“Go to Sor Vincenzino,” said Phœbus.
His wife did not reply.
“Go to the doctor.”
“Don’t you know that a hundred poor sinners might die before either of them would stir a finger? Don’t you know that the doctor keeps on asking me for a franc for that tooth he pulled out last year?”
Phœbus moved his jaws for a little while, like an animal chewing the cud; then he gave seven or eight more yawns, and rubbed his hands as if he had just concluded a good stroke of business.
“Go to Nannone—go to the chaplain, to the archdeacon, to Lisetta—only go to some one!”
“I went to Nannone this morning—he was not at home. I went to the chaplain yesterday, and he gave me that bread. I went to Lisetta the day before yesterday, and she gave me that polenta. And who’s going to the archdeacon’s, with that vixen of a Modesta there? Not I!”
“Then, you ugly slug, you cannot be hungry, and must just eat your own talk!”
The wife rose, sobbing and muttering curses, and went out, dragging the water-jar with her as usual, as an excuse for knocking at people’s doors. When they opened, however, it was something more than permission to draw water at the well that she wanted—her errand was more serious than that.
To-day she did not find them disposed to listen to tales of misery, for it was the last day of the carnival, and the weather was bright and clear. A cold wind kept the sky cloudless, and the sun, going down in the west, seemed to embrace the whole sky and earth with its rays, and smiled among the shadows and on the peaks of the snowy Apennines, which gradually faded away into the distance on the last clear rim of the horizon. But the village, all but the great ruined tower on the little piazza, the upper part of which was still in light, began to grow dark; and it was already dusk in the ancient, narrow streets, black as if after a conflagration, filled with crowds of country folk, among which the red shawls of the jolly peasant women made bright points here and there, and noisy with cymbals and other instruments, laughter, and shouting.