt the flesh burn under the fustian shift, and on looking
+at him to experience the thirst that one has in hot June days down in
+the low-lands.
+
+But he went on with his work, undisturbed, with his nose on his
+sheaves, and he said to her, "Oh, what's the matter, _gnà_ Pina?"
+
+In the immense fields where the only sound was the rustle of the
+grasshoppers flying up, while the sun was pouring down his hottest
+beams perpendicularly, _la Lupa_ was heaping up sheaf on sheaf, and
+pile on pile, without ever showing any signs of fatigue, without one
+moment straightening herself up, without once touching her lips to the
+water jug, so as to stick close to Nanni's heels as he reaped and
+reaped; and now and again he would ask,--
+
+"What do you want, _gnà_ Pina?"
+
+One evening she told him, it was while the men were sleeping in the
+threshing-floor, weary of the long day's work and the dogs were
+howling through the vast black campagna,--
+
+"I want you! you are as handsome as the sun and as sweet as honey; I
+want you!"
+
+"But I want your daughter--I want the young calf," said Nanni,
+laughing at his own joke.
+
+_La Lupa_ thrust her hands into the masses of her hair, scratching her
+temples, without saying a word, and went off and was not seen again in
+the harvest field. But the following October she saw Nanni again at
+the time when they were pressing the oil, because he worked near her
+house, and the rattle of the press kept her awake all night.
+
+"Take a bag of olives," she said to her daughter, "and come with me."
+
+Nanni was shoveling the olives into the hopper and shouting "Ohi" to
+the mule to keep it going.
+
+"Do you want my daughter Maricchia?" demanded _gnà_ Pina.
+
+"What dowry will you give with your daughter Maricchia?" replied
+Nanni.
+
+"She has her father's things, and besides I will give her my house; it
+will be enough for me if you'll let me have a corner in the kitchen to
+spread out a mattress in."
+
+"If that is so, we can talk about it at Christmas," said Nanni. Nanni
+was all grease and dirt from the olives put to fermenting, and
+Maricchia would not have him on any account; but her mother grabbed
+her by the hair as they stood in front of the hearth and hissed
+through her set teeth,--
+
+"If you don't take him, I'll kill you."
+
+_La Lupa_ looked ill, and the people remarked: "When the devil was old
+the devil a monk would be." She no longer went wandering about; she
+stood no more at her doorway looking out with those eyes as of one
+possessed.
+
+Her son-in-law, when she fixed those eyes on his face, always began to
+laugh, and would pull out his cloth talisman, with its effigy of the
+Madonna, to cross himself with.
+
+Maricchia stayed at home to nurse her children, and her mother went
+out to work in the fields with the men, just like a man,--to weed, to
+dig, to guide the animals, to dress the vines, whether it were during
+the Greek-Levant winds[13] of January, or during the August sirocco,
+when mules let their heads droop, and men sleep prone on their bellies
+under the shadow of the North wall.
+
+  [13] North-east.
+
+In that time between vespers and nones, when, according to the saying,
+no good woman is seen going about, _gnà_ Pina was the only living
+creature to be seen wandering across the campagna, over the fiery hot
+stones of the narrow streets, among the parched stubble of the wide,
+wide fields that stretched away into the burning haze toward cloudy
+Etna, where the sky hangs heavy on the horizon.
+
+"Wake up!" said _la Lupa_ to Nanni, who was asleep in the ditch next
+the dusty harvest-field, with his head on his arms. "Wake up, for I've
+brought you some wine to cool your throat."
+
+Nanni opened his eyes, half awake, and saw her sitting up straight and
+pale before him, with her swelling breast, and her eyes as black as
+coal, and drew back waving his arms,--
+
+"No! a good woman does not go about between vespers and nones,"
+groaned Nanni, thrusting his face in amongst the dried weeds of the
+ditch as far as he could, and putting his fingers into his hair. "Go
+away! Get you gone! And don't you come to the threshing-floor any
+more."
+
+She turned and went away,--_la Lupa_,--knotting up her splendid
+tresses again, looking down steadily as she made her way among the hot
+stubble, with her eyes black as coal.
+
+But she did go back to the threshing-floor, and Nanni no longer
+reproached her; and when she failed to come, in that hour between
+vespers and nones, he went, and with perspiration on his brow, waited
+for her at the top of the white deserted footpath, but afterwards he
+would thrust his hands through his hair, and every time he would say,
+"Go away! Go away! Don't come to the threshing-floor again."
+
+Maricchia wept night and day, and she looked into her mother's face
+with eyes blazing with tears and jealousy, like a _lupachiotta_,
+a young wolf herself, every time that she saw her coming back from
+the fields, silent and pale.
+
+"Vile! _scellerata!_" she would say, "Vile mamma."
+
+"Hold your tongue!"
+
+"Thief! thief!"
+
+"Hold your tongue!"
+
+"I'll go to the _brigadiere_!"[14]
+
+  [14] Brigadiere is the station or the Commandant of the detachment
+  of the Carabaneers in a small town.
+
+And she actually went with her infants in her arms, without a sign of
+fear, and without shedding a tear, like a crazy woman, because now she
+passionately loved that husband whom she had been forced to marry,
+greasy and dirty as he was from the olives set to fermenting.
+
+The _brigadiere_ summoned Nanni, and threatened him with the galleys
+and the gallows. Nanni began to weep, and pull his hair; he denied
+nothing, did not try to justify himself.
+
+"The temptation was too much," said he, "'twas the temptation of
+hell." He flung himself at the _brigadiere's_ feet, begging him to
+send him to the galleys.
+
+"For mercy's sake, _Signor brigadiere_, take me out of this hell! Have
+me shot! Send me to prison! Don't let me see her ever again! never
+again!"
