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Updated: June 6, 2025
The river seemed always happy, even when the great rainfall of autumn churned it into froth and the lightnings illumined its ink-black pools. It was on the river that he had first made friends with Adone, then a child of six, playing and splashing in the stream, on a midsummer noon. Don Silverio also was bathing.
But how to persuade of this truth a man so blind with pain and rage and so dogged in self-will as Adone had become, Don Silverio did not see. He shrank from renewing useless struggles and disputes which led to no issue. He felt that Adone and he would only drift farther and farther apart with every word they spoke.
But the Vicar had heard of it from the postman, who confided to him the fears he felt that Adone would neglect the summons, and so get into trouble.
Such is the difference betwixt Virgil's "AEneis" and Marini's "Adone." And if I may be allowed to change the metaphor, I would say that Virgil is like the Fame which he describes: "Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo."
Twice my father aided him to escape. But one night they seized him; there was a whole troop of carabineers against him, they took him in a trap, they could never have got him else, and I saw him brought down the mountain road and I ran and kissed him before they could stop me; and he never came back they kept him." "No doubt they kept him," said Adone bitterly.
With discomfiture they retreated before him and went along the grassy path northward, as Nerina had seen them do on the day of their first arrival. So far Adone had conquered. But no joy or pride of a victor was with him.
"I have ventured to come hither on behalf of a young parishioner of mine, Adone Alba, who, having received the summons of your Excellency only yesterday, may, I trust, be excused for not having obeyed it on the date named. He is unable to come to-day. May I offer myself for his substitute as amicus curie!"
For the first time in all his twenty-four years of life he went out of the house without a word to his mother, and took his way to the river again; for the first time he was neglectful of his cattle and forgetful of the land. Nerina came in from the fowl-house with alarm on her face. "Madama Clelia!" she said timidly, "Adone has gone away without feeding and watering the oxen. May I do it?"
Adone was silent, afraid that he had shown an unseemly curiosity; he saw that Don Silverio was irritated and not at ease, and he hesitated what words to choose. His friend relented, and blamed himself for being hurried by disquietude into harshness. "Come and have a cup of coffee with me, my son," he said in his old, kind tones. "I am going home to break my fast."
Adone never refused to sing for him, and when the voice of adolescence had replaced that of childhood, he would still stand no less docilely by the old marble lectern, and wake the melodies of early masters from the yellow pages. The church was as damp as a vault of the dead; cold even when the dog-star reigned in the heavens.
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