But with the gray dawn the sweetness of dreams was turned into bitter reality, and no one knows what might have happened to the three clerks had he not been one day providentially summoned to the Direttore’s office.
The Signore Direttore deigned to ask a favor. He had been sent a little fragrant plant with a few slender, dry branches; it had come from Sardinia, and he wanted to know if the prisoner could tell him anything about it.
Cassio took the slender branches in his long, delicate hands, and inhaled its fragrance with closed eyes. The perfume brought him a vision of the green mountains of Gennargentu. An intense homesickness thrilled him.
“It is the tirtillo.”
“The tirtillo. I thought so. The precious secret of the Sardinian shepherds that gives its especial aroma to the Sardinian cheese.”
Cassio bowed in assent.
“The famous tirtillo,” continued the Direttore, “the new cure for epizootic.”
“In Sardinia it has been used for centuries,” replied Cassio humbly. “Many things that on the continent pass for discoveries are well known on the island.”
The Direttore did not reply, but turned his back and resumed his writing, and apparently all was over, when, suddenly turning around, he addressed Cassio without looking at him.
“Has a pardon been asked for you?”