"Brava! Brava!" cried the doctor between sips of the golden wine. "Your wife," he remarked to the farmer, "is a nurse most competent. Guard well you do not burn the little one so close to the fire. Rub the legs and the body until nice and dry. Then take her back to her dam." He knelt down and put a finger in the filly's mouth. "See? Already she sucks! By herself she will find the mare's milk faucets. And now I must leave. Arrivederci, my good people."
The doctor's happy laughter rang out behind him as he walked across the dooryard to the hitching post.
In the warm kitchen a second miracle was taking place. The foal, yawning, looking about with her purple-brown eyes, was stretching her forelegs, learning so soon that legs were for standing!
The farmer slowly shook his head as if now he saw her for the first time, her frailty, her pipestem legs.
"Already I have a name for her," he said dully.
"So? How will you call her?"
"Farfalla. Butterfly."
"Is so beautiful," Maria sighed.
"Beauty, bah! Is not enough." In the farmer's eyes was a look almost of hatred. "A stout horse the Prince of Lombardy wanted. Nice strong legs to race over the cobble streets of Siena. With a colt by Sans Souci he hoped to win a Palio. Better that horse doctor never came!"
With a flirt of her tail, the foal tried a step, and fell down in a fuzzy heap.