THE THREE SISTERS—CHIARASTELLA THE WITCH

The summer of that year was a bad one for the Neapolitans, morally and materially. Above all, from the end of June the summer scirocco had gone on dissolving into rain; storms covered the bay with black clouds, lightning played behind Posillipo, thunder rumbled from Capodimonte, sudden heavy summer showers raised a pungent smell of dust, and went rushing down the city roads from the hill to the sea like little waterspouts, making the passers-by start aside and run. The poor cabmen, with no umbrellas, ragged, with shabby hats crushed down on their heads, could do nothing but stick their hands in the pockets of their worn-out jackets and keep their heads down. It was a devilish summer, a real correction from God; that was why San Gennaro had been so long in working the miracle that year. He makes no mistakes.

The rushing scirocco lashed up the waves in the bay furiously; they got livid with rage, and foamed under the chill curtain of clouds, and all the bathing-places from Marinella to Posillipo had to take up the boards of their wooden huts to let the raging sea pass through, or they would have been broken to pieces. There lay the great irrecoverable loss, for the long files of provincial people that come from Calabria, Basilicata, Abruzzi, and Molise, to take sea-baths, and fill up the inns and second-class eating-houses, who sit four in a carriage that barely holds two—these country people, who are Naples' summer source of revenue, being afraid of the bad weather, always went on intending to start for Naples the next week, and ended by never leaving their villages at all. Those who had arrived the first week in July, intending to stay till the end of August, on finding they could only have a bathe on one day out of five, and then have to face a stormy sea, got frightened and discouraged, and ended by going back to Campobasso, to Avellino, Benevento, and Potenza, to the great sorrow of the girls and young fellows. It was a lost season.

At the Fiori Inn, in Fiorentini Square, the Campidoglio, in Municipio Square, and the Centrale, at Fontana Medina, there was a void; as for the Allegria, in CaritÀ Square, one of the greatest resorts of country people, it was a desert.

Very warm days came at times between the stormy ones, which were very exhausting. It was a real African climate, and the bathing-places—De Crescenzio, Cannavacciuolo, Sciattone, Manetta and Pappalordo—had five days' emptiness to one day of too large a crowd of people. The owners shook their heads despondingly, whilst the bronzed, thin, black-toothed, hoarse-voiced bathing-women, shoeless, in shift, petticoat and straw hats, ran after sheets of doubtful whiteness on the dirty brown sands, where the wind caught them and threatened to cast them into the sea. What rain! what rain! The eating-houses in the centre of Naples had poor business, but those who put tables out in the open air on Santa Lucia causeway, the eating-houses that go from Mergellina to Posillipo, the Bersaglio, the Schiava, the Figlio di Pietro, all those whose slender existence depends on fine weather, summer and winter, these suffered most; no one had anything to do, from the cook yawning in the kitchen to the few waiters left, who sat sleepily in the steamy atmosphere that even the storms did not freshen up. Only crawling flies buzzed on the uselessly prepared tables. There was a general idleness; a chorus of oaths and lamentations arose at every new outburst of showers. Even the evenings at the Villa, round the bandstand, where the municipal band plays its old polkas and variations on 'Forza del Destino' of ancient date, where a penny for a seat is all that is needed to be able to enjoy the pleasant sight of a middle-class crowd, seated or wandering round the band, just a penny to sit in the open air and hear the modest concert—even these simple, economical, popular evenings were spoilt. Among the tradesmen's daughters, for whom the Villa means an occasion to show their humble white frocks, sewn and starched at home, to see their lovers, even at a distance, under the flickering gas-lamps, to go a step further on the road, often a long one, that leads to marriage—among these girls there was secret weeping. The chair-hirer wandered through the deserted, damp avenues, full of snails, to see if no one would come to brave the bad weather, or, driven desperate, he settled himself in a corner of Vacca CafÉ to talk over his woes with one of the waiters. What a season!

