Private

“Friend Alfio,” began Turridu after he had walked quite a bit of the way beside his companion, who remained silent, with his cap drawn over his eyes, “as true as God himself, I know...

Now that the husband was home again, Turridu no longer wasted his days in the little street, but drowned his sorrow at the tavern with his friends; and on Easter eve they had on...

“I am crazy about you,” Turridu would say; “I am losing my sleep and my appetite.”“I don`t believe it!”“I wish I was the son of Victor Emmanuel, so that I could marry you!”“I don`t...

“I`d like to take her from under his very eyes, the dirty dog!” he muttered.Across from Alfio`s house lived Master Cola, the vine-grower, who was rich as a porker, so they said, and had...

“It is a blessing to have sight of you!” said he.“Oh, friend Turridu, I was told that you came back around the first of the month.”“And I too was told many other things besides!”...

Giovanni Verga (1840—1922)With Verga we find ourselves in modern times. The dawn of the Nineteenth Century found Italy in the full flood of that romanticism that was popularized by Byron and Scott. The figure...

She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her rosy nails on the greasy pots and pans. She washed the dirty linen,...

She wrote at his dictation.At the end of a week they had lost all hope.And Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:“We must consider how to replace that ornament.”The next day they took the...

She saw first of all some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian cross, gold, and precious stones of admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the glass, hesitated, could not make...

But, by a violent effort, she had conquered her grief, and she replied, with a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks:“Nothing. Only I have no dress, and therefore I can`t go to...