"Come, come!" Uncle Piero repeated, "what about this letter?"
Franco roused himself, and hastened to embrace him, hardly able to restrain his sobs.
The placid man bore this storm calmly and patiently for a time, but presently he began to defend himself, and demanded the letter. "Let me see it, let me see it," said he, and he muttered, "What can that blessed woman have written?"
Franco brought the light and the letter, which he handed to Uncle Piero. His grandmother had written never a word, never a syllable; she had simply returned the engineer's letter and Franco's note. It was some time before the uncle could grasp this. He was never quick to understand things, and this thing was utterly incomprehensible to him! When at last he did make it out, he could not help saying: "Certainly this is very hard!" Then, seeing how beside himself Franco was, he added, with the big solemn voice he used when judging human actions toto corde, "Listen. It is, I should say——" (and he searched for the right word, in his own peculiar fashion puffing out his cheeks, and emitting a sort of rattling sound)"——an injustice! But I am by no means so extremely astonished as you are. Not all the wrong is on her side, my dear fellow, and so——However, I am sorry for you two, who will have to eat plain food and live in this miserable little town; but how about me? For my part, I gain by all this, and I may even say, I feel inclined to thank your grandmother. You see I have never founded a family of my own; I have always counted upon this family. Now my poor sister is dead, and if your grandmother had opened her arms to you, I should have been of no more use than an old cabbage stock. So you see——"
Franco was careful not to let his wife know about this matter, and although she was aware that the letters had been sent to Cressogno, she did not ask if his grandmother had answered, until after the funeral, until some hours after the funeral. The little drawing-room, the little terrace, the little kitchen, had been full of people all day long, from nine o'clock in the morning until nine in the evening. At ten Luisa and Franco left the house without a lantern, turned to the right, went very slowly and silently through the darkness of the village, and, passing the bright and windy turning to which rises the deep roar of the river of S. Mametti, stood among the shadows and the pungent odours of the walnut-trees of Looch. Shortly before they reached the cemetery, Luisa said softly to her husband: "Have you heard nothing from Cressogno?" He would have liked to hide at least part of the truth from her, but he could not. He said his note had been returned to him; and then Luisa wanted to know if his grandmother had sent a word of condolence to Uncle Piero. Franco's "no" was almost timid, and so uncertain that, after they had gone on a few steps a suspicion flashed across Luisa's mind, and she suddenly stopped, and seized her husband's arm. Before she had uttered a word Franco understood and embraced her as he had embraced Uncle Piero, only still more impetuously, telling her to take his heart, his soul, his life, to seek for nothing else in this world. He felt she was trembling violently in his arms, but neither then nor afterwards did a word on this subject pass between them. At the gate of the cemetery they knelt together. Franco prayed with the fervour of faith. Luisa, with eager eyes, pierced the earth where it had been disturbed near the entrance; pierced the coffin, and, in thought, fixed her gaze on her mother's mild and serious face; once more, in thought, but with an impulse so violent that the bars of the gate shook, she bent forward, lower and lower, pressed her lips to the lips of the dead woman, imprinting upon them a violence of affection, stronger than all the insults, than all the baseness of this world.
Towards eleven o'clock she tore herself reluctantly away from the spot. Going slowly down the slippery and stony path beside her husband there suddenly arose before her mind's eye a vision of a future meeting with the Marchesa. She stopped, drawing herself up and clenching her fists, and from her handsome, intelligent face there shone forth such fierceness that, could the old lady of marble have seen her thus, have met her at that moment, she might not have surrendered, perhaps, but she would certainly have hastened to put herself on the defensive.