Don Domenico Mayer's son and daughter, who in other years went every evening to the Villa, walking there and back, so as to spend only fourpence, this year nearly expired with heat and boredom in their Rossi Palazzo flat. Their father was so stern. Their mother was even more sickly and doleful than usual. It was a bad season for the three sisters scattered in different parts of Naples—Carmela, the cigar-maker; Annarella, the servant; and Filomena, the young girl who lived in sin. Above all, their mother was dead in the cellar where she had lived with Carmela, and in spite of having got a pauper's coffin for her from the Pendino district authorities, and her being thrown into the common pit on the great heap of the wretched at Poggio Reale, Carmela still had had to pay seventy or eighty francs for burial expenses, without even having the consolation of knowing that her mother had had a separate grave. For some time Carmela had paid a small weekly sum to a pious Congregazione so as to have at her own death, or any of her family's, a separate carriage following and a grave; but debts and wretchedness, gambling resorted to in desperation, had prevented her from going on paying the fees, and she had lost her claim. She was left alone, with no mother, in that damp, dark cellar, in debt up to the eyes, not having twelve francs even to get a black dress or any mourning; she wore a light-coloured cotton with a black kerchief at her neck, and her neighbours criticised her for her heartlessness. Her everlasting lover, Raffaele, had now risen to the highest grades of the Camorrist hierarchy from having taken part in two duels, or dichiaramenti, and from having a mark against him with the police; he had got still more haughty to her, especially after her mother's death; he fled from Carmela, and when she went after him at inn doors and suburban taverns, he treated her brutally, all the more that she had got into a wretched condition; she could not give him five francs ever now, or even the two francs he haughtily asked for and she humbly gave.

A subtle suspicion was growing in the girl's mind, and from her mother's death, her excessive poverty, and Raffaele's suspected false-dealing, she lost her head. She often failed to go to the tobacco factory, and lost her day's work, or worked so absent-mindedly, so badly, she was fined and got very little on Saturday. Often during the week she broke her fast with a penny-worth of dry bread dipped in macaroni-water, that a neighbour, not so poor as herself, treated her to. It was too hard, too hard, for one who only wished for others' happiness, to see her mother die of privation, and then thrown into a common paupers' ditch, to mingle her bones with theirs; to see her lover going down gradually the whole ladder of vice, even to prison, perhaps to capital crime; and also to see her sisters fading away for want of moral and physical comfort. Now, with her mother gone to her eternal rest—how Carmela envied her sometimes!—and with Raffaele always going farther off from her, she, feeling her heart as cold as her stomach, went oftener to see her sisters. She thought of going to live with Annarella, for economy's sake, and not to live in such a lonely way; but Annarella lived in a cellar in Rosariella di Porta Medina—she, her husband, and two children, already getting of a good size—in a cellar with a beaten earth floor and walls not white-washed for years. The husband and wife slept on a bed made of two iron trestles, with three squeaking boards laid over them lengthwise, and a big mattress stuffed with maize leaves—the paglione, which has an opening in the middle to put in the hand when the bed is made. The girl slept by the mother in the big conjugal bed, and they made up a little bed for the boy every evening upon two broken chairs.

Frightful, utter misery had gradually fallen on the glove-cutter's family. He not only staked his whole week's pay on the lottery, but on Friday evening and Saturday morning he beat his wife, enraged if she had only one or two francs to give him. Now the children were beginning to earn something. The girl worked at a dressmaker's, the boy as a stable-hand; and when he could not get anything from his wife, Gaetano went to the dressmaker's where his little girl worked by the week, called her down, and, by dint of lies, wheedling, or blows, one after the other, he managed always to draw some pence from the child, who got the dressmaker to advance them on her week's pay. With his son, now a boy of twelve, Gaetano behaved still worse. The stable-boy often refused him money, taunting him with his vice and the wretchedness he had reduced his mother to. The father rained down blows on him. The boy, choking with tears, shouted, swore, and struggled. People came up to hear a son call his father a scoundrel, an assassin. Once, when his father gave him a blow on the nose, making the blood flow, he got enraged and bit his hand. On Saturday evening, when they came back to their home, the children carried the marks of their father's blows. The mother, who had forgotten the blows she got herself, found the marks, and wept over her poor children, asking them:

'How much has he taken away from you?'

'Fourteen sous,' Teresina answered sadly.

'He took half a franc from me,' said Carmine, raging.

'Merciful God!' the mother cried out, weeping.

But what she could not get out of her mind was her two-and-a-half-year-old baby, which died from bad milk, bad nourishment, from languishing in that black cellar, which dripped from damp summer and winter. If Peppino was named by chance, she grew pale, and nothing could get it out of her head that her husband's vice had killed her little son. She had religiously kept the big swinging basket that poor Naples children are cradled in (the sportone); but she first sold the pillow, then the little maize mattress, and one day of great hunger, not knowing where to get a half-penny, she sold the cradle. Parting from it was so agonizing that the mother sat on the doorstep, not caring who passed, and wept for an hour, with her head in her apron. 'You know, Peppino—you know!' she whispered, as if she was asking pardon of the tiny dead for having sold his cradle.

