I knew a South Italian of the old Greek blood whose sister told him when
he was a boy that he had eyes like a cow.
Raging with despair and grief he haunted the fountains and looked into
the mirror of their waters. “Are my eyes,” he asked himself with horror,
“are they really like the eyes of a cow?” “Alas!” he was compelled to
answer, “they are only too sadly, sadly like them.”
And he asked those of his playmates whom he best knew and trusted whether
it was indeed true that his eyes were like the eyes of a cow, but he got
no comfort from any of them, for they one and all laughed at him and said
that they were not only like, but very like. Then grief consumed his
soul, and he could eat no food, till one day the loveliest girl in the
place said to him:
“Gaetano, my grandmother is ill and cannot get her firewood; come with me
to the bosco this evening and help me to bring her a load or two, will
you?”
And he said he would go.
So when the sun was well down and the cool night air was sauntering under
the chestnuts, the pair sat together cheek to cheek and with their arms
round each other’s waists.
“O Gaetano,” she exclaimed, “I do love you so very dearly. When you look
at me your eyes are like—they are like the eyes”—here she faltered a
little—“the eyes of a cow.”
Thenceforward he cared not . . .
And so on.