“Tell him to stop,” begged Antonello. “We shall not be able to carry all those branches.”
“The carriage shall take you to Trigento with your burden.”
And I lingered on, picturing the arrival of the springlike gift at the gates of the park where the three sisters were waiting. Their faces came before me indistinctly, yet with some trace of the features associated with memories of childhood and youth. And the desire to see them again, to hear their voices, to recall those memories in their presence, to know their troubles, and to take part in their unknown life, grew stronger and stronger within me, till it began to take the acuteness of anxiety.
Following out my own line of thought and feeling (the carriage had already begun to roll towards Rebursa), I said—
“Long ago the park of Trigento used to be full of jonquils and violets.”
“So it is still,” said Oddo.
“There were great hedges of box.”
“So there are still.”
“I remember so well the year you came back from Monaco. Massimilla was very ill. I used to come over to Trigento nearly every day with my mother ...”
We were immersed in spring. The carriage was crammed with almond blossom; it was piled behind our backs and on our knees. Antonello’s white face looked more wasted than ever in the midst of that fragrant whiteness, and the melancholy of his feverish eyes, contrasted with that living expression of youth eternally renewed, went to my heart.