"I don't care! I'm going away next year."
"And pray where may you be going?"
Anania grew red, remembering he couldn't go anywhere without Signor Carboni's assistance. What did the question mean? Had his godfather forgotten? Was he mocking him? Did he want to make the boy feel the weight of his obligation, keeping him on tenter hooks, exhibiting him as at his patron's mercy?
"I don't know," he murmured.
"Do you really want to go, my lad? Then you shall, you shall. You're shaking your wings like a young bird. Oh! you shall fly—you shall fly!"
He made the gesture of throwing a bird in the air; then slapped his godson's shoulder. Anania heaved a sigh of relief. He felt as light as if he had really been launched in flight. Margherita laughed. That laugh vibrating in the stillness of the night seemed to Anania the rose-bush's obscure desire for the bird which perches on it to sing.
[VII]
Autumn drew on.
These were Anania's last days at home, and heavy weight of sentiment oppressed him. He was still the young bird joyfully ready for flight; but he was sad and tormented by vague fears of the unknown. What was the world like, which had already usurped his thoughts? And the adieu was painful to that humble world in which his childhood had monotonously passed, unstained by active grief, brightened by his evolving love for Margherita. The languor and sweetness of early autumn contributed to render him sentimental. Light clouds veiled the sky. Behind the mountains a vaporous horizon concealed yet suggested worlds of ineffable dream. The pale green twilights were brightened by rosy cloudlets, meandering slowly and interruptedly over the glaucous heaven. In the garden was the rustle, the odour of burning weeds; it seemed to Anania that something of his soul vanished in the smoke of these melancholy fires.
Good-bye! good-bye! gardens and orchards, guardians of the valley! Good-bye! distant roar of the torrent which announced the winter! Good-bye, cuckoo, which foretold the return of spring! Good-bye! grey and savage Orthobene with his holm-oaks outlined against the clouds like upstanding hairs on a sleeping giant. Good-bye! distant cerulean mountains! and good-bye, tranquil and kindly hearth, little room scented with fruit, with honey, and with dreams! Good-bye, humble companions, unconscious of their own ill-fortune, wicked old Uncle Pera, miserable Nanna and Efès, suffering Rebecca, extravagant Maestro Pane, crazy beggars, girls careless of their beauty, children born to want—all of them mean and distressful persons whom Anania did not love, whom he was leaving gladly, yet with a wrench.