Africana, in this crisis, suddenly became audacious, pushed her hand quickly forward, grasped the tobacco box and rushed towards the stairs, descending with Passacantando just behind her.
“Lord! Lord! See what I have done for you!” she exclaimed, throwing herself upon him. With shaking hands, they started together to open the snuff-box and look among the tobacco for the gold pieces. The pungent odour of the tobacco arose to their nostrils, and both, as they felt the desire to sneeze, were seized with a strong impulse to laugh. In endeavouring to repress their sneezes, they staggered against one another, pushing and wavering. But suddenly an indistinct growling was heard, then hoarse shouts broke forth from the room above, and the old man appeared at the top of the stairs. His face was livid in the red light of the lantern, his form thin and emaciated, his legs bare, his shirt in rags. He looked down at the thieving couple, and, waving his arms like a damned soul, cried:
“The gold pieces! The gold pieces! The gold pieces!”
VI SORCERY
When seven consecutive sneezes of Mastro Peppe De Sieri, called La Brevetta, resounded loudly in the square of the City Hall, all the inhabitants of Pescara would seat themselves around their tables and begin their meal. Soon after the bell would strike twelve, and simultaneously, the people would become very hilarious.
For many years La Brevetta had given this joyful signal to the people daily, and the fame of his marvellous sneezing spread through all the country around, and also through the adjoining countries. His memory still lives in the minds of the people, for he originated a proverb which will endure for many years to come.
I
Mastro Peppe La Brevetta was a plebeian, somewhat corpulent, thick-set, and clumsy; his face shining with a prosperous stupidity, his eyes reminded one of the eyes of a sucking calf, while his hands and feet were of extraordinary dimensions. His nose was long and fleshy, his jaw-bones very strong and mobile, and when undergoing a fit of sneezing, he looked like one of those sea-lions whose fat bodies, as sailors relate, tremble all over like a jelly-pudding.
Like the sea-lions, too, he was possessed of a slow and lazy motion, their ridiculously awkward attitudes, and their exceeding fondness for sleep. He could not pass from the shade to the sun, nor from the sun to the shade without an irrepressible impulse of air rushing through his mouth and nostrils. The noise produced, especially in quiet spots, could be heard at a great distance, and as it occurred at regular intervals, it came to be a sort of time-piece for the citizens of the town.
In his youth Mastro Peppe had kept a macaroni shop, and among the strings of dough, the monotonous noise of the mills and wheels, in the mildness of the flour-dusty air, he had grown to a placid stupidity. Having reached maturity, he had married a certain Donna Pelagia of the Commune of Castelli, and abandoning his early trade, he had since that time dealt in terra cotta and Majolica ware,—vases, plates, pitchers, and all the poor earthenware which the craftsmen of Castelli manufactured for adorning the tables of the land of Abruzzi. Among the simplicity and religiousness of those shapes, unchanged for centuries, he lived in a very simple way, sneezing all the time, and as his wife was a miserly creature, little by little her avaricious spirit had communicated itself to him, until he had grown into her penurious and miserly ways.