"The confessor has bade me pardon you; but I am not angry with you for such gossip; and if you will not steal any more of the cheese from me, I will not take any further notice of what you said to me in passion."
It was from that moment that they nick named him Corno d'ore—"Gold horns"—and the nickname stuck to him and all his, even after he had washed his horns in blood.
La Mara also went to confession and returned from the church all wrapped up in her mantellina, and with her eyes cast down, so that she seemed a genuine Santa Maria Maddelena. Jeli, who was silently waiting for her on the balcony, when he saw her coming in that way, seeming as if she had the Holy Presence in her heart, kept looking at her,—pale, pale from his foot to his head as if he saw her for the first time, or as if his Mara had been changed for him, and he seemed hardly to dare to lift his eyes to her while she was shaking the cloth and setting the table, calm and neat as ever.
