ith 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' Aloisa 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'
Aloisa 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'
Aloisa. 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' Aloisa 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
suspe