+
+"No," replied _la Lupa_, to the _brigadiere's_ question. "I kept a
+corner of the kitchen to sleep in when I gave him my house as my
+daughter's dowry. The house is mine. I do not intend to go away."
+
+Shortly after, Nanni was kicked in the chest by a mule, and was like
+to die; but the priest refused to bring him the Holy Unction unless
+_la Lupa_ was out of the house.
+
+_La Lupa_ went away, and her son-in-law was then permitted to pass
+away like a good Christian; he confessed and partook of the Sacrament
+with such signs of penitence and contrition that all the neighbors and
+inquisitive visitors wept as they surrounded the dying man's bed.
+
+And it would have been better for him if he had died then and there,
+before the devil had a chance to return to tempt him, and take
+possession of him, mind and body, when he got well again.
+
+"Let me be!" he said to _la Lupa_; "for mercy's sake, leave me in
+peace! I have seen death with my own eyes! Poor Maricchia is in
+despair. Now the whole region knows about it! If I don't see you, it's
+better for you and better for me."
+
+And he would rather have put his eyes out, than see _la Lupa's_, for
+when hers were fastened on him, they made him lose soul and body. He
+did not know what to do to overcome the enchantment. He paid for
+Masses to be sung for the souls in Purgatory, and he went for aid to
+the priest and the _brigadiere_. At Easter he went to confession, and
+as a penance, publicly stood on the flint stones of the holy ground in
+front of the church, putting out six handbreadths of tongue, and then,
+when _la Lupa_ returned to tempt him,--
+
+"See here," said he, "don't you come on the threshing-floor again,
+because if you do come to seek me again, as sure as God exists, I'll
+kill you."
+
+"All right, kill me!" replied _la Lupa_. "It makes no difference to
+me; but I can not live without you."
+
+When he saw her afar off coming through the green corn field, he left
+off pruning the vines, and went and got his axe from the elm.
+
+_La Lupa_ saw him coming to meet her, with his face pale and his eyes
+rolling wildly, with the axe shining in the sun; but she did not
+hesitate an instant, did not look away. She went straight forward with
+her hands full of bunches of red poppies, and devouring him with those
+black eyes of hers.
+
+"Ah! a curse on your soul!" stammered Nanni.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE ST. JOSEPH'S ASS.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEATH OF THE ST. JOSEPH'S ASS.]
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE ST. JOSEPH'S ASS.
+
+
+They had bought it at the Fair of Buccheri when it was still a young
+colt, and if it caught sight of a she ass, it would run to it and try
+to nurse; for this reason, it had got blows and kicks on its rump, and
+it was all in vain for them to shout "_arricca_"--get up--to it.
+
+_Compare_ Neli, when he saw how lively and obstinate it was, and how
+it licked its nostrils when the blows fell, and how it kept wagging
+its ears, said,--
+
+"That's the one for me."
+
+And he went straight up to the proprietor, with his hand in his pocket
+on thirty-five _lire_.
+
+"The colt is handsome," said the proprietor, "and is worth more than
+thirty-five _lire_. No matter if it has a white and black skin like a
+magpie. There, I'll show you its mother; we keep her over yonder in
+that little grove, because the colt's all the time wanting to nurse.
+You shall see what a pretty dark hide it's got! Why, she does more
+work for me than a mule would, and has given me more colts than she
+has hairs on her back. My conscience! I don't know where this colt got
+its magpie coat. But it is well built, I tell you. Even men aren't
+judged by their moustaches. Look, what a chest! and what thick, solid
+legs! See how it holds its ears. An ass that holds its ears up like
+that can be put in a cart or to a plow as you please, and it will
+carry four bushels of corn better than a mule, I swear it will--by all
+the saints. Just feel that tail--strong enough to hold up you and all
+your kith and kin."
+
+_Compare_ Neli knew that as well as the other, but he wasn't dunce
+enough to say so, and he stood with his hand in his pocket, shrugging
+his shoulders and making grimaces while the proprietor of the colt
+made it turn round before them.
+
+"Huh!" grunted _compare_ Neli, "with a skin like that, it looks like
+Saint Joseph's ass. Animals of that color are always _vigliacche_,[15]
+and when you ride them about, people laugh in your face. Am I going to
+be made a laughing stock for a Saint Joseph's ass?"
+
+  [15] Cowardly, ridiculous, vile.
+
+It was the _padrone's_ turn to turn his back on him in a passion,
+screaming that some people didn't know a good animal when they saw
+one, and if they hadn't any money to buy with, they'd better not come
+to the fair, and waste good Christian's time--on a saint's day, too.
+
+_Compare_ Neli let him fume away, and he went off with his brother,
+who pulled the sleeve of his jacket, and whispered in his ear, that if
+he was going to throw away his money on that good-for-nothing animal
+he would deserve to be kicked.
+
+While the _padrone_ pretended to be shelling some young beans,
+holding the halter between his legs, _compare_ Neli, not really losing
+sight of the Saint Joseph's ass, went off on a tour of inspection
+among the mules and horses, now and again stopping to criticise or
+even haggle over the price of this one or of that among the better
+animals; but he did not open his hand, which still clasped safely in
+his pocket the thirty-five _lire_ as if it were going to buy half the
+fair. But his brother kept telling him in a whisper, pointing to the
+ass, which they called Saint Joseph's,--
+
+"That's the one for us."
+
+The ass's mistress, every once in a while, came over to her husband to
+see how business was progressing, and when she saw him sitting with
+the halter in his hand, she said,--
+
+"Isn't the Madonna going to send a purchaser for the foal, to-day?"
