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He hoped to be able to put Adone's contumacy in a pardonable light before the Syndic, and perhaps to plea his cause better than the boy could plead it for himself. To Don Silverio he always seemed a boy still, and therefore excusable in all his violence and extravagances.
Then, as a young bull lowers his horns, he bent his head and bit through and through to the bone the wrist of the soldier who held him; in terror and pain the man shrieked and let go his hold; Adone's arms remained bound behind him, but his limbs, though they dripped blood, were free.
Woe betided the hapless wight who made free with the ripe olives, or the ripe grapes, with the fig or the peach or the cherry which grew on Adone's lands; it seemed to such marauders that she had a thousand eyes and lightning in her feet.
I do not want to speak without respect to you, Adone, for I have eaten your bread and been sheltered by your roof through many a year; but for whatever end you send that child out of nights, you do a bad thing, a cruel thing, a thing unworthy of your stock; and if I know Clelia Alba and who should know her if not I? she will never let Nerina enter her house again." Adone's face grew dark.
Where it was set running in the beginning of the world, there it will go on running till the crack of doom. Let them look; let them prate; they can't take it." But Adone's reason would not allow him to be so consoled.
They will mourn like starved sheep bleating in a field of stones, and I, their shepherd, shall not have a blade of grass wherewith to comfort them!" Adone's sight was troubled as soon as he passed out of the dusky room into the blaze of noonday sunshine. His eyes seemed filled with blood. His brain was dizzy.
The younger men, however, and those who were under Adone's influence, were more wary; they guessed that the matter was being matured without them; that when the hog should be eaten, the smallest and rustiest flitch would then be divided amongst them.
No one else was sleeping in the house; all was dark, and she had not even a match or a tinder-box; but she felt her way to the outer door, unlocked it, as she had been used to unlock the door at the Terra Vergine, and in another moment ran down the steep and stone street. She laughed as the wind from the river blew against her lips, and brought her the fragrance of Adone's fields.
In the gloaming he went and spoke to Adone's mother. She was at her spinning-wheel, but her hands moved mechanically; her face was dark and her eyelids swollen. "My friend," he said, as he sat down on the bench beneath the rose-tree, "I have brought you ill-tidings." "It is true then, sir?" "Alas!" "I do not believe it. God will not let it be." "Would that I could think so."
"You are a simpleton indeed, or you are shamming," thought Adone's mother; but aloud she only said, "It is not in our usage." "But you will not die," said Nerina anxiously. "Why should you think of dying, madonna? You are certainly old, but you are not so very, very old." Clelia smiled. "You do not flatter, child. So much the better. Run away and drive in those fowls.
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