“Don’t spend money for me when I am gone. The Lord will know that you have no money, and will be content with the rosary that Mena and Maruzza will say for me. And you, Mena, go on doing as your mother has done, for she is a saint of a woman, and has known well how to bear her sorrows; and keep your little sister under your wing as a hen does her chickens. As long as you cling together your sorrows will seem less bitter. Now ’Ntoni is a man, and before long Alessio will be old enough to help you too.”
“Don’t talk like that, don’t! for pity’s sake, don’t talk so!” cried the women, as if it were of his own free-will that he was leaving them. He shook his head sadly, and replied:
“Now I have said all I wished to say, I don’t mind. Please turn me on the other side. I am tired. I am old, you know; when the oil is burned out the lamp goes out too.”
Later on he called ’Ntoni, and said to him:
“Don’t sell the Provvidenza, though she is so old; if you do you will have to go out by the day, and you don’t know how hard it is when Padron Cipolla or Uncle Cola says to you, ‘There’s nobody wanted on Monday.’ And another thing I want to say to you, ’Ntoni. When you have put by enough money you must marry off Mena, and give her to a seaman like her father, and a good fellow like him. And I want to say, also, when you shall have portioned off Lia, too, try and put by money to buy back the house by the medlar-tree. Uncle Crucifix will sell it if you make it worth his while, for it has always belonged to the Malavoglia—and thence your father and Luca went away, never to return.”
“Yes, grandfather, yes, I will,” promised ’Ntoni, with many tears. And Alessio also listened gravely, as if he too had been a man.
The women thought the sick man must be wandering, hearing him go on talking and talking, and they went to put wet cloths on his forehead.
“No,” said Padron ’Ntoni, “I am in right senses. I only want to finish what I have to say before I go away from you.”
By this time they had begun to hear the fishermen calling from one door to another, and the carts began to pass along the road. “In two hours it will be day,” said Padron ’Ntoni, “and you can go call Don Giammaria.”
Poor things! they looked for day as for the Messiah, and went to the window every few minutes to look for the dawn. At last the room grew lighter, and Padron ’Ntoni said, “Now go call the priest, for I want to confess.”