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Then he let his muzzle and his ears hang down, like a grown-up ass, his eye spent, as if he was tired of looking out over the vast white campagna that fumed here and there with the dust from the threshing floors, and it seemed as if he was made for nothing else but to be let die of thirst and made to trot around on the sheaves. At evening he went back to the village with full saddlebags, and the master’s lad went behind him pricking him between the legs, along the edges of the by-way that seemed alive with the twittering of tits and the scent of catmint and of rosemary, and the donkey would have liked to snatch a mouthful, if they hadn’t made him trot all the time, till the blood ran down his legs, and they had to take him to the vet; but his master didn’t care, because the harvest had been a good one, and the colt had earned his seven and a half dollars. His master said: “Now he’s done his work, and if I sell him for five dollars, I’ve still made money by him.”

The only one who was fond of the foal was the lad who made him trot along the little road, when they were coming home from the threshing floor, and he cried while the farrier was burning the creature’s legs with a red-hot iron, so that the colt twisted himself up, with his tail in the air and his ears as erect as when he had roved around the fairground, and he tried to get free from the twisted rope that pressed his lips, and he rolled his eyes with pain almost as if he had human understanding, when the farrier’s lad came to change the red-hot irons, and his skin smoked and frizzled like fish in a frying pan. But Neighbor Neli shouted at his son: “Silly fool! What are you crying for? He’s done his work now, and seeing that the harvest has gone well we’ll sell him and buy a mule, which will be better for us.”

Some things children don’t understand; and after they had sold the colt to Farmer Cirino from Licodia, Neighbor Neli’s son used to go to visit it in the stable, to stroke its nose and neck, and the ass would turn to snuff at him as if its heart were still bound to him, whereas donkeys are made to be tied up where their master wishes, and they change their fate as they change their stable. Farmer Cirino from Licodia had bought the Saint Joseph’s ass cheap, because it still had the wound in the pastern; and the wife of Neighbor Neli, when she saw the ass going by with its new master, said: “There goes our luck; that black-and-white hide brings a jolly threshing floor; and now times go from bad to worse, so that we’ve even sold the mule again.”

Farmer Cirino had yoked the ass to the plow, with the old horse that went like a jewel, drawing out his own brave furrow all day long, for miles and miles, from the time when the larks began to trill in the dawn-white sky, till when the robins ran to huddle behind the bare twigs that quivered in the cold, with their short flight and their melancholy chirping, in the mist which rose like a sea. Only, seeing that the ass was smaller than the horse, they had put him a pad of straw on the saddle, under the yoke, and he went at it harder than ever, breaking the frozen sod, pulling with all his might from the shoulder.”This creature saves my horse for me, because he’s getting old,” said Farmer Cirino.”He’s got a heart as big as the Plain of Catania, has that ass of Saint Joseph! And you’d never think it.”

And he said to his wife, who was following behind him clutched in her scanty cloak, parsimoniously scattering the seed: “If anything should happen to him, think what a loss it would be! We should be ruined, with all the season’s work in hand.”

And the woman looked at the work in hand, at thel ittle stony desolate field, where the earth was white and cracked, because there had been no rain for solong, the water coming all in mist, the mist that rots the seed; so that when the time came to hoe the young corn it was like the devil’s beard, so sparse and yellow, as if you’d burned it with matches.”In spite of the way we worked that land!” whined Farmer Cirino, tearing off his jacket.”That donkey put his guts into it like a mule! He’s the ass of misfortune, he is.”