In this way they came to the other side of the village; that is, to the part where Isidoro Pane lived. A spectacle of indescribable loveliness lay spread before them. The moon, like a great golden face, gazed down from the silver-blue west; and the black earth, the wet trees, the slate-stone houses, the clumps of bushes, and the wild stretch of upland--everything, as far as the eye could reach, to the very utmost confines of the horizon, seemed bathed in a tender, half-tearful smile. The two young people passed close by the fisherman's hut; they could hear him singing. Brontu stopped. "Come on," said Giovanna, dragging him by the arm. "Wait a moment; I want to knock on the thing he calls his door." "No," she said, trembling. "Come away, come on, I tell you; if you don't come, I'll leave you by yourself." "Oh! yes, that's true; you and he have had a quarrel; I haven't, though; I'm going to knock on his door." "I'm going on, then." "He was singing the lauds of San Costantino," said Brontu, as he rejoined her a few moments later. "The one the saint gave him on the river-bank that time. That old man is stark mad." CHAPTER XII On the following morning at about eleven o'clock, the religious services began in the church. They were set for this late hour so as to allow for the arrival of a young priest from Nuoro, a friend of Priest Elias's, who was to give a "panegyric" gratis to the people of Orlei. This panegyric was a great event, and in consequence, by ten o'clock the church overflowed with a gaily dressed throng of persons. The building itself was painted in the most vivid colours--pink walls relieved by stripes of bright blue; a yellow wooden pulpit; and rows of lusty saints with red cheeks and blond hair, simpering from their pink niches like so many Teutonic worthies. San Costantino, however, the Patron Saint, was clad in armour, and his face looked dark and stern. This ancient statue was believed to perform miracles, and, according to local tradition, had been carved by San Nicodemus himself. Through the wide-open door came a flood of sunshine, which, pouring over the congregation, enveloped them in a cloud of golden dust. At the other end of the church, where the altar stood, it seemed quite dark, notwithstanding the large M of lighted tapers, looking, with their motionless flames, like so many arrowheads stuck on shafts of white wood.