It seemed as though the sound of these words had fascinated his ear from the first, like a musical cadence. His voice kept the same inflections as he repeated them. And as I heard the words again I felt strangely disturbed, almost as if he had addressed them to me. Again the desire to cut some of the branches arose within me. It had died out at the sight of so much living beauty. And vaguely I pictured to myself the great gift of spring arriving at the gloomy palace in the twilight.
“Is there no one about?” I asked impatiently. A peasant came running up. Breathlessly he bent his head, and began to kiss my hand passionately.
“Cut some of the finest branches,” I ordered him.
He was a magnificent example of his species, a worthy inhabitant of this rugged flint-strewn land. He seemed to me like a survivor of Deucalion’s ancient race, sprung from the pebbles. He brandished his bill-hook, and with clean, rapid strokes began to mutilate the joyous vegetable creation. Each stroke sent down a shower of loose petals, which lay like snow on the ground.
“Look,” I said to Antonello, showing him a branch; “did you ever see anything so delicate and so fresh?”
He raised his weak, effeminate hand and touched a flower with the tips of his fingers. It was the gesture of the invalid or convalescent, who touches a living thing with the dim notion that the contact will leave some small part of its vitality with him, just as butterflies leave behind the ephemeral dust of their wings. He turned to his brother with almost tender melancholy in his painful smile.
“Do you see, Oddo? We had forgotten, we did not know ...”
“But don’t you live in a garden?” I asked, marvelling at the amazement and emotion caused by a simple branch of almond blossom, as though it were an unheard-of novelty. “Don’t you pass your whole time among leaves and flowers?”
“Yes, that is true,” answered Antonello; “but somehow I had ceased to notice them. Besides, these are, or seem to me, quite different. I can’t explain the impression they make on me. You would not understand.”
The ringing sound of the bill-hook went on, and he turned towards the almond tree, which was trembling under the blows. The man was sitting up in the tree, with the trunk in the grip of his muscular legs, and above his head, which was dark as a mulatto’s, hung the fresh silvery cloud, quivering at the glitter of the hooked steel.