"How did I lose my eye? Oh, that was long ago, when I was still a boy, but already helping my father. He was breaking stones in the vineyard; our soil is very hard, and needs a lot of attention: there are a great many stones. A stone flew from underneath my father's pick and hit me in the eye. I don't remember any pain, but at dinner my eye came out—it was terrible, signors! They put it back in its place and applied some warm bread, but the eye died!"
The old man rubbed his brown skinny cheek, and laughed again in a merry, good-humoured way.
"At that time there were not so many doctors, and people were much more stupid. What! you think they may have been kinder? Perhaps they were."
And now this dried-up, one-eyed, deeply wrinkled face, with its partial covering of greenish-grey, mouldy-looking hair, became knowing and triumphant.
"When one has lived as long as I one may talk confidently about men, isn't that so?"
He raised significantly a dark, crooked finger as though threatening someone.
"I will tell you, signors, something about people.
"When my father died—I was thirteen at the time—you see how small I am even now: but I was very skilful and could work without getting tired (that is all I inherited from my father)—our house and land were sold for debts. And so, with but one eye and two hands, I lived on, working wherever I could get work. It was hard, but youth is not afraid of work, is it?
"When I was nineteen I met a girl whom Fate had meant me to love; she was as poor as myself, though stronger and more robust; she, also, lived with her mother, an old woman in failing health, and worked when and where she could. She was not very comely, but kind and clever. And she had a fine voice—oh! she sang like a professional, and that in itself means riches, signors!
"'Shall we get married?' said I, after we had known each other for some time.