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Holding herself erect, wrapped in her green cloak lined with fur, her face shadowed by the great black hat, she gazed at him as she had done at Praglia, at the moment of their first meeting. But this time the sleeper perceived a resemblance between the gravity of that look and the gravity of the dancing-girls' faces.
And to think that he came and went through that entrance, through those cloisters, who knows how many times a day; that he must often think of Praglia, of that hour fixed by fate, of that water spilled, of the ecstasy, the tightly clasped hands, under cover of the fur cloak, on the way home. To think he was now free, and she also was free! How feverish she felt, how feverish!
Her eyes shone with that look of intense animation which, in former days, they had been wont to assume when Maironi entered the room, or even when she heard his step outside. "I wish I had the toilette I wore at Praglia," she said. "I should like to appear before him in my green fur-lined cloak, now, in May!
"Ah! signora," he says, "Santa Scolastica is a fine monastery, but you should see Praglia!" For Fra Antonio passed several years at Praglia in his youth, before the abbey was suppressed, and he speaks of it as of a venerable mother. "Ah! the church at Praglia! The cloisters! The hanging cloister, the refectory!" At these unexpected words Jeanne grows excited.
He strove to close his eyes, and could not; strove to cry out to God, and could not. At last the six dancing-girls inclined the goblets towards him, and six flowing ribbons of liquor streamed through the air. "Just as I did, at Praglia!" the sleeper thought, confusing persons in his clouded, mind. Then everything disappeared, and he saw Jeanne before him.
Presently a dark corner of the inclosure of Santa Scolastica looms before the wayfarers. Benedetto is thinking by what a mysterious way God has led him from the logge at Praglia, where Jeanne tempted and conquered him, to this toilsome ascent amidst the gloom towards another holy spot, with Jeanne near, and his heart anchored in Christ.
This death turned Piero's heart towards God; he left the woman, renounced his rights, left everything, and fled from his home in the night, telling no one whither he was going. Having met me once at Brescia, where I had gone to visit my sick father, and knowing I was at Subiaco, he came here. He was, moreover, fond of our Order, and cherished certain memories connected with our poor Praglia.
Then, for the first time, he perceived the subtle perfume of the coupé, the perfume Jeanne always used, and there rushed upon him the vivid memory of the return from Praglia with her, of the moment when, having left her at the foot of the hill leading to Villa Diedo, he had gone on alone in the victoria which was still filled with her warmth and her perfume, alone, and intoxicated with his love secret.
She judged him with severity in all his actions, all his attitudes, from the moment when he had conquered her by sheer strength in the monastery of Praglia to the moment when their lips had met near the basin of the Acqua Barbarena. He had shown himself incapable of loving, incapable of decisive action, irresolute, effeminate in the instability of his mind.
At Paviola, which was reached after a weary march in a misty thaw over roads reduced to quagmires, the Battalion split up again: B and D Companies, with Headquarters remained in the same area, while Captain Challenor with the remainder moved to the Convent di Praglia, south of Padua, in order to supply working parties to the central school at G.H.Q. Here they remained till the end of February, doing every kind of job, to the complete satisfaction of those concerned.
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