For an instant, in his suffering, Zorzi fancied that he had died and was in the clutches of Satan himself.
He turned his head on the cushion and saw the ugly face of the old porter, who was bending down and examining the wounded foot while he steadily cursed everything in heaven and earth, with an earnestness that would have been grotesque had his language been less frightful.

For a few moments Zorzi almost forgot that he was hurt, as he listened.

Not a saint in the calendar seemed likely to escape the porter's fury, and he even went to the length of cursing the relatives, male and female, of half-legendary martyrs and other good persons about whose families he could not possibly know anything.
"For heaven's sake, Pasquale!" cried Zorzi.

"You will certainly be struck by lightning!" He had always supposed that the porter hated him, as every one else did, and he could not understand.

By this time he was far more helpless than he had been just after he had been hurt, and when he tried to move the injured foot to a more comfortable position it felt like a lump of scorching lead.
The porter entered upon a final malediction, which might be supposed to have gathered destructive force by collecting into itself all those that had gone before, and he directed the whole complex anathema upon the soul of the coward who had done the foul deed, and upon his mother, his sisters and his daughters if he had any, and upon the souls of all his dead relations, men, women and children, and all of his relations that should ever be born, to the end of time.