Signora Flavia looked at us absently, with sleepy eyes, which she opened wide every time she heard an extra loud clatter of crockery from the kitchen, where Gostino was washing up. Signorina Olimpia, perhaps disgusted with a conversation which was unworthy of her, was wandering round the garden, casting loving looks at her flowers, till at last, stopping before a monthly rose with two bees on it, she exclaimed: “Dear insects,
“Sucking, for one brief moment,
Now this, now the other flower,
Alas! she said——”
“Always a poetess, Signorina Olimpia!” cried the Provost, “always a poetess! Are those your own verses, madam, are they yours?”
“Come now, Olimpia, out with it, before it is too late,” urged Sor Cosimo. “The sonnet to Calamai—we must have that at once, for it’s a beauty!”
“It is a wonder!” observed the Provost. “Do you know, I have it by heart; I could say it off, as though it were before me in print. It is the only one of yours I have heard.”
“Rejoice, O youthful boy...”
Signorina Olimpia was preparing to repeat the much-desired sonnet when Don Paolo appeared in the doorway of the house, looking as though he had gone to sleep in his clothes and were just out of bed, and stopped on the threshold, looking fixedly on the ground. They all went up to him, to congratulate him and ask how he felt....
“The heart, gentlemen! the heart!” He put both hands to the left side of his chest, half closing his eyes and twisting his mouth, as if to indicate a spasm which was taking away his breath. Then he asked—