“It’s fore-ordained what sort of natures children are to be born with, and it’s just like that with marriages. It’s far better to marry a man who really cares for you and has no other ends to serve, even though he has no money or fields, or mules or anything.”...
On the square the drum was beating to give notice of the festival.
“The Syndic says we shall have the festival,” was the murmur that went through the crowd.
“I’ll go to law till doomsday, if it should leave me as poor as holy Job, with nothing left but my shirt; but that five francs’ fine I will not pay! not if I had to leave directions about it in my will!”
“Confound it all!” exclaimed Nino. “What sort of a festival are they going to have, if we are all to die of hunger this year?”
Since March not a drop of rain had fallen, and the yellow corn, which crackled like tinder, was “dying of thirst.” Bruno, the carter, however, said that when San Pasquale was carried out in procession it would rain for certain. But what did he care about rain? or all the tanners of his neighbourhood either? In fact they carried San Pasquale in procession to east and to west, and set him upon a hill to bless the country on a stifling May day, when the sky was covered with clouds,—one of those days when the farmers are ready to tear their hair before the burnt-up fields, and the ears of corn droop as if they were dying.
“A curse on San Pasquale!” cried Nino, spitting in the air, and rushing about among his crops like a madman. “You have ruined me, San Pasquale; you’ve left me nothing but the reaping-hook to cut my throat with!”
The upper town was a desolate place enough. It was one of those long years when the hunger begins in June, and the women stand at their doors with their hair hanging about their shoulders—doing nothing—staring with fixed eyes. Gnà Saridda, hearing that Compare Nino’s mule was to be sold in the public square, to pay the rent of his farm, felt her anger melt away in an instant, and sent her brother Turi in hot haste, with the few soldi they had put aside, to help him.
Nino was in one corner of the square, with his eyes averted and his hands in his pockets, while they were selling his mule, with all its ornaments and the new headstall.
“I don’t want anything,” he replied sullenly. “My arms are still left me, please God. A fine saint that San Pasquale of yours, eh?”