"Sleep, sleep, my hope, yea sleep, nor be afraid, Sleep, sleep, my hope, in confidence serene, For if we both in the same scales be weighed, But little difference will be found between. Have you for me unfeignèd love displayed, My love for you shall greater still be seen. If we could both in the same scales be weighed, But small the difference would be found between."
He does not think the song nearly good enough for her: "I know not what song I can sing that is worthy of you," he says: he wishes he were "a goldfinch or a nightingale, and had no equal for singing;" or, better still, he would fain "have an angel come and sing her a song that had never before been heard of out Paradise," for in Paradise alone can a song be found appropriate to her. One day (it is Rusidda's fête-day), Turiddu makes a little poem, and says in it: "All in roses would I be clad, for I am in love with roses; I would have palaces and little houses of roses, and a ship with roses decked, and a little staircase all of roses, which I the fortunate one would ascend; but ere I go up it, I wish to say to you, my darling, that for you I languish." He watches her go to church: "how beautiful she is! Her air is that of a noble lady!" The mother lingers behind with her gossips, and Turiddu whispers to Rusidda, "All but the crown you look like a queen." She answers: "If there rode hither a king with his crown who said, 'I should like to place it on your head,' I should say this little word, 'I want Turiddu, I want no crown.'" Turiddu tells her he is sick from melancholy: "it is a sickness which the doctors cannot cure, and you and I both suffer from it. It will only go away the day we go to church together."
But there seems no prospect of their getting married; Turiddu sends his love four sighs, "e tutti quattru suspiri d'amuri:"
"Four sighs I breathe and send thee, Which from my heart love forces; Health with the first attend thee, The next our love discourses; The third a kiss comes stealing; The fourth before thee kneeling; And all hard fate accusing Thee to my sight refusing."
And now he has to go upon a long journey; but before he starts he contrives one meeting with Rusidda. "Though I shall no longer see you, we yet may hope, for death is the only real parting," he says. "I would have you constant, firm, and faithful; I would have you faithful even unto death." She answers, "If I should die, still would my spirit stay with you." A year passes; on Rusidda's _festa_ a letter arrives from Turiddu: "Go, letter mine, written in my blood, go to my dear delight; happy paper! you will touch the white hand of my love. I am far away, and cannot speak to her; paper, do you speak for me."