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It is the calmness of faith, love feeding on itself, ecstasy without display, ardent but reserved, internal. "In the books of the Egyptian Recluses you will never find the vehemence of a Maddalena de' Pazzi or a Catherine of Siena, the passionate ejaculations of a Saint Angela. Nothing of the kind, no amorous addresses, no trepidations, no laments.
"I agree, signore," the man laughed. "But get in again and I will drive to the Via della Maddalena." Five minutes later the car pulled up at the end of a narrow stuffy ancient street of high houses with closed wooden shutters. From house to house across the road household linen was flying in the wind, for the neighbourhood was certainly a poverty-stricken one.
Oh, much more than my nurse, although Maddalena is very dear to me. "We lived almost always in the city, so that we had not any garden, but we had pots of flowers in the windows, and I used to tend them. Sometimes, when my father went into the woods and the fields, he would take me, and then I was happy; no bird could have been happier.
Grandmother Maddalena devised numerous punishments for the children, such as tacking a cow's head cut out of red stuff, on their backs, when they had teazed Aunt Eucilda's cow or tieing them up by one leg, with a long cord to the table, for stone-throwing; but Tuttu and Tutti were incorrigible.
Everybody knew that she was to be a nun of the Perpetual Adoration; that she was soon to go to the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena on the Quirinal in Rome; and that, once entered there, she would never again see a person from outside.
Gaspare began to look fierce. "I think of buying a donkey," added Salvatore, carelessly, with his small, shrewd eyes fixed upon Maurice's face. Gaspare muttered something unintelligible. "How much do they cost?" said Maurice. "For a hundred lire you can get a very good donkey. It would be useful to Maddalena.
But what should we do there on Etna far away from the sea and from Marechiaro?" "We should" he whispered in her ear, seizing this chance almost angrily, almost defiantly, with the thought of Salvatore in his mind "we should love each other, Maddalena. It is quiet in the beech forests on Etna. No one would come to disturb us, and " A chuckle close to his ear made him start.
She felt excited, almost light-headed, childishly proud of herself. If only some of the girls of Marechiaro could see, could know! When the cards were thrown upon the table, and Maurice had dealt out a lira to each one of the players as stakes, and cried, "Maddalena and I'll share against you, Salvatore, and Gaspare!" she felt that she had nothing more to wish for, that she was perfectly happy.
Salvatore looked keenly from one to the other. "Are you tired, Maddalena?" he asked, with a sort of rough suspicion. "Si," she answered. She followed him slowly across the railway line towards the sea, while Maurice and Gaspare turned their donkeys' heads towards the mountain. They rode upward in silence. Gaspare was sleepy.
He wanted it because it would satisfy an imperious desire of tender passion, not because it would infuriate a man who hated him. He forgot the father in the daughter. "Suppose I were quite poor, Maddalena!" he said. "But you are very rich, signorino." "But suppose I were poor, like Gaspare, for instance. Suppose I were as I am, just the same, only a contadino, or a fisherman, as your father is.
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