At last poor old Padron ’Ntoni got so that he was ashamed to show himself in the street. His grandson, instead, to get rid of his sermons, came home looking so black that nobody felt inclined to speak to him. As if he didn’t preach plenty of sermons to himself; but it was all the fault of his fate that he had been born in such a state of life. And he went off to the druggist, or to whoever else would listen to him, to exhaust himself in speeches about the injustice of everything that there was in this world; that if a poor fellow went to Santuzza’s to drink and forget his troubles, he was called a drunkard; while those who drank their own wine at home had no troubles, nor any one to reprove them or hunt them off to work, but were rich enough for two, and did not need to work, while we were all the sons of God, and everybody ought to share and share alike.
“That fellow has talent,” said the druggist to Don Silvestro or Padron Cipolla or to anybody else whom he could find. “He sees things in the lump, but an idea he has. It isn’t his fault if he doesn’t express himself properly, but that of the Government, that leaves him in ignorance.” For his instruction he lent him the Secolo (the Age) and the Gazette of Catania.
But ’Ntoni very soon got tired of reading; first, because it was troublesome, and because while he was a soldier they had made him learn to read by force; but now he was at liberty to do as he liked, and, besides, he had forgotten a good deal of it, and how the words came one after another in printing. And all that talk in print didn’t put a penny in his pocket. What did it matter to him? Don Franco explained to him how it mattered to him; and when Don Michele passed across the piazza he shook his head at him, winking, and pointed out to him how he came after Donna Rosolina as well as others, for Donna Rosolina had money, and gave it to people to get herself married.
“First we must clear away all these fellows in uniform. We must make a revolution, that’s what we must do.”
“And what will you give me to make the revolution?”
Don Franco shrugged his shoulders, and went back to his mortar, for talking to such people as that was just beating water with a pestle, neither more nor less, he said.
But Goosefoot said, as soon as ’Ntoni’s back was turned, “He ought to get rid of Don Michele, for another reason—he’s after his sister; but ’Ntoni is worse than a pig now that Santuzza has taken to keeping him.” Goosefoot felt Don Michele to be a weight on his mind since that active official had taken to looking askance at Rocco Spatu and Cinghialenta and himself whenever he saw them together; for that he wanted to get rid of him.
Those poor Malavoglia had come to such a pass that they were the talk of the place, on account of their brother. Now, everybody knew that Don Michele often walked up and down the black street to spite the Zuppidda, who was always mounting guard over her girl, with her distaff in her hand. And Don Michele, not to lose time, had taken to looking at Lia, who had now become a very pretty girl and had no one to look after her except her sister, who would say to her, “Come, Lia, let us go in; it is not nice for us to stand at the door now we are orphans.”
But Lia was vain, worse than her brother ’Ntoni, and she liked to stand at the door, that people might see her pretty flowered kerchief, and have people say to her, “How pretty you look in that kerchief, Cousin Lia!” while Don Michele devoured her with his eyes Poor Mena, while she stood at the door waiting for her drunken brother to come home, felt so humbled and abased that she wanted the energy to order her sister to come in because Don Michele passed by, and Lia said:
“Are you afraid he will eat me? Nobody wants any of us now that we have got nothing left. Look at my brother, even the dogs will have nothing to say to him!”