'Did you bring the lock of hair cut from your forehead on Friday evening when the moon was rising?' Chiarastella's hoarse voice demanded in the middle of the prayer.
'Yes, I have it,' said Carmela, with a deep sigh, handing a tress of her black hair to the witch.
From the iron casket Chiarastella had taken a platinum dish with some hieroglyphics on it, as shiny as a mirror. On this she put the hair, and raised it up three times, as if making a sacrifice to heaven. Then she held the black tress a little above the crackling flame, which stretched up to devour it; a second after there was a disagreeable smell of burnt hair, and nothing was seen on the dish but a morsel of stinking ashes. The incantation went on, Chiarastella singing under her voice her great love-charm, which was a queer mixture of sacred and profane names—from Belphegor's to Ariel's, from San Raffaele's, the girl's protector, to San Pasquale's, patron saint of women—partly in Naples dialect, partly in bad Italian. She afterwards took a small phial from the wrought-iron box, which held all the ingredients for her charms, and put three drops from it into the plate of water, which at once became a fine opal colour, with bluish reflections. The witch looked again to try and decipher that whitish cloud which whirled round in spirals and volutes, and dropped the ashes of the hair in. Gradually under her gaze the water got clear and limpid again in the dish; then she told Carmela to hand her a new crystal bottle, bought on Saturday morning after making her Communion, and she filled it slowly with water from the dish. The love-philtre was ready.
'Take it,' the witch said in her solemn tones, ending the incantation—'take and keep it jealously. Make Raffaele drink some drops of it in wine or coffee. It will inflame his blood and burn in his brain; it will make his heart melt for love of thee. Believe in God, have faith, and hope in Him.'
'It is not poison, is it?' Carmela ventured to ask.
'It will do him good, and not harm. Have faith in God.'
'And what if he goes on despising me?'
'Then, that means that he is in love with someone else, and this charm is not enough. You must find out who the woman is that he has left you for, and bring me here a bit of her chemise, petticoat, or dress, be it wool, linen, or cotton. I will make a charm against her. We will drive in a bit of her chemise or dress with a nail and some pins into a fresh lemon; then you must throw this bewitched lemon into the well of the house where the woman lives. Every one of these pins is a misfortune; the nail is a sorrow at the heart of which she will never be cured. Do you see?'
'Very well, I will try and find out,' said Carmela, in despair at the very idea of Raffaele being unfaithful.