Now that summer had come in so unsettled and stormy, it had made the family position worse than ever. Of the two half-days' service she did, she had lost one, which meant ten francs. It was the lodging-house keeper: as she had empty rooms, she dismissed her servant. The girl Teresina had had her weekly pay reduced, as the dressmaker had no work; but, not wishing to dismiss the girl straight off, she let her do the house-work out of charity. The coachman that Carmine was stable-boy to went off with his master's family to the country for four months, and would have taken the boy with him; but Gaetano, the lad's father, knowing he could always get some pence out of the boy if he stayed in Naples, by threats, arguments, or blows, prevented him from going to the country. He ordered him to look out for another service in Naples. Carmine shrieked, wept, cursed, threatening to go away secretly.

'I am going away, mother; I am going off secretly, and father won't see a farthing of my money, you know. I will send it to you in a letter; father is not to have any of it.'

'What can I say, darling? You are right to go,' his mother lamented. And that going away of her son tore her heart also.

But the debts they had with Donna Concetta, the usurer, were Carmela's greatest agony, also Annarella's and Gaetano's. Even she had suffered from the bad season, as the debtors almost all failed to pay, and had not even money to pay the interest with by the week. She did not lend a farthing more to anyone; she was embittered and fierce, for even she was feeling the pinch of other people's wretchedness. She shut herself up in the house at night behind iron bars, for she had pension papers and savings-bank books in the house; and that put her in a state of constant fury. She wandered about all day from one street to another, from cellar to attic, from shop to factory, running after her own money, till she was out of breath; for she always went on foot. Devoured with rage from the constant refusals, she began by asking for her interest at least, coldly insistent, and ended up by making a scene, yelling, demanding her 'blood,' as she passionately called her money. But those who most enraged her were Gaetano, Annarella and Carmela. Between them they had got about two hundred francs from her, and she could not get even a centime of the weekly ten francs' interest. Oh, these three! these three! She went to the Bossi factory at Foria, where Gaetano cut out gloves, and had the workman called down sometimes; but, warned by a companion, he got them to say he was not at the factory that day. But she persisted, being suspicious and unbelieving; she walked about in front of the door, and he ended by going down to her, a black cigar ever in his mouth.

The scene began in a whisper, short, energetic, violent: sometimes Gaetano, grinning—for the lottery made him lose all sense of shame—repeated to her the motto of Naples' bad payers: 'If I had it and could, I would pay; but not having it, I can't and won't pay.' But she set to yelling, said she would go to Carlo Bossi to complain, or to the judge; and Gaetano, in a rage, but controlling himself, made answer. What would she gain by getting him turned out of the factory? She would not get another farthing then. The judge? What could he do? The prison for debtors no longer exists in Naples; the Concordia prison has been abolished by gentlemen who could not pay their big debts. Then she got in a rage like a witch; the whole neighbourhood came out to the doors and balconies. He listened, very pale, biting at his black cigar-stump. One day he threatened in a whisper to cut her in pieces. Muttering vague, threatening words, pulling her shawl round her angrily, Donna Concetta went off with the swinging step of rich, lazy women of the lower class, her head a little to one side, her face still discomposed after the scene.

