Compare Meno manœuvred round the animal, touching his ears, looking into his lifeless eyes, and when he saw that the blood was still oozing from the punctured vein under the belly, drop by drop, and coagulating in a black mass on his hairy skin, he remarked:
"So you've had him bled, have you?"
The widow fixed her dark eyes on his face without speaking, and nodded her "yes."
"Then there's nothing more to do," said compare Meno, and he continued to stare at the ass, which stretched itself out on the stones, stiffly, with its hair all rumpled, like a dead cat.
"It is God's will, sister!" said he to comfort her. "We are ruined, both of us!"
He had gone round by the widow's side and squatted down on the stones, with his little daughter between his knees, and both of them continued to gaze at the poor beast, which from time to time threshed the air with its legs as if it were in the agonies of death.
Comare Sidora, when she had got the bread safely out of the oven, also came into the yard with the cousin Alfia, who had put on her new gown and wore her silk handkerchief on her head, all ready for a bit of gossip, and comare Sidora said to compare Meno, drawing him aside,—
"Curátolo Nino won't give you his third daughter, for at your house the women die off like flies, and he loses the dowry. And then la Santa is too young, and there's the risk that she'd fill your house with children."
"If only one could be sure of boys! But there's always the danger of girls coming. Oh, I am so unfortunate!"
"Well, there's the cousin Alfia. She is no longer young, and she has property,—the house and a bit of vineyard."