"He was not" he cried angrily. "He saw the Siren. I told you."
I was silenced again.
"We put him to bed, though he was not ill. The doctor came, and took money, and the priest came and took more and smothered him with incense and spattered him with holy water. But it was no good. He was too big—like a piece of the sea. He kissed the thumb-bones of San Biagio and they never dried till evening."
"What did he look like?" I ventured.
"Like anyone who has seen the Siren. If you have seen her 'often and often' how is it you do not know? Unhappy, unhappy, unhappy because he knew everything. Every living thing made him unhappy because he knew it would die. And all he cared to do was to sleep."
I bent over my note book.
"He did no work, he forgot to eat, he forgot whether he had his clothes on. All the work fell on me, and my sister had to go out to service. We tried to make him into a beggar, but he was too robust to inspire pity, and as for an idiot, he had not the right look in his eyes. He would stand in the street looking at people, and the more he looked at them the more unhappy he became. When a child was born he would cover his face with his hands. If anyone was married—he was terrible then, and would frighten them as they came out of church. Who would have believed he would marry himself! I caused that, I. I was reading out of the paper how a girl at Ragusa had 'gone mad through bathing in the sea.' Giuseppe got up, and in a week he and that girl came in together.
"He never told me anything, but it seems that he went straight to her house, broke into her room, and carried her off. She was the daughter of a rich mine-owner, so you may imagine our peril. Her father came down, with a clever lawyer, but they could do no more than I. They argued and they threatened, but at last they had to go back and we lost nothing—that is to say, no money. We took Giuseppe and Maria to the Church and had them married. Ugh! that wedding! The priest made no jokes afterwards and coming out the children threw stones.... I think I would have died to make her happy; but as always happens, one could do nothing."
"Were they unhappy together then?"
"They loved each other, but love is not happiness. We can all get love. Love is nothing. Love is everywhere since the death of Jesus Christ. I had two people to work for now, for she was like him in everything—one never knew which of them was speaking. I had to sell our own boat and work under the bad old man you have to-day. Worst of all, people began to hate us. The children first—everything begins with them—and then the women and last of all the men. For the cause of every misfortune was—you will not betray me?"