Since she happened to be at Foria, and the cigar-makers' work ended at four o'clock, she went to stand at the door of the factory in Santi Apostoli Square, waiting till Carmela came out, to ask her for her money. She was not the only one that was waiting; other women were at the door who had lent money or clothes to the workers at high interest; and they knew and recognised each other, feeling they had a strong, mutual interest in the laws of usury; they made a long lament together over the tardiness in paying and inexactness of their clients. They all said they were ruined by the bad season and the ill-will of their debtors; the words 'my blood, our blood' came up always like a wail, as they spoke of the money lost. It was not allowable to send up for any workgirl, but the money-lenders waited, like the cake and fruit sellers, till the workpeople came out. The poor women who were coming from the factory, with sickly faces from the bad tobacco fumes, their hands stained up to the wrist, stopped to buy something to carry home to feed their families on, after their day's work. The money-lenders mingled with pot-herb-sellers, and vendors of parsnips in vinegar and pancakes, and waited patiently, pulling their shawls up on their shoulders—that common trick. At last the women, after being searched, one by one, by an overseer to find out if they had stolen any tobacco, came out. Some slipped away, others stopped to buy broccoli, radishes, potatoes, or some pancake; but the palest certainly were those who were caught outside by their creditors. The palest of all, and not from tobacco fumes, but shame, was Carmela. She tried to lead off Donna Concetta towards Vertecoeli Street or Santi Apostoli steps, so as not to let her friends hear what was said; but Donna Concetta went slowly and raised her voice. She wanted her money, her blood; it was a shame not to give it to her; she would have the interest, at any rate. If Carmela had any shame, she must at least give her the interest. The cigar-girl's eyes filled with tears at that abuse, and, having a few pence in her purse, it was impossible to hold out. She handed them to Donna Concetta; but it was so little always that, although she sacrificed her day's meal, it only got her the more abuse. She listened, with her head bent, to Donna Concetta's taunts up Arcivescovato Street and Gerolomini Road; after a time Donna Concetta recognised that the girl had no more money, and that it was useless to worry her.

But Carmela, even when Donna Concetta had gone off, felt the shiver of shame that bitter voice had sent through her, saying such offensive words; and tired, crushed, without a farthing in her pocket after working a whole day, she again felt envy of her dead mother. Of course, she, too, had that vice of gambling, but it was for good ends—to give money to everyone, to make all her friends happy, if she won, to let Raffaele, or Farfariello, as he was called, draw money from her; but to be so severely punished for this venial sin cut her to the heart. Ah! on some days how willingly she would have thrown herself into the well of the building where the factory was, so as not to hear or feel anything more! But Donna Concetta's thirst was not at all quenched by that drop of water, Carmela's pence, and on her way home every evening, before going in at her door, she hurried to the Rosariella Street cellar where Annarella lived. She was generally seated near the bed, and often in the dark, for she had nothing to buy oil with, saying the Rosary with her daughter. Donna Concetta crossed herself and waited till the Rosary was ended, to ask for her loan back, uselessly as it happened every day. Annarella could do nothing now but answer with a sigh or lament, and when Donna Concetta burst into eloquence she began to cry. Then Teresina broke in, speaking to both women.

'Don't cry, mother, to please me.' And to the money-lender: 'Do you not see, Donna Concetta, that mother has not got any money?'

'Dear girl, my darling!' sobbed her mother, choked by all the sorrows of her life.

The money-lender would not be appeased; she was so accustomed to the sham tears of those who wished to cheat her of her money that she no longer believed in any sorrow; it was only when she had exhausted her whole vocabulary of abuse that she decided to go away, slowly, with that sleek walk of hers, muttering that she would do justice with her own hands, against robbers of her blood. The mother and daughter were left alone in the damp, dark cellar's unhealthy heat, and the poor charwoman, responding to an inward thought, exclaimed:

'Soul of Peppinello, do me this grace!'

When Carmela and Annarella afterwards met in the street or the Rosariella cellar, there was a long outpouring of sorrows and interchange of news, when the physical and moral bitterness of their sad existences burst out.

'That lottery! what bad luck, what infamous luck, it was, for it never to give a farthing's winnings, and to take their all—even the bit of bread that just kept them alive!' Sometimes, through speaking about their wretchedness and solitariness, Filomena, the third unfortunate sister, was referred to. 'What was she doing? How could she bear that life of sin?'

Carmela had twice gone to seek her in the alley behind Santa Barbara Steps: once she was out; the other time she found her so cold, so changed, as if struck by remorse, that Carmela, filled with emotion, ran away at once. Another time Annarella had met Filomena in the street, in blue and yellow, with the usual red ribbon at her neck; she asked her why she wore no mourning for her mother.

'I am not worthy,' Filomena had answered, casting down her eyes, and going off with that sliding step on high-heeled, shiny shoes. All through this Carmela felt, besides her open griefs, besides the sequence of wretchedness and humiliation, something she could not take hold of, as if a new misfortune was coming on her head, a crowning fatality was hemming her in, with no way of escape. What was it? She could not say what it was. Perhaps it was Raffaele's increasing coldness, and the brutal way he treated her when they met; it may have been her brother-in-law Gaetano's fierce expression, or that queer look that Filomena gave her: she dared not go to ask for her now.

