Salvatore smiled his sweet smile and said he would think about it.
On the following Sunday, dressed in the stiff black clothes in which he looked so much less well than in the ragged shirt and trousers of every day, he went up to High Mass at the parish church and placed himself so that he could have a good look at the young woman.
When he came down again he told his mother that he was willing.
Well, they were married and they settled down in a tiny whitewashed house in the middle of a handsome vineyard.
Salvatore was now a great big husky fellow, tall and broad, but still with that ingenuous smile and those trusting, kindly eyes that he had had as a boy.
He had the most beautiful manners I have ever seen in my life.
Assunta was a grim-visaged female, with decided features, and she looked old for her years.
But she had a good heart and she was no fool.
I used to be amused by the little smile of devotion that she gave her husband when he was being very masculine and masterful; she never ceased to be touched by his gentle sweetness.
But she could not bear the girl who had thrown him over, and notwithstanding Salvatore’s smiling expostulations she had nothing but harsh words for her.
Presently children were born to them.
It was a hard enough life.
All through the fishing season towards evening he set out in his boat with one of his brothers for the fishing grounds.
It was a long pull of six or seven miles and he spent the night catching the profitable cuttlefish.
Then there was the long row back again in order to sell the catch in time for it to go on the early boat to Naples.
At other times he was working in his vineyard from dawn till the heat drove him to rest and then again, when it was a trifle cooler, till dusk.
Often his rheumatism prevented him from doing anything at all and then he would lie about the beach, smoking cigarettes, with a pleasant word for everyone notwithstanding the pain that racked his limbs.
The foreigners who came down to bathe and saw him there said that these Italian fishermen were lazy devils.
Sometimes he used to bring his children down to give them a bath.
They were both boys and at this time the elder was three and the younger less than two.
They sprawled about at the water’s edge stark naked and Salvatore, standing on a rock, would dip them in the water.
The elder one bore it with stoicism, but the baby screamed lustily.
Salvatore had enormous hands, like legs of mutton, coarse and hard from constant toil, but when he bathed his children, holding them so tenderly, drying them with delicate care, upon my word they were like flowers.
He would seat the naked baby on the palm of his hand and hold him up, laughing a little at his smallness, and his laugh was like the laughter of an angel.
His eyes then were as candid as his child’s.
I started by saying that I wondered if I could do it and now I must tell you what it is that I have tried to do.
I wanted to see whether I could hold your attention for a few pages while I drew for you the portrait of a man, just an ordinary Italian fisherman who possessed nothing in the world except a quality which is the rarest, the most precious and the loveliest that anyone can have.
Heaven only knows why he should so strangely and unexpectedly have possessed it.
All I know is that it shone in him with a radiance that, if it had not been so unconscious and so humble, would have been to the common run of men hardly bearable.
And in case you have not guessed what the quality was I will tell you. Goodness, just goodness.