“Ma—­Ma—­Mascalico—­”

“Mascalico!  Mascalico!” shrieked Giacobbe, who was bending over him, with ear intent to snatch the weak syllables from his dying lips.

An immense roar greeted the cry.  The multitude swayed at first as if tempest-swept.  Then, when a voice, dominating the tumult, gave the order of attack, the mob broke up in haste.  A single thought drove these men forward, a thought which seemed to have been stamped by lightning upon all minds at once:  to arm themselves with some weapon.  Towering above the consciousness of all arose a sort of bloody fatality, beneath the great tawny glare of the heavens, and in the electric odor emanating from the anxious fields.

IV.

And the phalanx, armed with scythes, bill-hooks, axes, hoes, and guns, reunited in the square before the church.  And all cried:  “San Pantaleone!”

Don Consolo, terrified by the din, had taken refuge in a stall behind the altar.  A handful of fanatics, led by Giacobbe, made their way into the principal chapel, forced the bronze grille, and went into the underground chamber where the bust of the saint was kept.  Three lamps, fed with olive oil, burned softly in the damp air of the sacristy, where in a glass case the Christian idol glittered, with its white head surrounded by a broad gilt halo; and the walls were hidden under the wealth of native offerings.

When the idol, borne on the shoulders of four herculean men, appeared at last between the pillars and shone in the auroral light, a long gasp of passion ran through the waiting crowd, and a quiver of joy passed like a breath of wind over all their faces.  And the column moved away, the enormous head of the saint oscillating above, with its empty eye-sockets turned to the front.

Now through the sky, in the deep, diffused glow, brighter meteors ploughed their furrows; groups of thin clouds broke away from the hem of the vapor zone and floated off, dissolving slowly.  The whole town of Radusa stood out like a smouldering mountain of ashes.  Behind and before, as far as eye could reach, the country lay in an indistinctly lucent mass.  A great singing of frogs filled the sonorous solitude.

On the river-road Pallura’s wagon blocked the way.  It was empty, but still soiled, here and there, with blood.  Angry curses broke suddenly from the mob.  Giacobbe shouted: 

“Let us put the saint in it!”

So the bust was placed in the wagon-bed and drawn by many arms into the ford.  The battleline thus crossed the frontier.  Metallic gleams ran along the files.  The parted water broke in luminous spray, and the current flamed away red between the poplars, in the distance, towards the quadrangular towers.  Mascalico showed itself on a little hill, among olive trees, asleep.  The dogs were barking here and there, with a persistent fury of reply.  The column, issuing from the ford, left the public road and advanced rapidly straight across country.  The silver bust was borne again on men’s shoulders, and towered above their heads amid the tall, odorous grain, starred with bright fireflies.