He wanted to leap from the vehicle, to run up the slopes where the grass was still green, among the rocks and the thickets, crying aloud with joy, like the colt which flees from the halter back to the freedom of the tancas. "And when I have worked off that intoxication I should like to stand like the wandering shepherd against a dazzling background of sunshine, or in the green shadow of the hazels, on the platform of a cliff, in the fork of a tree, losing myself in the contemplation of the immensity! Yes," he thought as the coach moved slowly up a steep incline, "I believe I was meant to be a shepherd. I should have been a ferocious robber, a criminal, but also a poet. Oh! to watch the clouds from the height of a mountain! To fancy oneself a shepherd of clouds—to see them roam over the silver heaven, chase each other, change, pass, sink, disappear! He laughed to himself, then thought—
"Am I not a shepherd of clouds? Are not my thoughts mere clouds? If I were forced to live in these solitudes I should dissolve into the winds and the mist and the sadness of the landscape. Am I alive? What after all is life?"
To these questions there was no reply.
The coach ascended slowly, more and more slowly with gentle cadenced movements; the coachman dozed, the horse seemed walking in his sleep. The sun at his zenith rained an equable and melancholy splendour; the thickets threw no shadow. Profound silence, burning somnolence pervaded the immense landscape. Anania felt himself really dissolving, becoming one with the drowsy panorama, with the sad and luminous sky. The fact was he was himself drowsy. As that other time, so now, he ended by closing his eyes and falling childishly asleep.
"Aunt Grathia! Nonna!" (godmother), he called, his voice still sleepy, as he entered the widow's cottage. The kitchen was deserted, the sunny little street was deserted; deserted the whole village which in the desolation of midday, seemed prehistoric, abandoned for centuries.
Anania looked curiously around. Nothing was changed. Poverty, rags, soot, ashes in the hearth, cobwebs among the rafters of the roof; wild emperor of that legendary spot, the long and empty phantasm of the black cloak hanging against the earthen wall.
"Aunt Grathia, where are you? Aunt Grathia?" cried the young man.
The widow had gone to the well. Presently she returned with a malune[21] on her head and a bucket in her hand. She was just the same; yellow, thorny, with a spectral face surrounded by the folds of a dirty kerchief. The years had passed without ageing that body already dried up and exhausted of the emotions of her distant youth.
Anania seeing her was strangely moved. A flood of memories rose out of the depths of his soul. He seemed to recall a whole former existence, to see afresh the spirit which had inhabited his body before his spirit of to-day.
"Bonos dias,"(good day) the widow said in greeting, surveying in astonishment the handsome unknown youth. She set down first the pail, then the malune slowly and without taking her eyes off the stranger. But no sooner had he smiled and asked, "What? don't you know me?" than she emitted a cry and opened her arms. Anania kissed her and overwhelmed her with questions.