An Idyll
I knew a South Italian of the old Greek blood whose sister told him when he was a boy that he had eyes like a cow.
Raging with despair and grief he haunted the fountains and looked into the mirror of their waters. “Are my eyes,” he asked himself with horror, “are they really like the eyes of a cow?” “Alas!” he was compelled to answer, “they are only too sadly, sadly like them.”
And he asked those of his playmates whom he best knew and trusted whether it was indeed true that his eyes were like the eyes of a cow, but he got no comfort from any of them, for they one and all laughed at him and said that they were not only like, but very like. Then grief consumed his soul, and he could eat no food, till one day the loveliest girl in the place said to him:
“Gaetano, my grandmother is ill and cannot get her firewood; come with me to the bosco this evening and help me to bring her a load or two, will you?”
And he said he would go.
So when the sun was well down and the cool night air was sauntering under the chestnuts, the pair sat together cheek to cheek and with their arms round each other’s waists.
“O Gaetano,” she exclaimed, “I do love you so very dearly. When you look at me your eyes are like—they are like the eyes”—here she faltered a little—“the eyes of a cow.”
Thenceforward he cared not . . .
And so on.