He is an old man with a long, hooked nose which hangs down over his upper lip, a bushy beard, pale eyes with red eyelids. They are the ugliest eyes imaginable; the whites are yellowish, and they squint. The beggar is tall and very thin; he moves his body when he walks, so that it looks as if he wriggled forward. He walks so softly that Donna Silvia does not hear him. The first thing she notices is his shadow, which, slender as a snake, bends down towards her.
She looks up when she sees the shadow. Then the beggar bows to her and asks for a dish of macaroni.
“I have macaroni on the fire,” says Donna Silvia. “Sit down and wait; you shall have your fill.”
The beggar sits down beside Donna Silvia, and after a while they begin to chat. They soon talk of Falco.
“Is it true that you let your sons work on Donna Micaela’s railway?” says the beggar.
Donna Silvia bites her lips together, and nods an assent.
“You are a brave woman, Donna Silvia. Falco might be revenged on you.”
“Then he can take revenge,” says Donna Silvia. “But I will not obey one who has killed my father. He forced him to escape from prison in Augusta, and my father was captured and shot.”
And so saying she rises and goes in to get the food.
As she stands in the kitchen she sees the beggar through the window, sitting and rocking on the stone-bench. He is not quiet for a moment. And in front of him writhes his shadow, slender and lithe as a snake.
Donna Silvia remembers what she had once heard Caterina, who had been married to Falco’s brother, Nino, say. “How will you recognize Falco after twenty years?” people had asked her. “Should I not recognize the man with the snake-shadow?” she answered. “He will never lose it, long as he may live.”
Donna Silvia presses her hand on her heart. There in her yard Falco Falcone is sitting. He has come to be revenged because her sons work on the railway. Will he set fire to the house, or will he murder her?
Donna Silvia is shaking in every limb as she serves up her macaroni.
Falco begins to find the time long as he sits on the stone-bench. A little dog comes up to him and rubs against him. Falco feels in his pocket for a piece of bread, but he finds only a stone, which he throws to the dog.