When we were outside, Calisto closed the doors.
"And those nests, those happy nests?" he said, shaking his handsome white head.
"They must not be touched, Calisto."
Every nest was deserted, empty, lifeless. Their last habitants had left them. A languorous kiss from the setting sun touched the closed house, the solitary nests, and there could be nothing sadder than those poor little dead feathers that, here and there, trembled, prisoners in the clay.
XXX.
The term approached. The first half of October had passed. Doctor Vebesti had been notified.
My anxiety increased hourly, became intolerable. I was frequently assailed by attacks of madness similar to that which had seized me on the banks of the Assoro. I fled far from the Badiola, remained long hours on horseback, I compelled Orlando to jump hedges and trenches, I forced him into perilous paths at a gallop. Then the poor animal and I returned, streaming, tired, but always safely.
Doctor Vebesti arrived. Everybody at the Badiola breathed a sigh of relief. Confidence and hope reappeared. Juliana alone was unnerved, and more than once I detected in her eyes the passage of a sinister thought, the sombre light of a fixed idea, the horror of a lugubrious presentiment.
The pains of childbirth began; they lasted an entire day, with a few periods of suspension, at times stronger, sometimes weaker, at times bearable, and sometimes agonizing. She remained standing, leaning on a table, her back against a closet, clenching her teeth so as not to cry out; or else she sat in an arm-chair and remained in it, almost motionless, her face buried in her hands, uttering at times a suppressed groan; or else she ceaselessly changed her place, going from one corner to another, stopping here and there to convulsively twist between her fingers the first object at hand. The sight of her suffering tortured me. I could not stand it. I left the room, went out for a few minutes; then I returned, almost in spite of myself, as if drawn by a magnetic attraction; and I forced myself to watch her suffering, without power to speak one comforting word to her.
"Tullio, Tullio! What a horrible thing! Oh! what a horrible thing. I have never suffered so much, never, never!"