+
+And the husband would always reply in these terms,--
+
+"None yet! One's been here bargaining, and he liked it. But he
+objected to the price, and went off again with the money in his
+pocket. There he is, over yonder with the white cap, beyond that flock
+of sheep. He hasn't bought anything yet; that means, he'll be back
+again."
+
+The woman was about to squat down on a couple of stones near her foal,
+to see whether it would be sold or not. But her husband said to her,--
+
+"Off with you. If they see you are waiting, they won't finish the
+bargain."
+
+Meantime the foal was nosing about between the legs of several
+she-asses that were passing by. It wanted to nurse, for it was half
+starved. It was just opening its mouth to bray when the _padrone_
+reduced it to silence by a shower of blows because they had not wanted
+it.
+
+"It's still there," said _compare_ Neli in his brother's ear,
+pretending to turn round and look for something. "If we wait till the
+Ave Maria, we may be able to get it for five _lire_ cheaper than the
+price that we offered."
+
+The May sunshine was warm so that gradually amid all the noise and
+bustle of the fair a great silence followed throughout the whole
+field, as if no one were there: then it was that the mistress of the
+young ass came to her husband again and said:
+
+"I wouldn't hold out for five _lire_ more or less, for to-night we
+have not enough to buy our supper and you know well that the foal will
+eat his head off in a month if he remains on our hands."
+
+"If you don't go off," replied her husband, "I'll give you a kick that
+you'll remember."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus passed the hours at the fair; but of all those who passed in
+front of the Saint Joseph's ass not one stopped to look at it, and
+that, too, though the _padrone_ had chosen the most humble place near
+the animals of small value, so that with its magpie skin it might not
+be compared with the beautiful bay mules and the sleek horses! Some
+one like _compare_ Neli was wanted to buy his Saint Joseph's ass, at
+the sight of which every one at the fair was laughing.
+
+The colt, after such a long waiting in the sun, let his head and ears
+hang down; his _padrone_ went and squatted on the stones, with his
+hands also hanging between his knees and the halter in his hands,
+gazing at the long shadows that began to be cast across the plain from
+the sun, which was preparing to set, and at the legs of all those
+animals that had not as yet found purchasers.
+
+Just then _compare_ Neli and his brother, and a friend of theirs whom
+they had picked up for the occasion, came sauntering by, with their
+noses in the air; but the owner of the young ass turned his head aside
+so as not to seem to be on the look out for them. And _compare_ Neli's
+friend, squinting up his eyes, remarked as if the idea had just
+occurred to him:
+
+"O, see that Saint Joseph's ass! Why don't you buy that one, _compare_
+Neli?"
+
+"I bargained it this morning; but he asks too much for it. Besides, I
+should be the laughing stock of the town if I were seen with that
+black and white beast. You see no one has had a thought of buying it
+so far."
+
+"That's so, but the color makes no difference in the use that you make
+of one."
+
+And turning to the _padrone_ he asked,--
+
+"How much must we pay for that Saint Joseph's ass of yours?"
+
+The mistress of the Saint Joseph's ass, seeing that the business was
+on once more, had quietly approached, with her hands clasped under her
+apron.
+
+"Don't speak to me of it," cried _compare_ Neli making off across the
+field. "Don't speak of it again, I don't want to hear a word."
+
+"If you don't want it, let it be," replied the _padrone_. "If he does
+not take it, some one else will. 'A sad wretch is he who has nothing
+left to sell after the fair.'"
+
+"And I will be heard, _santo diavolone_!" screamed the friend. "Can't
+I be permitted to have my say?"
+
+And he ran and caught _compare_ Neli by the jacket, then he came back
+and whispered something in the _padrone's_ ear as the man was about to
+return home with his young ass, and he flung his arm round his neck,
+murmuring,--
+
+"Look here! five _lire_ more or less, and if you don't sell it to-day
+you won't find another blunderhead like my _compare_ to buy a beast,
+which between you and me, isn't worth a cigar!"
+
+He also embraced the young ass's mistress, whispered in her ear to win
+her to his way of thinking. But she shrugged her shoulders and replied
+with stern face,--
+
+"'Tis my husband's business: I don't mix myself in it. But if he lets
+it go for less than forty _lire_ he is a dunce, and that's what I say.
+It cost us more than that."
+
+"This morning I was crazy when I offered him thirty-five _lire_,"
+resumed _compare_ Neli. "Has he found any other purchaser even at that
+price? I reckon not. In the whole fair there aren't more than four
+scabby rams and the Saint Joseph's ass. I'll give thirty _lire_ if
+he'll take it."
+
+"Take it," softly whispered the young ass's mistress to her husband,
+and the tears came into her eyes. "We haven't made enough this evening
+to buy our supper, and Turiddu has the fever again; he'll have to have
+quinine."
+
+"_Santo diavolone!_" screamed her husband, "if you don't get away from
+here I'll give you a taste of this halter."
+
+"Thirty-two and a half, there now!" cried the friend at last, giving
+him a powerful shake to the collar.
+
+"Neither you nor I! This time my advice ought to hold, by all the
+saints in paradise! and I don't even ask for a glass of wine. Don't
+you see the sun is set? What is the use of you both holding out any
+longer?"
+
+And he snatched the halter from the _padrone's_ hand, while, at the
+same time, _compare_ Neli with an oath took out of his pocket his
+closed fist clutching the thirty-five _lire_, and gave them to the man
+without looking at them as if they took his liver with them. The
+friend retired to one side with the mistress of the young ass to count
+over the money on a rock, while the _padrone_ went off to another part
+of the fair like a colt, cursing and beating himself with his fists.
+
+But when he was at last rejoined by his wife, who was carefully
+recounting the money in her handkerchief, he demanded,--
+
+"Have you got it?"
