"Yes, I am. Drunk with poison, you galley refuse. I only hope you will be strangled yet!"

At this the other felt very indignant. Not only had he never been to prison, but he had never so much as been accused of any offence against the law. Yet, mingled with his resentment, there was a vague feeling of terror.

"You are going crazy!" said he in a still lower tone. "What's the matter with you? Why should you talk to me like that? Have I ever done anything to you?"

Whereupon the other became confidential, and, groaning as though he were in physical pain, he declared that he was, in truth, madly in love with Giovanna, and that he had hoped, and prayed the devil, from the beginning, that Costantino would be found guilty.

"Even if the devil were to get my soul it wouldn't matter, because, you see, I don't believe in him!" said he, breaking into a foolish, cackling laugh, more disagreeable to listen to even than his previous maudlin distress. "I intend to marry Giovanna," he presently added.

Giacobbe was greatly astonished at this, but he pretended to be still more so. "What!" said he. "You take my breath away! How--why--what on earth do you mean? How can you marry her?"

"She will get a divorce, that's all. Well, what of that? There's a law that gives a woman the right to marry again if her husband has been sent to prison for a long sentence."

Giacobbe had heard some talk of this, but no case of legal divorce, still less of remarriage, had as yet been heard of in Orlei.

Nevertheless, not to appear ignorant, he said: "Oh, yes, I know; but it is a mortal sin. Giovanna Era will never do it!"

"That's just what I am worrying about, Giacobbe Dejas. Will you talk to her on the subject to-morrow?"

"Oh, yes, of course! To-morrow! You're an a.s.s, Brontu Dejas! You may be rich, but you are as stupid as a lizard, stupider than one! Here, when you might marry a maid,--some rich young girl, as fresh as a rose with the dew still on it,--you want instead to have that woman! Upon my word, it will give me something to laugh at for the next seven months!"

"All right, you can laugh till you split in two, like a ripe pomegranate! But I'm going to marry her!" said Brontu angrily. "There's no other woman like her, and I shall marry her; you will see!"

"Well, do marry her, my little spring bird!" cried the other, bursting into a loud laugh. Brontu joined in, and they continued on their way uproariously till they saw a tall figure with a staff silently approaching them.

"Uncle Isidoro Pane, did you have good sport?" shouted Giacobbe. "And your legs, have they plenty of punctures?"

"You had better turn leech-fisher yourself," said the other, coming up to them. "Whew! what a smell of brandy! Some one must have broken a cask near here!"

"Do you mean that you think we are drunk?" demanded Brontu in a bullying tone. "The only reason you don't get drunk yourself is because you haven't anything to do it with! Get away! get away, I tell you, or I'll crush you like a frog!"

The old man laughed softly, and walked on.

"Idiot!" said Giacobbe in an undertone. "Don't you know that he could have helped you with Giovanna? He's a friend of hers."

"Here! here!" shouted Brontu, turning around, and gesticulating with both arms. "Come back! come back, I tell you! 'Sidore Pane, _che ti morsichi il cane_!"[4] he laughed, delighted with his rhyme. But Isidoro did not stop.

"Do you hear me?" yelled the tipsy Brontu, stammering somewhat. "I tell you to come here! Ah! you won't do it, you little toad? I tell--you----"

But Isidoro silently pursued his way.

"Don't talk to him like that; what sort of way is this to carry on?"

remonstrated Giacobbe. Brontu thereupon adopted a new method.

"Little flower, come here, come here! Come listen to what I have to say.

You may tell _her_--that friend of yours--well, yes, Giovanna, that is who I mean. You may tell her that if she gets a divorce I'll marry her!"

This had the desired effect. The old man stopped short, and turning around, called in a distinct voice:

"Giacobbe Dejas!"

"What is it, my dear?" answered the herdsman mockingly.

"Make--him--keep--quiet!" returned Isidoro in the tone of a person who means to be obeyed.

For some unexplained reason, Giacobbe felt a sudden sense of chill as he heard the tone and those four emphatic words. Taking his new master by the arm he drew him quickly away, murmuring:

"You are a dunce! You behave as though you had no sense at all! What a way to talk!"

"Didn't you tell me to yourself?"

"I? You are dreaming! Am I crazy?"

They continued on their way, staggering along together, arm in arm. On the portico they found Aunt Martina, still spinning. She saw at once that her son was tipsy, but said nothing, knowing by experience that to irritate him when he was in that condition was only to arouse him to a state of fury. When he asked for wine, though, she said there was none.

"Ah! there is none? No wine in the Dejas' house! The richest people in the neighbourhood! What a miserly mother you are." Then he began to bl.u.s.ter: "I'm not going to make a scandal, but I can tell you I am going to marry Giovanna Era!"

"Yes, yes, you are going to marry her," said Aunt Martina to quiet him.

"But in the meantime, go to bed, and don't make such a noise; if she hears you, she won't have you."

He quieted down, but made Giacobbe unroll a couple of rush mats and spread them on the floor; then, throwing himself down, nothing would do but the herdsman must lie down as well, and sleep beside him; and rather than have any trouble, Aunt Martina was obliged to agree.

Thus it fell out that instead of beginning his term of service on the Monday, Giacobbe entered his new place on Sat.u.r.day evening.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] _Che ti morsichi il cane_,--"May the dog bite you."

CHAPTER V

Sunday morning, a fortnight later, found all the personages of our story a.s.sembled at Ma.s.s, with Priest Elias officiating. The country people said that when he celebrated he seemed to have wings.

Giovanna alone was absent; and this for two reasons. First, her late misfortune required the observance of a sort of mourning; she was expected not to show herself outside the house except when her work made it necessary. Apart from this, however, she had fallen into a state of lethargy, and appeared to be quite unable to move about, to go anywhere, to work, or even to pray. She had, indeed, never been much of a Christian at any time, though before the trial she had made a vow to walk barefoot to a certain church in the mountains, and, if Costantino were acquitted, to drag herself on her hands and knees from the point where the church first came into view to its doors; that is, a distance of about two kilometres.

Now, she had ceased praying, or talking, or eating, and even seemed to have lost all interest in her child. Aunt Bachissia had to feed him with bread crumbled up in milk in order to keep the poor little fellow alive.

Some of the neighbours said that Giovanna was losing her mind; and indeed it did look so. She would remain for hours at a time in a sort of stupor, crouched in a corner with her gla.s.sy eyes fixed on vacancy, and when she aroused it was only to fly into violent paroxysms, tearing her hair, and crying out wildly.

After the final interview with Costantino, when she had had the child with her, she could think of nothing else, and described the scene in the prison over and over again, with the monotonous insistence of a monomaniac:

"He was there, and he was laughing. He was livid, and yet he laughed, standing there behind the bars. Malthineddu seized hold of the bars, and he touched his little hands and then he laughed! My heart! my heart!

don't laugh like that; it hurts me, because I know that that is how dead people laugh! And the guards, standing there like harpies! At first they were good to us, those guards who watch over human flesh; but afterwards, when Costantino had been condemned, they were cruel, as cruel as dogs! Malthinu was frightened when he saw them, and cried; and his father laughed! Do you understand? The baby, the little, innocent thing, cried; he understood that his father had been condemned, and he cried! Oh, my heart! my heart!"

Then Aunt Bachissia, beside herself with impatience, and unable to hold in any longer, would exclaim:

"Honestly, Giovanna, any one would take you to be two years old! That child there has more sense than you. Simpleton!" And sometimes she would threaten to beat her; but prayers, sympathy, and threats were equally unavailing.