'Are you in God's grace?'
'I hope I am.'
'Ask the Virgin's help, but under your breath.'
Whilst Annarella raised her eyes as if to find heaven, the witch took out of the iron casket a thin new cord, looked at it, muttered some queer irregular verses in the Naples dialect, invoking the powers of heaven, its saints, and some good spirits with queer names. The chant went on; the witch, still holding the cord tight in her hand, looked at it as if filling it with her spirit; she breathed on it and kissed it devoutly three times. Whilst she was carrying out this deed of magic, her thin brown hands shook, and the cat went up and down the big table excitedly, spreading its whiskers.
Annarella now repented more than ever of having come, of trying to cast a spell on her husband. It would have been better, much better, to resign herself to her fate, rather than call out all these spirits, and put all that mystery into her humble life. She deeply repented; her breathing was oppressed, her face saddened. She wanted to fly at once far off to her dark cellar; she preferred to endure cold and wretchedness there. It was her sister who had led her into such an extreme measure; she had done it more out of pity for her, seeing her so melancholy, desolate, and worn out by sorrow from Raffaele's desertion. It was not right—no, it could not be—to try and find out God's will by witchcraft and magic in any case. No witchcraft, however powerful, would conquer her husband's passion. She had read one Saturday in his eyes, grown suddenly ferocious, how unconquerable the passion was. She had seen him ill-treat his children with that repressed rage that is capable of even greater cruelty. That witchcraft, you see, with its alarming prelude and continuation, seemed to her another big step on the way to a dark, fatal end.
Now Chiarastella, with sharpened features, her skin more shiny and eyes burning, made three fatal knots in the twine, stopping at each to say something in a whisper. At the end she threw herself all at once from the chair to kneel on the ground, her head down on her breast. The black cat jumped down too, as if possessed, and went round and round the witch in the convulsive style of cats when going to die.
'Mother of God, do not forsake me!' Annarella called out, shaking with fear; but the witch, after crossing herself wildly several times, got up and said in solemn tones to the gambler's wife:
'Take—take this miraculous cord. It will tie your husband's hands and mind when Beelzebub tells him to gamble. Believe in God; have faith; hope in Him.'
Trembling, feeling hot all over from excessive emotion, Annarella took the witch's cord. She was to put it on her husband without his noticing it. She would have liked to go away now, to fly, for she felt the sultriness of the room, and the perfume was turning her brain; but Carmela, pale, disturbed from what she had seen and the commotion in her own mind, turned an appealing look on her to get her to wait.
Chiarastella had already begun the charm to make Raffaele love Carmela again. She called Cleofa, her decrepit servant, and said something in her ear. The woman went out, and came back carrying with great care a deep white porcelain dish full of clear water, looking at it as if hypnotized, not to spill a drop; then she disappeared. Chiarastella, with her face close to the dish, muttered some of her mysterious words over the water. She put in one finger, and let three drops fall on Carmela's forehead, who at a sign had leant forward to her. Then the witch lit a big wax candle Carmela had brought, and went on muttering Latin and Italian words. The candle-wick spluttered as if water had been thrown on the flame.