+
+"Yes, the whole of it; praised be San Gaetano![16] Now I'll go to the
+apothecary's."
+
+  [16] The especial saint of the Provident.
+
+"I got the best of them! I'd have let them have the beast for twenty
+_lire_; asses of that color are _vigliacchi_--vile."
+
+And _compare_ Neli, as he got behind the ass to drive it off, said,--
+
+"As God exists I robbed him of the colt! The color makes no
+difference. See what solid legs, _compare_! That beast is worth forty
+_lire_ with one's eyes shut."
+
+"If it had not been for me," returned the friend, "you would not have
+struck the bargain. Here are still two _lire_ and a half of your
+money. And if you don't object we will go and have a drink to the
+health of the ass!"
+
+Now the colt needed to have its health in order to repay the
+thirty-two and a half _lire_ which had been paid for it, and the straw
+which it ate. Meanwhile it was contented to frisk behind _compare_
+Neli, trying to bite his new _padrone's_ coat tails, and making no ado
+because it was leaving forever the stall where it had been sheltered
+by its mother's side, free to rub its nose on the edge of the manger,
+or to gambol and cut up capers, butting with the ram or going to rub
+the pig's back in its pen.
+
+And the _padrone_, who was still again counting over the money in her
+handkerchief before the apothecary's counter, had on her side no
+regrets, although she had assisted at the birth of the foal with its
+black and white skin, as shiny as silk, and which could not at first
+stand up on its legs, but lay in the warm sun in the court-yard while
+all the grass which had made it grow so big and strong had passed
+through her hands!
+
+The only person who missed the foal was its mother, who stretched out
+her neck toward the entrance of the stall and brayed. But when her
+udder was no longer painfully distended with the milk, she also forgot
+about the foal.
+
+"Now you will see," said _compare_ Neli, "that this ass will carry
+four bushels of corn better than a mule, for me."
+
+And at harvest time he was set to threshing.
+
+At the threshing, the colt, fastened by the neck, in a row with other
+animals--worn out mules, decrepit horses, paced over the sheaves,
+from morning till night, so that when it was brought back to the
+stable, he was so tired that he had no desire to bite at the heap of
+straw where they put him up in the shade when the wind blew, while the
+peasants did their winnowing with shouts of "_Viva Maria!_"
+
+Then he let his nose hang down and drooped his pendent ears, like a
+full-fledged ass with eyes dulled, as if he were weary of gazing
+across over that vast plain, smoking here and there with the dust of
+the threshing-floors, and he seemed made for nothing else than to die
+of thirst and enforced treading on sheaves.
+
+At eventide, it was sent to the village with the saddle-bags filled
+full, and the _padrone's_ boy followed, to prick it in the withers,
+along the hedges lining the road, that seemed alive with the
+chattering of the tomtits, and the odor of the catnip and rosemary;
+and the ass would gladly have snatched a mouthful, if they had not
+always kept it on the go, until at last, the blood ran to its legs and
+they had to take it to the farrier; but this did not trouble the
+_padrone_, because the harvest was good, and the young ass had earned
+its cost,--his thirty-two _lire_ and a half. The _padrone_ said,--
+
+"Now, the work has worn him out, but if I could sell him for twenty
+_lire_, I should still have made a good thing out of him."
+
+The only person who had a fondness for the young ass was the boy who
+made it trot over the road on the way from the threshing-floor. And he
+felt badly when the farrier burnt its legs with red-hot irons, so that
+the young ass squirmed and flung its tail into the air, and pricked up
+its ears, and when it ran across the field of the fair, and it tried
+to break loose from the twisted rope which they fastened to its lip,
+and it rolled its eyes with the agony, as if it were undergoing
+torture, when the farrier's apprentice came to change the hot irons,
+red as fire, and the skin smoked and sizzled, like fish in a
+frying-pan. But _compare_ Neli cried to his boy,--
+
+"You beast! what are you weeping for? Now that he is played out, and
+since the harvest has been a good one, we'll sell him and buy a mule,
+and that will be better."
+
+Boys do not understand some things, and after the young ass was sold
+to _massaro_ Cirino, of Licodiana, _compare_ Neli's son used to visit
+it in the stall, and to caress its face and neck, and the ass would
+turn round its head, and snuff as if it had become attached to him,
+while, as a general thing, asses are made to be tied wherever their
+_padrone_ may see fit to tie them, and change their lot as they change
+their stall.
+
+_Massaro_ Cirino, of Licodiana, had paid a very small price for the
+Saint Joseph's ass, because it still bore the scars on its pastern,
+and _compare_ Neli's wife, when she saw the poor beast go by with its
+new master, said,--
+
+"That beast was our mascot. That black and white skin brought joy to
+the threshing-floor, and now the profits are going from bad to worse,
+for we have had to sell the mule, too."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Massaro_ Cirino had yoked the ass to the plow, together with an old
+mare which matched it like a stone in a ring, and drew her brave
+furrow all day long, for miles and miles, from the time the lark began
+to sing in the clear morning sky, till, with quick and hasty flights,
+and melancholy chirping, the robin red-breasts ran to hide behind the
+naked bushes, trembling with cold under the mist that rose like a sea.
+
+Only, as the ass was smaller than the mare, a cushion of hay was put
+over the saddle under the yoke, and it had hard work to break up the
+frozen clods, by dint of chafed shoulders.
+
+"It'll help spare the mare, who's getting old," said _massaro_ Cirino.
+"It's got a heart as broad and big as the Plain of Catania, that Saint
+Joseph's ass has! and you would not think it!"