For some time Annarella and she had been making up a plan to put an end to their difficulties. Among all Naples common folk there are women famed as witches—fattucchiare, as they call them—whose witchcraft, philtres and charms cannot be resisted. Some, indeed, have a large practice, much larger than a doctor's would be in the same neighbourhood; almost every quarter boasts of its witch, who can do the most extraordinary miracles, always, however, by God's help and the Virgin's. Well, Chiarastella, the great sorceress, who lived up there at Centograde Lane, near the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, had a tremendous reputation: there was not a shop, cellar, road, square, or street corner where Chiarastella's marvellous deeds were not known and spoken of. It was said everywhere that, to get Chiarastella's spells, you must ask for things that were not against God's will; but no one who attended to this rule had come home disappointed from her little place in Centograde Lane. No one among the mass of Naples common folk dared to throw a doubt on Chiarastella's magic powers. If in the provision stores and macaroni shops, where young and old women love to gossip, or in front of herb-sellers' baskets and barrows, where small folk haggle for three-quarters of an hour over a bundle of borage, and at basement doors, where such long, animated talk goes on; any ignorant woman, on hearing of the Centograde witch's miracles, raised her eyebrows in surprise and unbelief, twenty anxious, excited voices told her of all the deeds done by Chiarastella. In one place a traitor husband had been brought back to his young wife; then a young fellow dying of consumption was cured when the doctors had given him up. Another case was a dressmaker who had lost her customers, and had got them all back gradually by the witch's influence; then there was a heartless girl who drove her lover to an evil life and crime by her coldness, and Chiarastella had set things right. Above all there was the tying of the tongue: that—that was Chiarastella's grand feat. Everyone who had a lawsuit coming off, or a trial in which they might be overcome by their adversary or by justice, where money, honour, liberty or life would be at stake, rushed in desperation for Chiarastella's magic. After hearing about the case, if she considered it moral and in accordance with God's will, she promised to tie the tongue of the adversary's lawyer. The spell consisted of a magic cord with three knots in it to represent the number of persons in the Trinity. Means must be found to put it on the advocate's person, either in his pocket or in the lining of his clothes, on the decisive morning of the trial, and by the help of prayer the rival's advocate would not be able to say over any of his arguments, even if he had them in his mind—his tongue was tied, the suit was lost to him, the spell had secured its object. Examples were quoted where the innocent and oppressed, suffering from man's injustice, had been thus saved by Chiarastella. Carmela and Annarella had thought of applying to Chiarastella for some time, Carmela to try and awaken in Raffaele's heart renewed love for her, she never having had his love, and now it was less hers than ever. Annarella required a spell to get her husband Gaetano to give up gambling at the lottery.

Carmela had been up already at Centograde Lane to make inquiries about getting the magic; she found five francs were necessary; and, besides, there were some small ingredients that had to be bought. Afterwards, if it was successful, just as God willed it, the two sisters would make the witch a good present. Chiarastella certainly never promised anything; she spoke mysteriously, in a doubtful way, and kept deep silence at certain questions. It seemed as if she did not care about money; she contented herself with a small fee for her support, counting on people's gratitude to get a better gift if it was God's will that the thing turned out well later on. Meanwhile, ten francs at least were needed; without them nothing whatever could be done. Whatever privations the sisters might endure that bad summer, they never would have been able to put aside ten francs between them.

But days went by, and moral wretchedness was as urgent of care as their bodily wants required looking to: it was the only remedy left, so, though much against the grain, Carmela made up her mind to sell her old marble-topped chest of drawers, the chief bit of furniture in her room, that had been bought by her mother as a bride. She barely got twelve francs for it—everyone was selling furniture that hateful summer; there was not a dog left that would buy a farthing's worth of things. She put her few pieces of linen in a covered basket under her bed, and hung her poor clothes on a bit of string from two nails in the wall, where they got damp, but she had her twelve francs.

It was one Sunday at the end of August, after hearing Mass in Sette Dolori Church, that the sisters went towards Centograde Lane. Carmela had shut up her home and carried the key in her pocket. Annarella left her daughter Teresina at home mending a torn dress, after working till mid-day at the dressmaker's. For eight days now Carmela had not succeeded in finding Raffaele, though she wandered through Naples in her free hours. Gaetano, Annarella's husband, had not come home on Saturday night, nor that morning. In Sette Dolori Church, kneeling at a dark wooden form that the poor must use, as they cannot pay for seats, they prayed earnestly during Mass. Now they were laboriously going up the steps of the steep incline that leads from Sette Dolori Street to Vittorio Emanuele Corso, not speaking, wrapt up in vague hopes and fears. Chiarastella, the witch, lived appropriately in a dark alley. It was quiet, but well enough lighted, and stood to the right of the steep steps that lead from the principal street up the hill to the little outlets Pignasecca, CaritÀ, and Monte Santo. There was a great quietness in that blind alley, but the damp summer scirocco had covered the flint pavement with a thin coating of mud, so they had to walk carefully not to fall, and they made no noise.

