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Updated: May 28, 2025
Pallura lay on his back upon the boards, with a broad wound in the middle of his forehead, with one ear torn, with gashes on his arms, his sides, and one thigh. A warm stream flowed down to his chin and neck, staining his shirt and forming dark, shining clots on his breast, his leathern belt, and even his breeches.
The air was full of the stifling emanations of mown hay, with now and then a whiff from putrefied silkworms in the bushes. Flights of swallows crossed this space with quick, scolding cries, trafficking between the river sands and the eaves. An expectant silence had interrupted the murmur of the multitude. The name Pallura ran from lip to lip. Signs of angry impatience broke forth here and there.
Loving hands changed the cloths on his wounds, sprinkled water in his face, set the gourd of wine to his lips, made a sort of pillow under his head. "Pallura, poor Pallura, won't you answer?" He lay supine, his eyes closed, his mouth half open, with brown soft hair on his cheeks and chin, the gentle beauty of youth still showing in his features contracted with pain.
Would not the whole bust do better? When would Pallura come back with the candles? Was it one hundred pounds of wax? Only one hundred? And when would the bells begin to ring? Well, then? Well, then?" The clamor increased around Giacobbe. Those on the outskirts of the crowd pushed toward the church. From all the streets people poured into the square till they filled it.
Giacobbe, who reached the wagon first, saw stretched out on its floor the bloody body of Pallura, and screamed, waving his arms towards the crowd, "He is dead! He is dead!" The sad news spread like lightning.
Here's Pallura!" The wagon came screeching over the gravel, drawn at a walk by a heavy gray mare, over whose shoulders hung a great shining brass horn, like a half-moon. When Giacobbe and the others made towards her, the pacific animal stopped and breathed hard.
And the crowd pressed closer, saying: "Speak, Pallura! Who hurt you? Who hurt you? Speak! Speak!" Beneath this question was a trembling rage, an intensifying fury, a deep tumult of reawakened feelings of vengeance; and the hereditary hatred boiled in every heart. "Speak! Who hurt you? Tell us! Tell us!"
The balsamic odor of incense spread quickly to the nostrils of the devotees. "Te rogamus, audi nos!" But when the arm was carried back and the tolling stopped, in that moment of silence a tinkling of little bells was heard near at hand coming from the river road. Then of a sudden the crowd rushed in that direction and many voices cried: "It is Pallura with the candles! It is Pallura coming!
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