Turi turned his back on him, to avoid unpleasantness, and went on his way. But the truth is that people’s minds were thoroughly exasperated, now that they had carried San Pasquale in procession to east and west, with no more result than that. The worst of it was that many from the parish of San Rocco had been induced to walk with the procession too, thrashing themselves like asses, and with crowns of thorns on their heads, for the sake of their crops. Now they relieved their feelings in exceedingly bad language; and the Bishop’s delegate was obliged to leave the town, as he entered it, on foot, and without the band.
The vice-prætor, by way of retaliation on his opponent, telegraphed that people’s minds were excited, and the public peace compromised; so that one fine day a report went through the town, that the soldiers had arrived, and every one could go and see them.
“They have come on account of the cholera,” others; said, however. “Down in the city, they say, the people are dying like flies.”
The chemist put up the chain of his shop door, and the doctor left the place as speedily as possible, to escape being knocked on the head.[[13]]
“It will not come to anything,” said the few who had remained in the place, having been unable to fly into the country like the rest. “The blessed San Rocco will watch over his own town.”
Even the lower town folks had begun to go barefoot to San Rocco’s church. But not long after that, deaths began to come thick and fast. They said of one man that he was a glutton, and died of eating too many prickly pears, and of another, that he had come in from the country after nightfall.[[14]] But, in short, there was the cholera, there was no disguising it,—in spite of the soldiers, and in the very teeth of San Rocco,—notwithstanding the fact that an old woman in the odour of sanctity had dreamed that the saint himself had said to her—
“Have no fear of the cholera, for I am looking after that. I am not like that useless old ass of a San Pasquale.”
Nino and Turi had not met since the mule was sold; but scarcely had the former heard that the brother and sister were both ill, than he hastened to their house, and found Saridda, black in the face, and her features all distorted, in a corner of the room. Her brother, who was with her, was recovering, but could not tell what to do for her, and was nearly beside himself with despair.
“Ah! thief of a San Rocco,” groaned Nino. “I never expected this. Gnà Saridda, don’t you know me any more? Nino, your old friend Nino.”
Saridda looked at him with eyes so sunken that one had to hold a lantern to her face before one could see them, and Nino felt his own running over.