After the Divorce - Grazia Deledda (reading like a writer .TXT) 📗

be left under her care. Thus the two, the old woman and the child, lived on in the white house, while Giovanna and Costantino returned to the little grey cottage. There, after a time, another child was born to them⁠—Malthineddu.

It is a soft spring day. Overhead the sky is a tender blue, and all around the village the fields of grain sway like the waves of a green, encircling sea. Aunt Martina sits on the portico, spinning, and praying silently; a white, tragic figure, spiritualised by sorrow.

Aunt Bachissia sits spinning likewise, before the door of the cottage. Giovanna is sewing, and hard by Costantino works at his bench. No one speaks, but the thoughts of all are turned on the past.

In the middle of the common Mariedda and Malthineddu are playing together with gurgles and shouts of joyous laughter, as happy and unconcerned as the birds on the neighbouring hedges.

Hither and thither they go, trotting from Aunt Martina to Costantino, from Aunt Bachissia to Giovanna, from Giovanna to Aunt Martina. And each in turn, even the desolate, heartbroken old grandmother, looks up to receive them with a smile of tender indulgence. They are the invisible woof of peace and mutual forgiveness.

Endnotes

Porredda, female diminutive for Porru. ↩

Piedino⁠—little foot. ↩

An enclosed pasture, but of vast extent. ↩

Che ti morsichi il cane⁠—“May the dog bite you.” ↩

A summer goblin, invoked in Sardinia to frighten children out of the sun. ↩

Bread and water. ↩

Balla chi trapasset sa busacca, brasciai!⁠—“I wish a ball would hit him in the pouch, the he-wolf!” ↩

Stagman. (Translator’s note.) ↩

A grind-stone turned by a small donkey, which grinds a hundred litres of grain in four days. ↩

In Sardinia, farm labourers often own cattle which are either turned out with their master’s herds (whose partners they thus, in a manner, become), or are confided to some other shepherd, who receives half the profits in return for looking after them. ↩

Ispana trista or santa, from which, according to tradition, the crown of thorns was made. The people use the leaves of this tree for medicinal purposes. ↩

The custom of burying a person bitten by a tarantula in a dunghill, and putting him in an oven, is not so unreasonable as it at first appears, the effect of the poison being neutralised if the sufferer can be made to perspire freely; while the sickening odours of the dunghill induce nausea, also supposed to be very beneficial. Now, however, the people completely ignoring these practical results, the ceremony has come to be an act of pure superstition. The account given above describes such scenes as they have actually been known to occur. ↩

Head of cattle. ↩

In Sardinia the fireplaces almost always consist of four stones placed so as to form a square in the centre of the kitchen. They have no chimneys. ↩

Colophon

After the Divorce
was published in 1905 by
Grazia Deledda.
It was translated from Italian in 1905 by
Maria Hornor Lansdale.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Dede Stolee,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2012 by
Henry Flower and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Agostina the Italian,
a painting completed in 1866 by
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
The cover and title pages feature the
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Uncopyright

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