+
+And he added, turning to his wife, who had followed him, wrapped in a
+mantellina, penuriously scattering the seed,--
+
+"If anything should happen to it--Heaven forefend--we are ruined with
+the prospects before us."
+
+The woman looked forward to the prospects of crops in the rocky,
+desolate, little field, with its white and cracked soil, so long had
+it been since the rain fell, and all the water it got came in the form
+of mist and fog, of the kind that spoils the seed, and when it was
+time to dig up the ground, it was so yellow and hard, that you would
+call it the very beard of the devil, as if it had been burnt with
+sulphur matches!
+
+"In spite of the crop which I put in," mourned _massaro_ Cirino,
+pulling off his doublet, "why, that ass has worked himself to death
+like a stupid mule. That ass is under a curse!"
+
+His wife had a lump in her throat at the sight of the parched field,
+and she replied with tears rolling from her eyes,--
+
+"The ass had nothing to do with the failure. It brought a good crop
+to _compare_ Neli. But we are unfortunate."
+
+So the Saint Joseph's ass changed masters once more, when _massaro_
+Cirino returned from the field with the sickle over his shoulder, it
+being useless even to try to reap that year, although the images of
+the saints had been stuck into bamboo sticks all over the ground for
+protection, and two _tarì_[17] had been paid to the priest for his
+blessing.
+
+  [17] A _tarì_ is one-thirtieth of an _onza_.
+
+"It's the devil that we want rather than the saints," said _massaro_
+Cirino, irreverently, when he saw all those stalks standing up like
+crests, which even the ass refused to touch, and he spat up towards
+that turquoise-colored sky, so relentlessly cloudless.
+
+It was then that _compare_ Luciano, the carter, meeting _massaro_
+Cirino, as he was driving back the ass with empty saddlebags, asked,--
+
+"What'll you take for that Saint Joseph's ass?"
+
+"Anything you'll give me! Cursed be he and the saint who made him!"
+replied _massaro_ Cirino. "Now we haven't any more bread to eat, or
+fodder to give the beast."
+
+"I'll give you fifteen _lire_ for it, seeing that you are ruined, but
+the ass isn't worth so much, for it won't last out more than six
+months! See how thin it is!"
+
+"You might have got more than that," grumbled _massaro_ Cirino's wife,
+after the bargain was settled. "_Compare_ Luciano's mule's dead, and
+he hadn't money enough to buy another. Now if he hadn't bought our
+Saint Joseph's ass, he wouldn't have known what to do with his cart
+and harnesses; you'll see that ass'll be a fortune to him."
+
+The ass was set to work drawing the cart, but the shafts of it were
+much too high for it, and brought all the weight on its shoulders, so
+that it would not have survived even six months; for it went limping
+along over the hilly roads under _compare_ Luciano's cruel
+cudgelling, who tried to put a little spirit into it; and when it went
+down hill, the case was even worse, for then the whole load rested on
+it, and pushed against it so hard that it had to make its back like an
+arch to hold the cart back, and push with those poor scarred legs, and
+people would laugh to see it, and when it fell it would have taken all
+the angels of Paradise to get it to its feet again. But _compare_
+Luciano knew that he carried three quintals of merchandise more than a
+mule, and the load would bring him five _tarì_ a quintal.
+
+"Every day that Saint Joseph's ass lives," said he, "I make fifteen
+_tarì_, and his keep costs me less than a mule's would."
+
+Every time the people who happened to be sauntering along behind the
+cart saw the poor beast, which could hardly put one leg in front of
+the other, arching its spine and panting heavily, with discouragement
+clouding its eye, they would say,--
+
+"Block the wheel with a rock, and let that poor creature have a chance
+to get its breath."
+
+But _compare_ Luciano would reply,--
+
+"If I let him do as he pleases, I should not make my fifteen _tarì_ a
+day. His hide's got to pay for mine. When he can't do any more work I
+shall sell him to the lime dealer; for the beast is good enough for
+his work. I tell you there's no truth at all in the idea that St.
+Joseph's asses are _vigliacchi_. Besides, I got this one of _massaro_
+Cirino for a piece of bread, after he was 'poverished."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In this way the Saint Joseph's ass passed into the hands of the
+lime-dealer, who already possessed a score or more of asses all lean
+and moribund, which carried his sacks of plaster, and picked up a
+wretched living by means of the mouthfuls of weeds that they could
+snatch as they went along the road.
+
+The lime-dealer objected to the Saint Joseph's ass because it was
+covered with worse scars than his other beasts, with its legs seared
+by the hot iron, and the skin on its chest worn off by the poitrel,
+and the withers raw by the chafing of the plow, and the knees barked
+by constant falls, and then that pelt of black and white seemed to him
+so inharmonious among his other brown-skinned animals.
+
+"That makes no difference," replied _compare_ Luciano. "Besides, it
+will serve to distinguish your asses at a distance."
+
+But he deducted two _tarì_ from the seven _lire_ that he had asked, so
+as to bring the business to a settlement.
+
+Now the Saint Joseph's ass would not have been recognized even by the
+_padrona_ who had been present when it was born, so greatly had it
+changed as it stumbled along with its nose to the ground and its ears
+curled over like an umbrella under the lime-dealer's heavy sacks,
+twitching its flanks under the blows of the youth who drove the
+caravan. But then the _padrona_ herself was changed at that time,
+what with the bad harvests they had gathered and the hunger from which
+she had suffered, and the fevers which they had all contracted in the
+low lands, she and her husband and her Turiddu, while they had no
+money to buy any more quinine at the apothecary's and at the same time
+they had no more asses even of the Saint Joseph kind to sell for the
+small price of thirty-five _lire_!