'Does she expect us?' Annarella asked, hardly moving her lips. She was panting after going up the steps.

'Yes, she does,' said Carmela in a whisper, as she went in at the door.

They went up to the first-floor, on to the narrow landing. There were two doors facing each other; one was shut fast; indeed, it was fastened by a chain and a heavy iron padlock. It looked as if the dwellers there had gone off after a misfortune, shutting up their dull abode for ever. The door on the left was half open; but the sisters, on hearing a muffled sob, dared not go in without knocking. It was startling for Carmela to pull a brown monkey's paw joined to a big-ringed iron chain the bell inside was hung to. The black, mummified paw gave one a shudder; it was hairy above and pink underneath. It seemed like finding a bit of a swarthy murdered child. The bell tinkled long and shrilly, as if it would never give over. A very old, decrepit, bent servant, with a pointed nose that seemed to wish to go into her toothless mouth, appeared. She signed to the two women to come into the bare, narrow lobby, which was rather damp underfoot. The choked sobbing went on behind another closed door. Soon after the door opened, and a girl of the people, a seamstress (Antonietta the blonde it was), crossed the lobby, her shawl off her shoulders, weeping, her handkerchief at her eyes. Nannina, her short friend, kept one arm round her waist, as if she wanted to hold her up, and went on repeating, to console her:

'It does not matter; never mind about it.'

But on the sobbing getting louder the old woman opened the outer door and sent the girls off, almost pushing them out; then she disappeared without saying a word to Annarella or Carmela. They, already moved by the feelings that induced them to invoke the witch's power, were very sympathetic with the two girls, one so inconsolable, the other so vainly trying to soothe. Leaning at the lobby window, they waited, their eyes cast down and hands crossed over their aprons, tightly holding the ends of their shawls, not saying a word to each other. A great silence was around, in the damp summer sultriness of that long summer noon. Annarella, being gentler, more saddened, and at the same time less infatuated than Carmela, bent her shoulders to her fatal destiny, feeling an increasing want of confidence in any means of salvation, being almost sure that Gaetano would never be brought back to reason by any prayer nor charm. She felt nothing but a growing fear all through her low spirits. Carmela, instead, having an ardent, loving soul that nothing could subdue, felt the flame of passion light up within her. She was not afraid; no, she would have dared any sight or danger to get Raffaele's heart again. But the decrepit servant, bent into a bow, as if she wanted to reach the earth again, appeared in the lobby and made a sign to Carmela to come in. Without making a sound, the sisters disappeared into the other room, and the door shut behind them.

'Here is my sister that I told you of,' whispered Carmela, standing aside to present Annarella, who stood just behind her.

Chiarastella nodded as a salutation. The witch was of middle height, or a little below it, very thin, with long lean hands, the skin of them shiny from sticking to the bones; her body moved automatically, as if she could stiffen every muscle at will. She had a small head, and short face covered with deep red blotches, the jaw very prominent; her complexion was of a warm vivid pallor, and the nose a short one. But her eyes were the interesting thing in the witch's neurotic face; they had a very mobile glance, and the colour varied from gray to green, with always a luminous point, a sparkle, in them; the glance was sometimes shy, then frightened-looking, then seemingly carried away in a spiritual ecstasy; her whole vitality was summed up in them. Chiarastella looked as if she were more than forty, but her hair remained very black, and her forehead was marked by a single deep wrinkle; but when her eyes lighted up, an irradiation of youthfulness spread over her face and person. She wore a black woollen dress, simply made, the usual cut among the common people, only it was ornamented with white silk buttons, and a white silk ribbon hung at her waist, in a knot with two long ends, at the side. White and black are the colours worn by the votaries of Our Lady of Sorrows. A thick crooked red coral horn hung from her neck on a thin black silk cord; in making some careless gesture, the witch often touched this horn. She was seated at a big walnut table that had a closed iron box on it, of deep-cut, artistic workmanship, an antique, evidently. A big black cat slept beside her, its paws gathered up under it. Set round the small room were a little sofa of faded chintz and five or six chairs; that was all that was in it. On the wall was a black wooden crucifix; the figure of Christ, carved in ivory, was a work of art also. She kept silence, with her eyes down. The sisters felt that a great mystery was coming near, and would envelop them.

