Then the little Don Cesare exulted aloud:
"Ha!" he cried, waving his little hands in the air, "that was what I prayed yesterday of the good, dear Evolino for myself. That was it. Father Atanasio! He gave you rain, and me he gave a brother-in-law. Long live Evolino!"
And in his heart he added something more, which he did not think it necessary to say aloud:
"Evolino," thought he, "you were wiser than I, and led me to a kingdom, when I only looked for a she ass. The ships will come to the harbor of themselves, but of himself never would this rascal Nino have taken my little sister for his wife."
A few weeks later, when the wedding of Carmela and Nino was celebrated with great pomp in the chapel of Evolo, a new image of the saint stood on the altar, a gay, brand new image, which Don Cesare, with divers other matters, had brought from a foreign ship that lay at anchor in the harbor of Roccastretta, and had placed in the chapel in remembrance of this day of miracles. The old Evolino, however, he claimed for himself, and no one grudged him that worm-eaten and broken relic.
At the foot of the rocks of Evolo, in a cool arbor, searched through by sun, and moonbeams, at the Casina, where Nino and Carmela were to make their home, Don Cesare had set up the image--mended, and decently restored by his own hand. It stood in a niche of stone under a roof of fragrant orange trees, beside the ivy-wreathed Greek marble basin into which the crystal spring of Evolo poured; and almost it seemed as if the Evolino felt himself far more at ease amid these surroundings, near the finely-cut bas-reliefs from his ancient temple, with the free winds sighing around him, than above in his musty chapel. A singular peacefulness seemed to have settled down upon his old head, stripped of beard, and hair, and halo; he looked with Olympian smile upon the youthful pair, gaily pursuing a frolicsome existence at his feet, on this their wedding evening, and a faint spark gleamed in his painted eyes, as Nino, who must have learned some lore of the ancient gods, poured a goblet of fragrant Muscatel upon the ground before him, and laughingly cried:
"To the gods belong the first drops; honor and glory to the gods and the saints!"
When they had all departed, and even Don Cesare had taken leave of him with a friendly, confidential nod, and when at last the Evolino stood alone in the silent moonlight, a soft whisper fell from his lips:
"In spite of all, you feel yourselves drawn back again to the ancient heathen gods, you dear gay heathen folk; and though new names have taken the place of the old ones, in you, my cheerful, good-natured, grown-up children, I recognize my early worshippers once more. In spite of time and change you are they who used to lay fragrant wreaths on the old god's altar, in the pillared temple on the cliff, and singing, and laughing, and shouting, passed their shouting, singing, laughing life away!"
Silently gleaming, the eternal stars beckoned, softly splashing, the rippling spring murmured a kindly, comforting answer to the poor forgotten God of the Winds.