Now came the green brocade standard, with its hundred variegated ribbons and gilded staff; and next the Madonna of the Assumption, extended with closed eyes on her portable couch, covered with necklaces and rings that looked like relics of the bronze age, and watched over by the four green cherubs.
On each of the four sides, walking beside the bearers, was a man wearing a white tunic and carrying in his arms a child dressed as an angel. They were charming little creatures, two blond and two brunette, and they chattered gaily with one another, shouting to make themselves heard. One of them, tickled under the knee by the man who carried him, squirmed and wriggled, one wing hanging limply down.
The sight of these children touched some finer emotion in Brontu, Giacobbe, and the others, and bending their knees, they crossed themselves devoutly. The children, for their part, gazed up at the windows, and one of them, recognising an uncle in the group, flung a red confetto at him, which, missing fire, fell back into the road.
Priest Elias and the little stranger from Nuoro came next, wearing brocade and lace robes, pale and handsome in their bravery. They walked with clasped hands and rapt faces, chanting in Latin.
"The devil!" exclaimed Giacobbe suddenly. "If there isn't that dirty old Isidoro Pane! You'd suppose he was running the whole procession; I'm going to spit on him."
"No, you're not," commanded Brontu.
Giacobbe coughed to attract the fisherman's attention, but the other did not so much as raise his eyes, continuing to intone the prayers to which the people responded as with a single voice.
The surging, vari-coloured crowd had flowed together behind the procession, and above the sea of heads could still be seen the swaying silver cross. The men had all uncovered,—bald heads, shining with perspiration, mops of thick black hair, rough, curly pates,—and then the gay head-kerchiefs of the women, some with black grounds and yellow squares, others striped with red, or covered with green spots,—all surmounting flushed faces, flashing eyes, white bodices crossed on the breast, red, gesticulating hands. Gradually the crowd thinned; an old cripple came limping along, then a woman with two children hanging to her skirts, then three old women—a child with a yellow flower in its mouth—the street grew empty and silent; the noise, and movement, and colour receding in waves, and growing ever fainter as the low, melancholy cadence of the chanted invocations died away in the distance.
As the last sounds ceased, two cat's paws appeared on the wall opposite Giacobbe's house, followed by a little, white face, with wide startled eyes, then the animal leaped on the wall, and sat staring intently down into the street.
"Too late!" cried Brontu, waving a salute.