“Oh, I don’t mind, Cousin Tino,” answered Rocco Spatu. “It is nothing to me; for whoever trusts to one of those false cats of womankind is worse than a pig. I don’t want any sweetheart except Santuzza, who lets me have my wine on credit when I like, and she is worth two of the Mangiacarubbe any day of the week. A good handful, eh, Cousin Tino?”
“Pretty hostess, heavy bill,” said Pizzuti, spitting in the sand.
“They all look out for husbands to work for them,” added ’Ntoni. “They’re all alike.”
“And,” continued Goosefoot, “Uncle Crucifix ran off panting to the notary, with his heart in his mouth. So he had to take the Wasp after all.”
Here the apothecary, who had come down to the beach to smoke his pipe, joined in the conversation, and went on pounding in his usual way upon his usual theme that the world ought to be put in a mortar and pounded to pieces, and made all over again. But this time he really might as well have pounded dirty water in his mortar, for not one of them understood a word he said, unless, perhaps, it were ’Ntoni. He at least had seen the world, and opened his eyes, like the kittens; when he was a soldier they had taught him to read, and for that reason he, too, went to the drug-shop door and listened when the newspaper was read, and stayed to talk with the druggist, who was a good-natured fellow, and did not give himself airs like his wife, who kept calling out to him, “Why will you mix yourself up with what doesn’t concern you?”
“One must let the women talk, and manage things quietly,” said Don Franco, as soon as his wife was safe up-stairs. He didn’t mind taking counsel even with those who went barefoot, provided they didn’t put their feet on the chairs, and explained to them word for word all that there was printed in the newspaper, following it with his finger, telling them that the world ought to go, as it was written down there.
XIII.
Padron ’Ntoni, when his grandson came home to him drunk in the evening, did his best to get him off to bed without letting him be seen by the others, because such a thing had never been known among the Malavoglia, and old as he was, it brought the tears to his eyes. When he got up by night to call Alessio to go out to sea, he let the other one sleep; for that matter, he wouldn’t have been of any use if he had gone. At first ’Ntoni was ashamed of himself, and went down to the landing to meet them with bent head. But little by little he grew hardened, and said to himself, “So I shall have another Sunday to-morrow, too!”