Don Giammaria came when the sun had already risen; and all the neighbors, when they heard the bell tinkle in the black street, went after it, to see the viaticum going to the Malavoglia. And all went in, too; for when the Lord is within the door can be shut upon nobody; so that the mourning family, seeing the house full of people, dared not weep nor cry; while Don Giammaria muttered the prayers between his teeth, and Master Cirino put a candle to the lips of the sick man, who lay pale and stiff as a candle himself.
“He looks just like the patriarch Saint Joseph, in that bed, with that long beard,” said Santuzza, who arranged all the bottles and straightened everything, for she was always about when Our Lord went anywhere—“Like a raven,” said the druggist.
The doctor came while the vicar was still there, and at first he wanted to turn his donkey round and go home again. “Who told you to call the priest?” he said; “that is the doctor’s affair, and I am astonished that Don Giammaria should have come without a certificate. Do you know what? There is no need of the priest—he’s better—that’s what he is.”
“It is a miracle, worked by Our Lady of Sorrows,” cried La Longa; “Our Lady has done this for us, for Our Lord has come too often to this house.”
“Ah, Blessed Virgin! Ah, Holy Virgin!” exclaimed Mena, clasping her hands; “how gracious art thou to us!” And they all wept for joy, as if the sick man were quite ready to get up and be off to his boat again.
The doctor went off growling. “That’s always the way. If they get well it is Our Lady has saved them; if they die, it is we who have killed them.”
“Don Michele is to have the medal for throwing the rope to the Provvidenza, and there’s a pension attached to it,” said the druggist. “That’s the way they spend the people’s money!”
Goosefoot spoke up in defence of Don Michele, saying that he had deserved the medal, and the pension, too, for he had gone into the water up to his knees, big boots and all, to save the Malavoglia—three persons. “Do you think that a small thing—three lives?—and was within a hair’s-breath of losing his own life, too, so that everybody was talking of him: and on a Sunday, when he put on his new uniform, the girls couldn’t take their eyes off him, so anxious were they to see if he really had the medal or not.”
“Barbara Zuppidda, now that she’s got rid of that lout of a Malavoglia, won’t turn her back on Don Michele any more,” said Goosefoot. “I’ve seen her with her nose between the shutters when he’s passed along the street.”
’Ntoni, poor fellow, as long as they couldn’t do without him, had run hither and thither indefatigably, and had been in despair while his grandfather was so ill. Now that he was better, he took to lounging about, with his arms akimbo, waiting till it was time to take the Provvidenza to Master Zup-piddu to be mended, and went to the tavern to chat with the others, though he hadn’t a sou to spend there, and told to this one and that one how near he had been to drowning, and so passed the time away, lounging and spitting about, doing nothing. When any one would pay for wine for him he would get angry about Don Michele, and say he had taken away his sweetheart; that he went every evening to talk to Barbara at the window; that Uncle Santoro had seen him; that he had asked Nunziata if she hadn’t seen Don Michele pass by the black street.