"If I must," stammered Antonio, while in spite of his grief a smile curled his lips, "those two teeth are ... to my mind...."
"Ha, ha!" cried the old woman laughing aloud, "my two dear good old black teeth are what pleases you the least about me. I can well believe it: they stand like two scorcht palisades among the ruins of a fortress in the wide empty space there. But you should have seen me ten years back; then matters were much worse still. In those days I had a whole mouth full of such portentous grinders; and they who loved me would say it lookt frightful. Well, one by one they fell out, and these two alone are left behind the last of all their race. When they are once gone, my jaws will clap together like two doors, the upper lip will grow just thrice as long, and again one can't tell what sort of a face will come of it. Time, my dear young friend, is, as somebody found out many many years ago, a bungling workman; he makes a creature pretty enough; then he daubs and trims and pares and pulls and squeezes the thing about, draws the nose and chin out of their sheaths, knocks in the cheeks, eats ruts into the forehead, till he has turned it into a scarecrow; and then at last he gets ashamed, smashes the whole wretched concern to pieces, and shovels it over with earth that all the world may not see his disgrace. Your cheeks too, smooth and polisht as they are, will not be so like a roseleaf by and by. Here! let me look! verily you have the rarest pearls of toothikins! a pity they must be used in chewing bread and roast beef. Hey, hey! shew them to me ... wider open with the mouth ... but they stand very oddly ... hem! and that eyetooth! there is meaning in all that."
Antonio knew not whether to scold or laugh; however he constrained himself to be calm, and to let the old woman have her chatter; for owing, as it seemed, to her former acquaintance with his family, she possest a strange power over him. But how did he start with amazement when she suddenly cried out: "Crescentia!"
"For Heaven's sake!" he said, almost breathlessly: "do you know her? can you see her? can you tell me anything about her?"
"What's the matter with you?" howled the old woman: "how can I help knowing her, seeing she is my own daughter? Only look yourself how the lazy slut has fallen asleep in her chair there, and lets the fire go out and the soup get cold."