"Daughter! daughter! Do you know what you are doing? You must be mad! You are howling like a wild beast!" cried Aunt Bachissia, grasping her by the arm. "And what good will it do? There is the appeal still,—the Court of Cassation,—do be quiet, my soul!"
All this had happened in a few moments. The witnesses, the lawyer, Paolo Porru, and the others now came crowding around the women, trying to think of something to say to comfort them. Giovanna, dry-eyed and staring, was sobbing in a heartbroken way, disjointed sentences falling from her lips, expressions of passionate tenderness for Costantino, and wild threats and imprecations addressed to the jury. She begged so hard to be allowed to remain until the condemned man should be brought out, that they agreed. At last he appeared; bent, livid, sunken-eyed; grown prematurely old.
Giovanna rushed forward, and, as the carbineers made no motion to stop, she went ahead of them, walking backwards, smiling into her husband's face, telling him that it would all be set right in the Court of Cassation, and that she would sell everything, to the very clothes on her back, in order to save him. But he only stared back at her, wide-eyed, unseeing; and when the carbineers pushed her gently aside, one of them saying: "Go away, my good woman, go off now, and try to be patient," he too said: "Yes, go away, Giovanna, try to get permission to see me before I am taken away, and—bring the child, and take courage."
So Giovanna and her mother went back to the house, where Aunt Porredda embraced and wept over them; then, however, appearing to repent of such weakness, she set about to remedy it.
"Well," said she. "Twenty-seven years, what is that after all? Suppose he had been sentenced to thirty, would not that have been worse? What! You are going away? In this heat! Why, you must be crazy, both of you; upon my word, I shan't let you go."
"Yes," said Aunt Bachissia; "we must get off; the others are all going back now, and will be company for us. But if it won't be putting you out too much, Giovanna will return in a few days and bring the boy."
"Why, bless you! is not this house the same as your own?"
They sat down to dinner, but Giovanna, though now perfectly calm, would touch nothing. Two or three times Aunt Porredda attempted to talk on indifferent subjects: she asked if the boy had cut his first teeth; remarked that travelling in such heat might make them ill; and enquired about the barley-crop in their neighbourhood.
Profound peace brooded over the courtyard. The sun poured down on the grape-vines overhead, and traced delicate lacework patterns on the paving where it filtered through the leaves. The swallows flew hither and thither, singing joyously. Paolo sat reading the newspaper as he ate his dinner. Grazia and Minnia,—the boy had gone off with his grandfather,—in their sparse, tumbled little black dresses, kept falling asleep over theirs, overpowered by the noontide somnolence. Aunt Porredda's words floated dreamily out into all this sunlight and peace, into which Aunt Bachissia's tragic mien, and Giovanna's mute air of woe, seemed to strike a note of discord.