I told him how they had taken his father and bound him, and thrown him down, and tied him to the savage beast, and how he had been dragged along till his blood spattered on the pavement and his soul left him.
Checco uttered a most awful groan, and, looking up to heaven, as if to call it in witness, cried,—
'Oh, God!'
Then, sinking into a chair, he buried his face in his hands, and in his agony swayed from side to side. Matteo went up to him and put his hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him; but he motioned him aside.
'Let me be.'
He rose from his seat, and we saw that his eyes were tearless, for his grief was too great for weeping. Then, with his hands before him like a blind man, he staggered to the door and left us.
Scipione, the weak man, was crying.
XXXVIII
ONE does not really feel much grief at other people's sorrows; one tries, and puts on a melancholy face—thinking oneself brutal for not caring more, but one cannot; and it is better, for if one grieved too deeply at other people's tears life would be unendurable; and every man has sufficient sorrows of his own without taking to heart his neighbour's. The explanation of all this is that three days after my return to Città di Castello I was married to Giulia.
Now I remember nothing more. I have a confused idea of great happiness; I lived in an intoxication, half fearing it was all a dream, enchanted when anything occurred to assure me it was true. But the details of our life I have forgotten; I remember I was happy. Is it not a curious irony that we should recall our miseries with such plainness, and that our happiness should pass over us so indistinctly, that when it has gone we can scarcely realise that it ever existed? It is as though Fortune were jealous of the little happiness she has given us, and to revenge herself blots it out of the memory, filling the mind with miseries past.