“Ignazio,” I began firmly, “the time has come when we must part.”
He shook the earth from his slim fingers, sprang to his feet, agile as a faun, and fixed me with his clear hazel eyes.
“E vero? This is a fount of sorrow to me! Where might your Excellency be going?”
“It is not I who am going.”
“Si capisce! The Signora will soon join the Signore? Let her be at ease; everything will go on as if she were at home. Behold the primole the Signora has asked for these many years! They are not a garden flower, therefore it was extraordinarily difficult to obtain these wild things. With infinite labor I got them from the guardiano of the Villa Caprarola, where they cover the hills like a weed.”
This was my last attempt to part with Ignazio; whatever else is fleeting, he is permanent. To cover my defeat, I changed the subject and asked him what he knew of the Sicilians.
“I am from upper Italy, a Sienese; I have naught to do with those of the south; I do not say there are not brave people among them but they have too hot blood. They all go armed too, even the women; I have proof of it—” he glanced half consciously at a scar on his wrist; when he spoke again an odd note of resentment had crept into his voice, a shadow into eyes clear as a forest brook. “We who have nothing but our two arms—or at best a little gingillo of a knife, so long, what can we do against them? Nothing! It is best to keep away from them, to have nothing to do with them—enough, I have said it!”
VII
BUILDING THE NEW MESSINA
“Un soldo! Eh! Signore, un soldo!” The brown boy, naked as the day he was born, threw up his right arm with that graceful gesture of asking that makes it hard to deny the Neapolitan beggar anything.
“Give me the valise, Signore; there is no danger of its getting wet,” said Antonio, the boatman, an old friend; J. knew him by his gold earrings and the red scar on his cheek.