"Yes, I gave you fair warning; since I saw my old mother in the hen-yard, it seems to me I have her all the time before my eyes."
"Keep them well open, those eyes of yours," cried compare Alfio, "for I am going to give you back good measure."
As he stood on guard, all doubled up, so as to keep his left hand on his wound, which pained him, and almost trailing his elbow on the ground, he swiftly picked up a handful of dust, and flung it into his adversary's eyes.
"Ah!" screamed Turiddu, blinded, "I am dead."
He tried to save himself, by making desperate leaps backwards, but compare Alfio overtook him with another thrust in the stomach, and a third in the throat.
"And that makes three! that is for the house which you have adorned for me! Now your mother will let the hens alone."
Turiddu staggered a short distance among the prickly pears, and then fell like a stone. The blood foaming, gurgled in his throat, and he could not even cry, "Ah! mamma mia!"
She was tall and lean; but she had a firm, full bust, and yet she was no longer young; her complexion was brunette, but pallid as if she had always suffered from malaria, and this pallor set forth two big eyes and fresh rosy lips that seemed to eat you.
In the village she was called la Lupa—the She-Wolf—because she was never satisfied. Women made the sign of the cross when they saw her pass, always alone like a big ugly hound, with the vagabond and suspicious gait of a famished wolf; she would bewitch their sons and their husbands in the twinkling of an eye with her red lips and she made them fall in love with her merely by looking at them out of those big Satanic eyes of hers, even if they were before Santa Agrippina's altar.