“You never were at school, and you can manage your affairs well enough.”
“And I know my catechism, too,” said Uncle Crucifix, not to be behindhand in politeness.
In the heat of dispute Don Giammaria lost the pavement, which he could cross with his eyes shut, and was on the point of breaking his neck, and of letting slip, God forgive us! a very naughty word.
“At least if they’d light their lamps!”
“In these days one must look after one’s steps,” concluded Uncle Crucifix.
Don Giammaria pulled him by the sleeve of his coat to tell him about this one and that one—in the middle of the piazza, in the dark—of the lamplighter who stole the oil, and Don Silvestro, who winked at it, and of the Sindic Giufà, who let himself be led by the nose. Dumb-bell nodded his head in assent, mechanically, though they couldn’t see each other; and Don Giammaria, as he passed the whole village in review, said: “This one is a thief; that one is a rascal; the other is a Jacobin—so you hear Goosefoot, there, talking with Padron Malavoglia and Padron Cipolla—another heretic, that one! A demagogue he is, with that crooked leg of his”; and when he went limping across the piazza he moved out of his way and watched him distrustfully, trying to find out what he was after, hitching about that way. “He has the cloven foot like the devil,” he muttered.
Uncle Crucifix shrugged his shoulders again, and repeated “that he was an honest man, that he didn’t mix himself up with it.”
“Padron Cipolla was another old fool, a regular balloon, that fellow, to let himself be blindfolded by old Goosefoot; and Padron ’Ntoni, too—he’ll get a fall before long; one may expect anything in these days.”
“Honest men keep to their own business,” repeated Uncle Crucifix.
Instead, Uncle Tino, sitting up like a president on the church steps, went on uttering wise sentences: