'He answers for us,' said many of them, in a breath. 'Good, Don Niccola! You answer for us. We are Christians. We wish to bury Don Ferdinando properly.'
'I have not the slightest objection,' said San Giacinto. 'On the contrary, I respect your wish, and I only regret that I have not the means of doing more honour to your friend. You must attend to that. Be kind enough to wait here while the priest blesses the body.'
The priest and the boy with the holy water passed in, and the gate closed upon the crowd. While they had been talking, the carpenter and his wife had entered the court. Basili's man led them to the door of the church and opened it. The woman marched in with her swinging stride, and one hand on her hips, while the other steadied the deal coffin.
'Where is he?' she asked in a loud, good-natured voice, for the church seemed very dark after the morning light outside.
She was answered by a low cry from the steps of the side altar, where the unhappy girl lay half across her lover's body, looking round towards the door, in a new horror.
The woman uttered an exclamation of surprise, and then slowly swung her burden round so that she could see her husband.
'Help me, Ciccio,' she said, in a matter-of-fact way. 'They are always inconvenient things.'
The man held up his hands and took the foot, while his wife raised her hands also and shifted the weight towards him little by little, until she got hold of the head. The loose lid rattled as they set the thing down on the floor. Then the woman took the rolled towel on which she had carried the weight, from her head, undid it, wiped her brow with it, and looked at the girl in some perplexity.
'It is the apothecary's Concetta,' she said, suddenly recognising the white features in the gloom. 'Oh, poor child! poor child!' she cried, going forward quickly, while her husband took the lid from the coffin and began to fumble in his leathern bag for his nails.
As the woman approached the step, Concetta threw her arms wildly over her head, stiffened her limbs straight out, and rolled over and over upon the damp pavement, in one of those strange fainting fits which sometimes seize women in moments of intense grief. The carpenter's wife tried to lift her, and to bend her arms, so as to get hold of her; but the girl was as rigid as though she were in a cataleptic trance.