And he looked different, with his American clothes and even in the way he acted. He walked differently, more freely. He could compare things, whereas the rest of them had to accept only what they saw before them or what they had always known. He came and went as he pleased to Soveria Mannelli, to Cosenza, even to the coast. No matter what stories of sacrifice and hard times he told of his experience in the New World, and no matter what harsh truth his feelings about America conveyed, what was true for Umbertina was what she saw, and she saw that he was respected and listened to because he had savings to buy land. And his health was returning in the good mountain air; his confidence also, as his marriage approached and he made the down payment on the parcel of land he obtained at auction.

It was a promising time despite Don Antonio’s sour prediction in the pulpit that those blasphemers who bought secularized Church lands at auction would not be blessed with them. “You cannot take from God and expect to prosper,” he said. And many believed, for the Church was powerful and there were more ways than one for it to get revenge on those who dared think they could buy its expropriated property.

“They say those who bought ten years ago are already ruined,” Carlo told Serafino.

“They tried to get too much from their soil—they wore it out,” Serafino answered confidently.

“Even trying to get little from soil is no good,” Carlo rejoined. “This is a thin soil, a soil that washes away. Only the rich can manage it. They can afford irrigation. They can afford a large holding and keep some of it fallow. But a peasant has little and has to work it all—continually. And it dies.”

“My friend, what would you have me do? Return to the mountains with a flock? One must try,” Serafino answered. “Times are changing.”

“All that’s changed is that instead of barons being the landholders, now it’s the borghesi—the bourgeois—who buy out the ruined peasants. For us it’s always the same.”

At the auction of a large ecclesiastical estate, Serafino was able to put up the minimum deposit required of bidders. Then, when he had bought the land, he put down a tenth of the purchase price on his few acres, agreeing to pay off the balance in eighteen years at 25 percent interest. He had enough to make a start. Work would do the rest.

Umbertina on the eve of her marriage went to get the finished spread from Nelda and pay her what lire her father had let her keep from the sale of some goats. “There is another thing I would like from here,” she told the old housekeeper, who was at her work in the kitchen. “I would like some of Don Antonio’s rosemary to plant where I will live from now on.”

Nelda laughed in a raucous, rough-edged way. “They used to say you had a character because of your strong chin. And it’s true, for now you want rosemary. The saying is that in the house where rosemary thrives, the women of that house are its strength.”