Costantino looked extremely dejected and all but wept; then he confessed; asked whether it might not be better to dedicate the laud to SS. Peter and Paul, since they too had been in prison, and begged to be forgiven if he had presumed too much in making such a request. The young chaplain gave the absolution and prayed for some moments aloud, the prisoner, meanwhile, praying to himself; then, laying one hand on the other's head, the priest said in a low voice: "Listen; write out your laud if you can manage it, and—keep a brave heart."
A wave of joy swept over Costantino, and from that moment he had no other thought than of how he might contrive to transcribe his verses. "I have been a student," he said one day to the guard. "But I know how to make shoes as well. Would you like to have me make you a pair? Oh, I can fit you!"
"You want something," said the man in Neapolitan. "But it's no use, I will do nothing."
"Now, Uncle Serafino, be kind! Remember your immortal soul!"
"I remember my immortal soul well enough, and I've told you before that I'm not your uncle; you killed your uncle."
"All right; it does not signify; only in our part of the country we always call all the important people 'uncle.'"
Don Serafino, however, wanted his own title, which Costantino, for his part, could not bring himself to employ, since in Sardinia it is used only in addressing people of noble birth; so for that day nothing was accomplished.
On the following morning the prisoner returned to the charge: he recounted how he was of good family, had received an education, and fallen heir to a fortune; this, his uncle, he whom he had been accused of murdering, had spent, and had then shut him up in a dark little room, and forced him to make shoes; and once he had torn almost the entire skin off one of his feet. He even offered to show the foot, but Don Serafino declined with an expression of horror, and cursed the dead man's cruelty under his breath.
The result was that Costantino presently found himself in possession of a sheet of paper, and by means of blood and a small stick, he succeeded in writing out the laud for condemned prisoners. Thus the winter wore away.
One March day a visit of inspection was made to Costantino's cell; it was under the direction of a big man, with two round, staring, pale-blue eyes, and so little chin that what he had was completely hidden by a heavy light moustache.