+
+In winter, when there was little work and the wood for burning the
+lime was scarce, and to be had only at a distance, and the frozen
+paths hadn't a leaf on their hedges or a mouthful of stubble along by
+the icy gutters, life was still harder for those poor brutes, and the
+_padrone_ knew that in winter not half as much was eaten; so he used
+to buy a good stock of provisions in the spring.
+
+At night the drove remained in the open air near the lime-burners, and
+the brutes clustered together for protection against the cold. But
+those stars shining like swords through and through them in spite of
+their thick hides, and all those ulcer-eaten beasts shook and trembled
+in the cold as if they were human beings.
+
+But then there are many Christians who are not better off, not having
+even such a ragged coat as that wrapt up in which the herd-boy slept
+before the furnace.
+
+Near by there lived a poor widow in a dilapidated hut, more
+tumble-down by far than the lime-furnace, and through its roof the
+stars penetrated like swords, as if it were no roof at all, and the
+wind fluttered the wretched rags of her covering. At first she took in
+washing, but that was meagre pay, for the people thereabouts do their
+own washing, when they wash at all, and now that her little boy had
+grown she went about peddling wood in the village. No one had known
+her husband and no one knew where she got the wood that she sold; that
+was known only by her son, who went about picking it up here and
+there at the risk of getting shot by the _campieri_.
+
+"If you only had an ass!" the lime-dealer had said to her, hoping that
+he might dispose of that Saint Joseph's ass, which was good for
+nothing more, "then you could take down to the village much bigger
+fagots, now that your son is getting to be grown up."
+
+The poor woman had a few _lire_ in the knot of her handkerchief, and
+she let herself be persuaded into it by the lime-burner, because it is
+said that "old things go to destruction in the house of a fool."
+
+One thing at least was true: the poor Saint Joseph's ass had a more
+endurable existence at last, because the widow regarded it as a
+treasure by reason of the few _soldi_ that it had cost her, and she
+went out nights in search of straw and hay for it, and she kept it in
+her hut next her own bed because its vital heat was as good as a fire,
+and in this way one hand washed the other, as the proverb has it.
+
+The woman driving the ass loaded with a mountain of wood so that its
+ears could not be seen, built air-castles as she went, and her son
+ravaged the hedges, and risked his life in the borders of the
+woodlands to gather together his load, while both mother and son had
+an idea that they were going to become rich by that business, until,
+finally, the baron's _campiere_ caught the boy breaking off branches,
+and gave him a terrible beating.
+
+The doctor, for the price of curing the lad, devoured all the spare
+_soldi_ knotted in the handkerchief, the store of wood, and whatever
+else vendible she had,--and that was not much in all conscience,--so
+that the widow one night when her son was in a raging fever, with his
+face turned to the wall, and there was not a mouthful of bread in the
+house, went out, raging and talking to herself, as if she, too, had
+the fever, and she went to break off an almond-tree near by in such a
+way that it would not appear how it happened, and at dawn she loaded
+it on the ass to go and sell it. But the ass on the way up stumbled
+under the weight, and went down on its knees, just as Saint Joseph's
+ass knelt before the infant Jesus, and would not get up again.
+
+"Souls of the dead!" stammered the woman, "won't you carry this load
+of wood for me."
+
+And the passers-by pulled the ass's tail, and they bit its ears, so as
+to make it get up.
+
+"Don't you see it's dying?" at last remarked a carter, and so at least
+the others let it alone, because the ass had the eye of a dead fish, a
+cold nose, and a shudder ran over its skin.
+
+The woman, meantime, thought of her son, who was delirious with fever,
+and a flushed face, and cried,--
+
+"Now what shall we do,--what shall we do?"
+
+"If you will sell it, and all the wood on its back for five _tarì_,
+I'll give that much," said the carter who had an empty cart; and as
+the woman looked at it with squinting eyes, he added, "I'll only take
+the wood, for the ass isn't worth that--"
+
+And he gave a kick to the carcass, which sounded like a burst drum.
+
+
+
+
+THE BEREAVED.
+
+
+The little girl appeared at the door, twisting the corner of her apron
+in her fingers, and said,--
+
+"Here I am!"
+
+Then, when no one paid any attention to her, she looked shyly first at
+one and then at another of the women who were kneading dough, and
+spoke again,--
+
+"They told me,--'Go to _comare_ Sidora.'"
+
+"Come here, come here," cried _comare_ Sidora, red as a tomato, as she
+stood in the back part of the bake-shop. "Wait a moment, and I'll make
+you a nice cake."
+
+"It means they are bringing _comare_ Nunzia the Viaticum; they've sent
+the little girl away," observed the woman from Lacodia.
+
+One of the women engaged in kneading the dough, turned her head, with
+her hands still at work in the trough, her arms bare to the elbow, and
+asked the little girl,--
+
+"How is your step-mother?"
+
+The child, not knowing the woman, looked at her with frightened eyes,
+and hanging her head, and nervously working at the ends of her apron,
+said, in a low voice, between her set teeth,--
+
+"She's in bed."
+
+"Don't you see 'tis the Sacrament," replied la Licodiana. "Now the
+neighbors have begun to scream at the door."
+
+"As soon as I finish kneading this dough," said _comare_ Sidora, "I'll
+run over a moment to see if they have need of anything. _Compare_ Meno
+loses his right hand when this second wife of his dies."
+
+"Some men have no luck with their wives, just as some are unfortunate
+with their mules. No sooner do they get 'em than they lose 'em.
+There's _comare_ Angela."
+
+"Yesterday evening," observed la Licodiana, "I saw _compare_ Meno at
+his door; he had come back from the vineyard before the Ave Marie, and
+was blowing his nose on his handkerchief."
