"Good-by, good-by, good-by, little swallows!"
Of all the rest I retain only an indistinct recollection, like that of a dream.
Maria wished to enter the house. I opened the door myself. It was here, on these three steps, that Juliana had followed me, furtively, light as a shadow, and had embraced me, and had whispered: "Go in, go in!" In the vestibule, the nest still hung among the grotesques of the ceiling. "Now I am yours, altogether, entirely!" she had murmured, without releasing my neck; and by a sinuous movement she had thrown herself on my breast and had met my mouth. The vestibule was silent—the staircases were silent; silence reigned throughout the house. It was here that I had heard the low and distant hum, like that retained by certain shells in the depths of their folds. But now, the silence resembled that of a tomb. And this place was the sepulchre of my happiness.
Maria and Natalia prattled on without cease, did not stop asking me questions, showed themselves curious about everything, went and opened the drawers of the dressing-table, the closets. Miss Edith followed them, watchful.
"Look, see what I have found," cried Maria, running toward me.
At the bottom of a drawer she had found a bouquet of lavender and a glove. It was one of Juliana's gloves, spotted with black at the finger-tips; on the inside, near the hem, it bore the following still visible inscription: "The Mulberries, January 27, 1880. Souvenir!" Like a flash, my memory represented clearly to me the episode of the mulberries, one of the happiest episodes of our first felicity, a fragment of the idyll.
"Is it one of mamma's gloves?" asked Maria. "Give it to me, give it to me. I want to take it to her myself."
Of all the rest I have but an indistinct recollection, like a dream.
Calisto, the old care-taker, came to speak to me. He told me a thousand things, and I understood almost nothing of what he said. Several times he repeated the wish:
"A boy, a fine boy, and may God bless him! A fine boy!"