And he added, turning to his wife, who had followed him, wrapped in a mantellina, penuriously scattering the seed,—
"If anything should happen to it—Heaven forefend—we are ruined with the prospects before us."
The woman looked forward to the prospects of crops in the rocky, desolate, little field, with its white and cracked soil, so long had it been since the rain fell, and all the water it got came in the form of mist and fog, of the kind that spoils the seed, and when it was time to dig up the ground, it was so yellow and hard, that you would call it the very beard of the devil, as if it had been burnt with sulphur matches!
"In spite of the crop which I put in," mourned massaro Cirino, pulling off his doublet, "why, that ass has worked himself to death like a stupid mule. That ass is under a curse!"
His wife had a lump in her throat at the sight of the parched field, and she replied with tears rolling from her eyes,—
"The ass had nothing to do with the failure. It brought a good crop to compare Neli. But we are unfortunate."
So the Saint Joseph's ass changed masters once more, when massaro Cirino returned from the field with the sickle over his shoulder, it being useless even to try to reap that year, although the images of the saints had been stuck into bamboo sticks all over the ground for protection, and two tarì[17] had been paid to the priest for his blessing.
"It's the devil that we want rather than the saints," said massaro Cirino, irreverently, when he saw all those stalks standing up like crests, which even the ass refused to touch, and he spat up towards that turquoise-colored sky, so relentlessly cloudless.
It was then that compare Luciano, the carter, meeting massaro Cirino, as he was driving back the ass with empty saddlebags, asked,—