+
+"But," suggested the woman who was kneading the dough, "he is a master
+hand at killing off his wives. In less than three years already two of
+_curátolo_[18] Nino's daughters have been eaten up, one after the
+other! Wait a little and you'll see the third go the same way, and all
+_curátolo_ Nino's things wasted."
+
+  [18] The manager of a farm, not a tenant.
+
+"Is this little girl _comare_ Nunzia's daughter, or his first wife's?"
+
+"She's his first wife's daughter. But this one has been just as kind
+to her as though she had been her own mamma, because the little orphan
+was her niece, you know."
+
+The child, hearing them speaking of herself, began to weep silently in
+a corner, thus relieving her bursting heart, which she had till then
+kept under control, by playing with her apron.
+
+"Come here, come here," pursued _comare_ Sidora. "The nice cake's all
+ready. There, there! Don't cry; for your mamma's in Paradise."
+
+The little girl then dried her eyes with her doubled fists, because
+she saw that _comare_ Sidora was preparing to open the oven.
+
+"Poor _comare_ Nunzia!" said a neighbor, appearing at the door. "The
+gravediggers are on their way. They just passed by here."
+
+"Heaven protect me! as I am under Mary's grace!"[19] exclaimed the
+women, crossing themselves.
+
+  [19] "_Lontano sia! che son figlia di Maria!_"
+
+_Comare_ Sidora took the cake out of the oven, brushed off the ashes,
+and handed it, smoking hot, to the little girl, who took it in her
+apron and walked away slowly, slowly, blowing on it as she went.
+
+"Where are you going?" cried _comare_ Sidora. "Stay here! There's a
+black-faced _ba-bau_ at your house who carries folks off."
+
+The little orphan listened gravely, with wide-opened eyes. Then she
+replied in the same obstinate drawl,--
+
+"I am going to carry it to my mamma."
+
+"Your mamma is dead; stay here," said one of the neighbors. "Eat your
+cake."
+
+Then the little girl squatted down on the door-step, the image of
+sadness, holding her cake in her hand without offering to eat it.
+
+Then suddenly seeing "_il babbo_" coming, she jumped up joyously and
+ran to meet him.
+
+_Compare_ Meno entered without saying a word, and sat down in a
+corner, with his hands dangling between his knees, with a long face,
+and his lips as white as paper; for since the day before, he had not
+put a morsel of food into his mouth because of his grief. He looked at
+the women as if to say,--
+
+"_Poveretto me!_"
+
+Seeing the black handkerchief around his neck, the women, with their
+hands still pasted with dough, made a circle round him and condoled
+with him in chorus.
+
+"Don't speak of it to me, _comare_ Sidora," he exclaimed, shaking his
+head, and heaving up his great shoulders. "This is a thorn that will
+never be pulled out of my heart. That woman was a real saint! I did
+not deserve her, saving your presence. Only day before yesterday, when
+she was so sick, she got up to tend to the weaning colt, and she would
+not let me call in the doctor, or buy any medicine, either--so as to
+not waste any money. I sha'n't find another wife like her. No I
+sha'n't, I tell you. Let me weep--I've good reason to."
+
+And he began to shake his head and to heave his shoulders as if his
+misfortune were a burden not to be borne.
+
+"As to getting another wife," said la Licodiana, to encourage him,
+"all you've got to do is to look for one."
+
+"No! no!" asseverated _compare_ Meno, with his head hung low, like a
+mule's. "Such another wife is not to be had. This time I shall remain
+a widower. I tell you I shall."
+
+_Comare_ Sidora interrupted him,--
+
+"Don't say foolish things like that. You must get another wife, if
+only for the sake of this little orphan girl; for otherwise, who will
+look out for her when you are out working? You wouldn't let her run in
+the streets, would you?"
+
+"Then find me another wife like my last one! She would not wash
+herself, for fear of soiling the water; and at home, she served me
+better than a farm-hand--affectionate and faithful. Why, she would not
+take even a handful of beans from the rack, or ever open her mouth to
+ask for anything. And beside, a fine dowry--things as good as gold.
+And I've got to give it all back because she had no children. At
+least, so the sacristan says, when he came with the Holy Water. And
+how kind she was to the little girl who reminded her of her poor
+sister. Any other woman, except an aunt, would have cast an evil eye
+on her, the poor little orphan!
+
+"If you asked _curátolo_ Nino for his third daughter, it would make
+things all right, both for the orphan and for the dowry," suggested la
+Licodiana.
+
+"That's what I say. But don't speak of it to me, for now my mouth is
+bitter as gall."
+
+"I wouldn't talk about it now," said _comare_ Sidora. "Eat a bit of
+something, _compare_ Meno. You are all tired out."
+
+"No! no!" returned _compare_ Meno several times. "Don't speak to me of
+eating, for I have a lump in my throat."
+
+_Comare_ Sidora placed before him on a stool fresh bread with ripe
+olives, a piece of sheep's-head cheese, and a jug of wine. And the
+poor clumsy fellow set to work nibbling at it, all the time grumbling,
+with a long face.
+
+"Such bread as she made," he observed with a quaver in his voice, "no
+one else could ever make. Just as if it were made of real meal. And
+with a handful of wild fennel, she would make a soup to lick your
+fingers over! Now I shall have to buy bread at the shop of that thief,
+_mastro_ Puddo; and as for hot soup, I sha'n't have any more, when I
+come home wet as a fresh-hatched chicken. And I shall have to go to
+bed with a cold stomach. Only the other night, while I was watching
+with her, after I had been digging and grubbing all day on the hill,
+and caught myself snoring as I sat next the bed, so tired I was, the
+poor soul said to me: 'Go and get a mouthful of something to eat. I
+left the soup to keep hot on the hearth.' And she was always thinking
+about my comfort, and about the house, and whatever was to be done,
+and this thing and that thing; and she could not come to an end of
+speaking or of giving her last directions, like one who is going off
+on a long journey, and I heard her constantly muttering between waking
+and sleeping. And how contentedly she went off to the other world!
