"Five," answered Maria, who appeared to be minutely informed about everything. "Two bagpipes, two flageolets, and one fife."
"They come from the mountains," I said, turning toward Anna. "Perhaps one of them is from Montegorgo."
The nurse's eyes had lost their enamel-like hardness, had become animated, had acquired a humid and sad lustre. Her entire face visibly expressed extraordinary emotion. Then I understood that she was suffering, and that her malady was homesickness.
XLIV.
Evening approached. I went down to the chapel, and saw the preparations for the nine days' prayers: the manger, the flowers, the candles of virgin wax. I went out without knowing why; I looked up at the window of Raymond's room. I walked up and down the lawn with rapid steps in the hope of overcoming my convulsive trembling, the acute chill that penetrated my bones, the spasm that contracted my empty stomach.
It was a freezingly cold evening. A greenish lividity spread over the distant horizon, and at the bottom of the valley, where flowed the tortuous Assoro. The river glistened, solitary.
A sudden fright seized me. I thought: "Am I afraid?"
It seemed to me that an invisible witness was watching my soul. I felt the same uneasiness that is caused at times by a fixed and magnetic look. I thought: "Am I afraid? Of what? Of accomplishing the act, or of being discovered?"
I was frightened by the great trees, by the immensity of the sky, at the reflections of the Assoro, at all the confused voices of the fields. The Angelus sounded. I re-entered, or, rather, I rushed in, as if some one were at my heels.
I met my mother in the corridor, which had not yet been lighted.