be called settling down which
was a continual hurly-burly; the only repose about it appeared in the
bar's rests to which poor Alfio's counterpoint was now reduced. He grew
irritable, abused her and beat her; but she was one of those women who
love their man more passionately the more he knocks them about. Maria
sent him a post-card for his onomastico, and the widow got hold of it.
This led to his leaving the house for a few nights, but she had always
taken his money for housekeeping, so he had not enough to leave the town,
and she came to the shop in the daytime and made such a disturbance that
he was frightened into returning. He dreamt of disguising himself in one
of his own theatrical wigs and escaping so, but the idea was too like
some of those contrapuntal combinations which, as Cherubini says, may be
employed in a study-fugue, but which in practical music, as in practical
life, have to be weeded out by artificial selection.

Then his mother fell ill, and the family sent him the money to go home to
embrace her. The widow had put some of his money by for an emergency.
She was not going to lose sight of him again, especially now that she
knew about Maria; she bought a ticket and came too. They spent the night
at her brother's house in Catania and Alfio was to go next day to his
village. She said she would come too, he said that nothing would induce
him to take her with him. She implored and stormed and spat and swore,
knowing all the time she could not appear in his village as belonging to
him, and fearing that he intended to manipulate his going home alone into
a way of escape. She pretended to acquiesce but, in the morning, as he
was passing through the Quattro Canti she was there, disguised as a man
in her brother's clothes, and before Alfio could recognise her she had
stabbed him in the back and he fell down dead.

"But, Peppino," I exclaimed, "this is a worse tragedy than the other.
What a horrible woman!"

"The Padre Eterno was very angry that day when he made the bad woman."

"Where is she now?"

"In prison."

"That is no satisfaction to poor Alfio."

"No; and not satisfaction to his family. His mother died of grief during
that they were telling her his murder."

"And Maria?"

"Maria is telling that she would becoming a monkey-woman."

"What do you mean?"

"How do you say in English the lady-priest, the monaca?"

"Oh! yes,--a nun. But it seems a pity she should take such a serious
ste