Marianna felt that she would like to throw herself at this pig’s feet and kiss them in the joy of her deliverance, while Carolina gave play to her rage in a storm of anathema against her brother and the singer. In the thick of her onset--all rituals of conduct torn to shreds--the door bell jingled tragically. With bated breath, Angelica turned the knob, and Carolina struck a pose of disdain in the hallway. As the door opened a chorus of greetings and happy auguries came from a group of men and women at the threshold, all in their sprucest Sunday array. They were the first lot of invited guests, and would have swarmed in, but Carolina ordered them back. “We have come to the wedding feast,” they protested. “Signor Di Bello has bidden us.” “Begone, you ragabash and bobtail!” said Carolina, and she slammed the door in their faces. CHAPTER XVIII AT THE ALTAR OF SAN PATRIZIO NEVER did wedding barouche so gorgeous roll over the asphalt of Mulberry as the one in which Signor Di Bello and his bride rode to church; and never had the people beheld such an illustrious couple in nuptial parade. With an overdone mimicry of the princesses and duchesses she had watched so often driving in the Chiaja of Naples, Juno sat erect and grand of mien, deigning scarcely a glance to right or left. Now and then she did smile with a feigned grace, or bow with mock condescension in response to some wild salvo of “bravoes” shot as they passed by a _caffè_ from the throats of Signor Di Bello’s boon comrades. Nor did these salutes meet with a less dignified return from the bridegroom. His old friends wondered, and avowed that the bubbling merchant was not himself to-day. And, in truth, for the first time in his life the signore had put on an air of loftiness and gravity. No one could say that the radiant creature in purple by his side surpassed him in grandeur. Perhaps it was the example of Juno, perhaps the witchery of his looking-glass. An hour before, arrayed in evening clothes spick and span from the tailor, who had worked overtime, Signor Di Bello had viewed his mirrored self with much approval and delight. It was his first dress suit, and the round brow, the bushy hair, and the King Humbert mustache showed above the broad field of shirt front in bolder relief and a light that was new to their owner. His facial likeness to the monarch of Italy had ever been a spring of secret pride, but not until to-day, when he beheld himself in royal raiment, had the similitude played him any mental pranks. Fondly he gazed in the mirror’s verge, and said to himself: “Ah! that is the head of the king, and the head is on my shoulders.” And it was because the king had got into that head so badly that Signor Di Bello rode to his wedding with the stateliness of a royal chief.