A mile away, between me and the stars, was the grand black pile of Sant' Aloïsa.
Christ! it was strange! I had led a rough life, I had been no saint. I had always been ready for jest or dance or intrigue with a pretty woman, and sometimes women far above me had cast their eyes down on the arena, as in Spain ladies do in the bull-ring to pick a lover out thence for his strength; but I had never cared. I had loved, laughed and wandered away with the stroller's happy liberty, but I had never cared. Now, all at once, the whole world seemed dead—dead heaven and earth—and only one woman's two eyes left living in the universe, living and looking into my soul and burning it to ashes. Do you know what I mean? No? Ah, then you know not love.
All the night I lay awake—the short hot night when the western gold of sunset scarce fades into dark ere the east seems to glow luminous and transparent with the dawn. Ah! the sunrise! I shall see it once more, only once more! I shall see it through those bars, a hand's breadth of it above Tiber, no more; and when again it spreads its rosy warmth over the sky and reddens the river and the plain, I shall be dead—a headless thing pushed away under the earth and lime, and over my brain and skull the wise men will peer with knife and scalpel, and pour the plaster over its bones to take a cast, and say most likely to one another, as I heard them say once before a cast in a museum, "A good face, a fair brow, fine lines: strange that he should have been a murderer!" Well! so be it. Even though I lived for fourscore years and ten, the sun would nevermore rise for me as it rose before Phœbus died.
At that time I lived only to see a shadow on the barred windows, a hand open a lattice, a veiled head glide by through the moonbeams. I was wretched, yet never had I been so happy. The bolt of the gods stuns as it falls, but it intoxicates also.
I had been such a fool! such a fool! When she had said so much I had said nothing: that last moment haunted me with unending pain. If I had been bolder, if I had only known what to answer, if I had only seized her in my arms and kissed her! It would have been better to have had that one moment, and have died for it, than have been turned out of her presence like a poor cowardly clod.
I cannot tell how the long hot days went on: they were days of drought to the land, but they were days of paradise to me. The fever-mists were heavy and the peasants sickened. Tiber was low, and had fetid odors as its yellow shallows dried up in the sun, clouds of gnats hovered over the Lagherello and its beds of rushes, and the sullen wind blew always from the south-east, bringing the desert sand with it. But to me this sickly summer was so fair that I continued to live in the absent shepherd's empty hut. I continued to net the fish when I could, and now and again I saw her. I lived only in the hope of seeing her face. She had the evil eye. Well, let it rest on me and bring me all woe, so that only I might live in its light one day! So I said in my madness, not knowing.
I must have looked mad at that time to the few scattered peasants about the pool. I lived on a handful of maize, a crust of bread. I cast my nets in the water, and once or twice went up to Sant' Aloïsa with the small fish, and was sent away by the crone Marietta. August passed, and the time drew nigh for the gathering of the grapes, ripe here sooner than in the Lombard and the Tuscan plains. But the vintage of Sant' Aloïsa was slight, for the ground was covered with olives in nearly every part. When they were stripping what few poor vines there were I offered myself for that work. I thought so I might behold her. There was no mirth on the lands of Taddeo Marchioni: the people were poor and dull. Fever that came from the river and the swamps had lessened their numbers by death and weakened those who were living: my strength was welcome to those ague-stricken creatures.
The day of the gathering was very hot: no rain had fallen. The oxen in the wains were merely skin and bone: their tongues were parched and swollen in their muzzled mouths. The grass had been long all burnt up, and the beasts famished: the air was stifling, pregnant with storm.
Amidst the sere and arid fields, and the woods, black and gray, of ilex and of olive, the great old square house rose before us, pale, solitary, mysterious—a mausoleum that shut in living creatures: it terrified me.
Night fell as the last wagon, loaded with the last casks of grapes, rolled slowly with heavy grinding wheels toward the cellars of Sant' Aloïsa. With the wagon there were a few men enfeebled with fever, a few women shivering with ague. I walked behind the wagon, pushing it to aid the weary oxen. There was no moon: here and there a torch flickered in a copper sconce filled with oil. The courtyard and the cellar were of enormous size: in the old times Sant' Aloïsa had sheltered fifteen hundred men. In the darkness, where a torch flared when he passed, I saw now and then Taddeo Marchioni coming and going, giving orders in his high, thin voice, screaming always, swearing sometimes, always suspecting some theft. He did not see me. He was entirely absorbed in his vintage and in the rebukes he hurled at his peasants. I drew back into the shadow, leaning against the column of the gateway, a huge wall blackened with time and damp. The bell of the old clock-tower sounded the nineteenth hour of the night. All at once the servant Marietta muttered in my ear, "Go in: she wants to speak with you. Go in to the tapestry-room on the other side of the house: you remember."