'We have brought the ten francs,' Carmela said timidly, taking them out of the corner of her handkerchief and putting them on a table by Chiarastella's hand.

The witch did not move an eyelash; only the black cat raised its head, showing fine yellow eyes like amber.

'Have you heard Mass this morning?' Chiarastella asked, without turning her head.

'Yes, we have,' the sisters muttered shyly.

She had a low, hoarse voice—one of those women's voices that seem always charged with intense feeling—and it caused deep emotion in the heart and brain of the hearers.

'Say three Aves, three Pater Nosters, three Glorias, out loud,' commanded the witch.

Standing in front of her, the sisters said the words of prayer; she said them too, in her vibrating voice, her hands clasped in her lap on her black apron. The cat rose on its long black legs, holding down its head. Then, altogether, the three women, after bowing three times at the Gloria Patri, said the Salve Regina. The prayers were ended. The witch opened the wrought-iron casket, holding the lid so as to hide what was in it, and groped with her fingers a long time. Then, taking out some little things, still hiding them in her hands, she got mortally pale, her eyes became wild, as if she saw a terrible sight.

'Holy Virgin, help us!' Annarella uttered in a low tone, shaking with fear.

Now Chiarastella, with a yellow lighted taper, burnt two queer scented pastilles, which were pungent and heavy at the same time; she gazed intently at the flying smoke-rings; her eyes dilated, showing the whites streaked with blue, as if she was trying to read a mysterious word. When the smoke had disappeared, only a heavy smell was left; the sisters felt stupefied already, from that smell, perhaps. Monotonously, not looking at them, Chiarastella asked:

'Have you made up your mind to work a spell on your husband?'

'Yes, provided that he does not suffer in health from it,' Annarella replied feebly.

'You want to tie his hands, two or three times, so that he never at any time can stake at the lottery, do you not?'

'Yes, that is it,' the other answered eagerly.

'Are you in God's grace?'

'I hope I am.'

'Ask the Virgin's help, but under your breath.'

Whilst Annarella raised her eyes as if to find heaven, the witch took out of the iron casket a thin new cord, looked at it, muttered some queer irregular verses in the Naples dialect, invoking the powers of heaven, its saints, and some good spirits with queer names. The chant went on; the witch, still holding the cord tight in her hand, looked at it as if filling it with her spirit; she breathed on it and kissed it devoutly three times. Whilst she was carrying out this deed of magic, her thin brown hands shook, and the cat went up and down the big table excitedly, spreading its whiskers.

Annarella now repented more than ever of having come, of trying to cast a spell on her husband. It would have been better, much better, to resign herself to her fate, rather than call out all these spirits, and put all that mystery into her humble life. She deeply repented; her breathing was oppressed, her face saddened. She wanted to fly at once far off to her dark cellar; she preferred to endure cold and wretchedness there. It was her sister who had led her into such an extreme measure; she had done it more out of pity for her, seeing her so melancholy, desolate, and worn out by sorrow from Raffaele's desertion. It was not right—no, it could not be—to try and find out God's will by witchcraft and magic in any case. No witchcraft, however powerful, would conquer her husband's passion. She had read one Saturday in his eyes, grown suddenly ferocious, how unconquerable the passion was. She had seen him ill-treat his children with that repressed rage that is capable of even greater cruelty. That witchcraft, you see, with its alarming prelude and continuation, seemed to her another big step on the way to a dark, fatal end.

Now Chiarastella, with sharpened features, her skin more shiny and eyes burning, made three fatal knots in the twine, stopping at each to say something in a whisper. At the end she threw herself all at once from the chair to kneel on the ground, her head down on her breast. The black cat jumped down too, as if possessed, and went round and round the witch in the convulsive style of cats when going to die.

'Mother of God, do not forsake me!' Annarella called out, shaking with fear; but the witch, after crossing herself wildly several times, got up and said in solemn tones to the gambler's wife:

'Take—take this miraculous cord. It will tie your husband's hands and mind when Beelzebub tells him to gamble. Believe in God; have faith; hope in Him.'