+With the crucifix on her breast, and her hands folded over it. She
+has no need of Masses and rosaries, saint that she was. Money spent on
+the priest would be money thrown away."
+
+"World of tribulation!" exclaimed a neighbor. "_Comare_ Angela's ass
+is like to die of the colic."
+
+"But my misfortunes are heavier," ended _compare_ Meno, wiping his
+mouth with the back of his hand. "No, don't make me eat any more, for
+the mouthfuls fall like lumps of lead into my stomach. You eat
+something, you poor innocent, for you don't understand what you've
+lost. Now you have no one any longer to wash you and brush your hair.
+Now you haven't a mamma any more to shelter you under her wings like a
+setting hen, and you are ruined, as I am. I found her for you, but a
+second stepmother like her you won't get, my daughter!"
+
+The child with bursting heart put up her lip again, and stuck her
+fists into her eyes.
+
+"No, you can't possibly get along alone," interposed _comare_ Sidora.
+"You must find another wife for the sake of this poor little
+motherless girl, left in the midst of the street."
+
+"And how shall I get along? And my colt? And my house? And who'll look
+after the hens? Let me weep, _comare_ Sidora! It would have been
+better if I had died instead of that good soul."
+
+"Hush, hush! you don't know what you are saying, and you don't know
+what a house without its head is!"
+
+"That is true," assented _compare_ Meno, comforted.
+
+"Just take example from poor _comare_ Angela! First, her husband died;
+then her grown-up son, and now her ass is also dying."
+
+"The ass ought to be bled in the belly, if it has the colic," said
+_compare_ Meno.
+
+"Come, you know all about such things," suggested the neighbor. "Do a
+work of charity for the sake of your wife's soul."
+
+_Compare_ Meno got up to go to _comare_ Angela's, and the little
+orphan ran behind him like a chicken, now that she had no one else in
+the world. _Comare_ Sidora, good housewife that she was, called him
+back.
+
+"And the house? How have you left it, now that there is no one there
+to look after it?"
+
+"I locked the door, and besides cousin Alfia lives opposite, and will
+keep an eye on it."
+
+Neighbor Angela's ass lay stretched out in the midst of the yard, with
+his muzzle cold and his ears hanging, every now and then kicking his
+four legs into the air whenever the colic made him draw in his sides
+like a pair of bellows. The widow crouching in front of him on the
+rocks, with her hands clenching her gray hair, and her eyes dry and
+despairing, was watching him, pale as a corpse.
+
+_Compare_ Meno manoeuvred round the animal, touching his ears,
+looking into his lifeless eyes, and when he saw that the blood was
+still oozing from the punctured vein under the belly, drop by drop,
+and coagulating in a black mass on his hairy skin, he remarked:
+
+"So you've had him bled, have you?"
+
+The widow fixed her dark eyes on his face without speaking, and nodded
+her "yes."
+
+"Then there's nothing more to do," said _compare_ Meno, and he
+continued to stare at the ass, which stretched itself out on the
+stones, stiffly, with its hair all rumpled, like a dead cat.
+
+"It is God's will, sister!" said he to comfort her. "We are ruined,
+both of us!"
+
+He had gone round by the widow's side and squatted down on the stones,
+with his little daughter between his knees, and both of them continued
+to gaze at the poor beast, which from time to time threshed the air
+with its legs as if it were in the agonies of death.
+
+_Comare_ Sidora, when she had got the bread safely out of the oven,
+also came into the yard with the cousin Alfia, who had put on her new
+gown and wore her silk handkerchief on her head, all ready for a bit
+of gossip, and _comare_ Sidora said to _compare_ Meno, drawing him
+aside,--
+
+"_Curátolo_ Nino won't give you his third daughter, for at your house
+the women die off like flies, and he loses the dowry. And then la
+Santa is too young, and there's the risk that she'd fill your house
+with children."
+
+"If only one could be sure of boys! But there's always the danger of
+girls coming. Oh, I am so unfortunate!"
+
+"Well, there's the cousin Alfia. She is no longer young, and she has
+property,--the house and a bit of vineyard."
+
+_Compare_ Meno fixed his eyes on the cousin Alfia, who with her arms
+a-kimbo was pretending to look at the ass, and then he said, "That's
+so! One might think of that. But I am so very unlucky!"
+
+_Comare_ Sidora interrupted him,--
+
+"Think of those who are more unlucky than you are!"
+
+"No one is, I tell you. I shall never find another wife like her, I
+shall never be able to forget her, even if I married ten times. And
+this poor little orphan will never forget her, either."
+
+"Calm yourself! You'll forget her fast enough. And the little girl
+will forget her, too. Didn't she forget her own mother? But just look
+at poor neighbor Angela, whose ass is dying, and she hasn't got
+anything else. She'll never be able to forget it."
+
+_Comare_ Alfia saw that it was a favorable moment for her to approach,
+and drawing a long face, she began to eulogize the dead woman. She had
+with her own hands helped to lay her out on the bier, and had put over
+her face a fine linen handkerchief, of which she had a goodly store,
+as may be imagined.
+
+Then _compare_ Meno, with his heart melting within him, turned to his
+neighbor Angela, who was sitting motionless, as if she had been turned
+to stone.
+
+"I suppose you'll have the ass skinned won't you? At least get some
+money for his pelt."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Under the Shadow of Etna, by Giovanni Verga
+
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