“It is entirely useless! It is lost. Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”
He took a knife and went out. The streets were deserted. All of the devotees were in the church. Above the houses sped, like fugitive herds of cattle, the violet clouds of a September sunset.
In the church the united multitude sang in measured intervals as if in chorus to the music of the instruments. An intense heat emanated from the human bodies and the burning tapers. The silver head of Saint Gonselvo scintillated from on high like a light house. L’Ummalido entered. To the stupefaction of all, he walked up to the altar and said, in a clear voice, while holding the knife in his left hand:
“Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”
And he began to cut around the right wrist, gently, in full sight of the horrified people. The shapeless hand became detached little by little amidst the blood. It swung an instant suspended by the last filaments. Then it fell into a basin of copper which held the money offerings at the feet of the Patron Saint.
L’Ummalido then raised the bloody stump and repeated in a clear voice:
“Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”
II THE COUNTESS OF AMALFI
I
When, one day, toward two o’clock in the afternoon, Don Giovanni Ussorio was about to set his foot on the threshold of Violetta Kutufas’ house, Rosa Catana appeared at the head of the stairs and announced in a lowered voice, while she bent her head: