‘Look here, look here,’ said Giacobbe, pointing out every nook and cranny, and his smooth, eyebrowless face became jovial again.

‘Take my sister as your wife,’ he repeated. ‘This house will be yours.’

‘You’re teasing me because I’m poor,’ replied the fisherman.

He trod cautiously across the wooden floor while Giacobbe stamped the iron heels of his boots, enjoying the echo that he raised in the big empty rooms that smelled of fresh whitewash.

Their stone sills burning in the sun, the windows looked out over the whole village, which was blackish-brown, like a pile of spent charcoal, under its green veil of trees. Beyond lay the yellow plain and the great purple-grey sphinxes. In the burning afternoon silence, the incessant peal of the church bell sounded like the clang of a chisel working wearily, far-off in the mountains.

‘Why don’t you want to marry my sister?’ Giacobbe asked, leaning out awkwardly over one of the window-sills. ‘This house could be yours, this could be the bedroom. Here at this window, you could stand, smoking your pipe.’

‘I don’t smoke. Leave me in peace,’ said Isidoro impatiently, for the shepherd’s words were beginning to upset him. He too leaned out of the window.

‘I’m not joking, you old lizard,’ broke out Giacobbe. ‘But you are so beggarly it doesn’t occur to you that I’m not joking.’

‘Look,’ said Isidoro. ‘Today you gave me dinner, and just because of that you want to joke at my expense. If you want me to go on being grateful, leave me alone.’

Giacobbe watched him for a while. Then he laughed.

‘Let’s go and have a drink now,’ he said.

They went off, Giacobbe to the tavern and Isidoro to the church.

In the tavern Giacobbe found Brontu playing morra noisily with the other men. Long before five o’clock when the procession was due to start, they were all drunk. Giacobbe soon became drunker than any of them. Thinking that Brontu was about to fall over at any moment, he took his young master by the arm. Then he invited everyone in the tavern to come to his mansion to watch the procession.

The huge empty rooms resounded with raucous voices, uncontrolled laughter, and staggering footsteps. The open windows filled with wild, flushed, bearded faces.

Giacobbe and Brontu leaned out of the window where the fisherman had stood. The sun had sunk down, but the windowsill was still hot, while away in the distance the mountains seemed ever more furrowed by purple shadows.