They both laughed good humouredly.
Around them there are blue and golden flowers; sunbeams tremble in the air; in the transparent glass of the decanter and the tumblers the wine seems to be on fire. From afar comes the soft murmur of the sea.
"Well, my good Vincenzo," said the locksmith, with a broad smile. "Tell me in verse how I became a socialist. Do you know how it happened?"
"No," said the painter, filling the glasses with wine and smiling at the red stream. "You have never told me. This skin fits your bones so well that I thought you were born in it!"
"I was born naked and stupid, like you and everybody else; in my youth I dreamed of a rich wife; when I was a soldier I studied in order to pass the examination for an officer's rank. I was twenty-three when I felt that all was not as it should be in this world, and that it was a shame to live as if it were, like a fool."
The painter rested his elbows on the table and, raising his head, gazed at the mountains where, on the very edge of the precipice, moving their large branches, stood huge pine-trees.
"We, our whole regiment, were sent to Bologna. The peasantry there were in revolt, some demanding that the rent of land should be lowered, others shouting about the necessity for raising wages: both parties seemed to be in the wrong. 'To lower rents and increase wages, what nonsense!' thought I. 'That would ruin the landowners.' To me, who was a town-dweller, it seemed utter foolishness. I was very indignant—the heat helped to make one so, and the constant travelling from place to place and the mounting guard at night. For, you know, these fine fellows were breaking the machinery belonging to the landowners; and it pleased them to burn the corn and to try to spoil everything that did not belong to them. Just think of it!"
He sipped his wine and, becoming more animated, went on:
"They roamed about the fields in droves like sheep, always silently, but threateningly and as if they meant business. We used to scatter them, threatening them with our bayonets sometimes. Now and then we struck them with the butts of our rifles. Without showing much fear, they dispersed in leisurely fashion, but always came together again. It was a tedious business, like mass, and it lasted for days, like an attack of fever. Luoto, our non-commissioned officer, a fine fellow from Abruzzi, himself a peasant, was anxious and troubled: he turned quite yellow and thin, and more than once he said to us:
"'It's a bad business, boys; it will probably be necessary to shoot, damn it!'