"Blessed be the employer who says to his lady: 'Give without measuring, and put sapor in the wine of the haymaker!'"
"Amen!"
The benedictions extended from one to another: to him who had killed the sheep, to him who had washed the herbs and vegetables, to him who had polished the copper saucepan, to him who had seasoned the meats with spices. And the chief, in the fire of enthusiasm, in the sudden transport of a sort of poetic fury, expressed himself, all at once, in couplets. The band replied to him by immense clamors that reverberated through all the creeks, while on the iron of the scythes the flashes of the twilight, and the sheaves arranged on the top of the stacks, had the appearance of flames.
"Blessed be the woman who sings beautiful songs while bringing pitchers of old wine!"
"Amen!"
There was a thunderclap of joy. Then all were silent, and watched approach the chorus of the women, bearers of the last gifts of the mown field.
The women, in double file, were singing, carrying in their arms the large painted jars. And the uninitiated spectator, seeing them advance between the olive-trees, as through a colonnade, against the maritime background, might imagine he saw one of those votive images that develop harmoniously in bas-relief on the friezes of the temples or around the sarcophagi.
As he went back to the house this image of beauty accompanied him along the road, while he slowly wended his way amid the illusions of the evening, in which were still floating the waves of the choruses. At a bend in the road, he stopped to listen to a melodious voice that was approaching and that he seemed to recognize. As soon as he recognized it he started joyfully: it was the voice of Favetta, the young singer with the falconlike eyes, with the vibrating voice that always awoke in him the memory of that delicious May morning, resplendent on the labyrinth of the blossoming furze, on the solitude of the garden of gold in which, to his surprise, he thought he had discovered the secret of joy.
Without suspecting the presence of the stranger, hidden by a hedge, Favetta advanced, leading a cow by the tether. And she sang, her head high, her mouth open towards the sky, the full light on her face; and from her throat the song gushed forth, fluid, limpid, crystal as a stream. Behind her the fine, snowy beast ambled gently, and at each step its fetlock undulated, and its massive udder, swollen with milk by the pasture, dangled between its legs.
When she perceived the stranger, the singer stopped singing, and seemed about to halt; but he went to meet her with a joyous air, as if he had met a friend of the happy days.