Trembling, feeling hot all over from excessive emotion, Annarella took the witch's cord. She was to put it on her husband without his noticing it. She would have liked to go away now, to fly, for she felt the sultriness of the room, and the perfume was turning her brain; but Carmela, pale, disturbed from what she had seen and the commotion in her own mind, turned an appealing look on her to get her to wait.

Chiarastella had already begun the charm to make Raffaele love Carmela again. She called Cleofa, her decrepit servant, and said something in her ear. The woman went out, and came back carrying with great care a deep white porcelain dish full of clear water, looking at it as if hypnotized, not to spill a drop; then she disappeared. Chiarastella, with her face close to the dish, muttered some of her mysterious words over the water. She put in one finger, and let three drops fall on Carmela's forehead, who at a sign had leant forward to her. Then the witch lit a big wax candle Carmela had brought, and went on muttering Latin and Italian words. The candle-wick spluttered as if water had been thrown on the flame.

'Did you bring the lock of hair cut from your forehead on Friday evening when the moon was rising?' Chiarastella's hoarse voice demanded in the middle of the prayer.

'Yes, I have it,' said Carmela, with a deep sigh, handing a tress of her black hair to the witch.

From the iron casket Chiarastella had taken a platinum dish with some hieroglyphics on it, as shiny as a mirror. On this she put the hair, and raised it up three times, as if making a sacrifice to heaven. Then she held the black tress a little above the crackling flame, which stretched up to devour it; a second after there was a disagreeable smell of burnt hair, and nothing was seen on the dish but a morsel of stinking ashes. The incantation went on, Chiarastella singing under her voice her great love-charm, which was a queer mixture of sacred and profane names—from Belphegor's to Ariel's, from San Raffaele's, the girl's protector, to San Pasquale's, patron saint of women—partly in Naples dialect, partly in bad Italian. She afterwards took a small phial from the wrought-iron box, which held all the ingredients for her charms, and put three drops from it into the plate of water, which at once became a fine opal colour, with bluish reflections. The witch looked again to try and decipher that whitish cloud which whirled round in spirals and volutes, and dropped the ashes of the hair in. Gradually under her gaze the water got clear and limpid again in the dish; then she told Carmela to hand her a new crystal bottle, bought on Saturday morning after making her Communion, and she filled it slowly with water from the dish. The love-philtre was ready.

'Take it,' the witch said in her solemn tones, ending the incantation—'take and keep it jealously. Make Raffaele drink some drops of it in wine or coffee. It will inflame his blood and burn in his brain; it will make his heart melt for love of thee. Believe in God, have faith, and hope in Him.'

'It is not poison, is it?' Carmela ventured to ask.

'It will do him good, and not harm. Have faith in God.'

'And what if he goes on despising me?'

'Then, that means that he is in love with someone else, and this charm is not enough. You must find out who the woman is that he has left you for, and bring me here a bit of her chemise, petticoat, or dress, be it wool, linen, or cotton. I will make a charm against her. We will drive in a bit of her chemise or dress with a nail and some pins into a fresh lemon; then you must throw this bewitched lemon into the well of the house where the woman lives. Every one of these pins is a misfortune; the nail is a sorrow at the heart of which she will never be cured. Do you see?'

'Very well, I will try and find out,' said Carmela, in despair at the very idea of Raffaele being unfaithful.

'Let us go away,' said Annarella, who could bear no more.

'Thank you for your kindness, ma'am,' said Carmela.

'Thank you so much,' added Annarella.

'Thank God! thank Him!' the witch cried out piously.

She cast herself down again, kneeling, fervently praying, while the big black cat gently mewed, rubbing its pink nose on the table. The two women went out, thoughtful and preoccupied.

'That witchcraft is not good,' said Annarella, in a melancholy way to her sister.

'Then, what should be done—what can be done?' the other asked, wringing her hands, her eyes filled with tears.

'Nothing can be done,' said Annarella, in a solemn voice.

They went down slowly, tired, worn out by that long scene of witchcraft, which was above their intellectual capacity, and depressed by the tension on their nerves. A man went up the steps of Centograde Lane quickly, turning towards the witch's house. It was Don Pasqualino De Feo. The sisters did not see him; they went on, feeling the weight of their unhappy life heavier, fearing to have gone beyond the limits allowable to pious folk, and that they had drawn God's mysterious vengeance on the heads of those they loved.