“Yes. I had one, but it died when I was a little girl.”
“I am sorry there are none here.”
A cock awakening from his torpor, and perceiving a ray of sunlight that had filtered through one of the windows, began to crow lustily—cock-a-doodle-doo; then another answered in deeper tones, and a third broke in immediately. And the hens began to perform in high soprano, the turkey-hens in contralto, while the turkeys and their kin gobbled in deep bass. Crescendo, staccato, swelled the discordant symphony; and patient visitors stopped their ears, while nervous ones ran away. Lucia’s grasp tightened on Andrea’s arm; she leant her head against his shoulder to deaden the sound, stunned, coughing, laughing hysterically, struggling in vain for speech, while he smiled his good-tempered, phlegmatic smile at the animal chorus. Then by degrees came a decrescendo; some of the performers suddenly stopped, others waxed fainter; a few solitary ones held on, and, as if run down, stopped all at once. Lucia was still convulsed with laughter.
“Have you never heard this before?”
A fat merino, of the height of a donkey, with abundant, dirty wool, disported himself in solitary state in his pen. Farther on, a greyish pig, with bright pink splotches that looked as if he had scratched them that colour, stood forgotten and unclassed, away from his fellows, like an exceptional and monstrous being that eschews all social intercourse.
“Come away, come away,” said Lucia, whose nerves had been shaken, dragging her companion away; “I won’t look at anything else.” She was seized with cramps and violent stitches, alternating with a stinging sensation which almost paralysed her. All the fire which the sun had transfused into her veins seemed to have concentrated itself at the nape and set her nerves in combustion. Andrea, who knew nothing of atmospheric effects, who could bask in the sun and walk through two rows of animals without discomfort, was unconscious of these painful sensations; he was as sane as Nature herself. They passed out into the garden, past the horse-boxes, where a ray of sun was beginning to broaden. Lucia hastened along with bowed head; now the pain was in the top of her skull, the fluffy bonnet weighed like a leaden helmet; she could scarcely resist a longing to loosen her plaits and throw it off.
“I am burning, burning!” she kept saying to Andrea.
“What’s to be done about the jury?”
“I’ll go there. Oh! this sun will kill me.”
“What can I do for you; dip the handkerchief in water again?”