Despairingly, all fixed their eyes on the high altar, where the burning candles cast reflections on the saint's face.
'San Gennaro! San Gennaro!' the people shouted out as every Credo ended.
A wind of terror that the miracle would not come blew over them and burst out in their voices. San Gennaro's relatives were torn with sorrow and rage; they had got to the thirty-fifth Credo, and the time was going by with threatening slowness; they, feeling at once offence at their holy ancestor's delay and despair at his anger, called out to him things like this:
'San Gennaro, face of gold, don't keep us waiting any longer!'
'You are in a rage, eh? What have we done to you?'
'Old cross-patch, do the miracle for your people!'
The feeling of rage, tenderness, devotion, and agitation that breathed in these reproaches and pious invocations cannot be expressed. The legend says San Gennaro likes to be pressed, and does not get offended at the remarks his relatives and the populace make to him, and the people's emotion was such that at the thirty-eighth Credo each sentence of the prayer was said desperately, as if every word was dragged out by overpowering agony; cries burst out far back:
'Green face!'
'Ugly yellow face!'