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?"
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."
"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.
"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 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."
"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.
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 manœuvred 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."