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Updated: June 23, 2025
Conscious how impolitic it would be to press this matter further, the captain casually remarked that he should have supposed that all the elements of Nerina had been calculated long since by astronomers on the earth. It was about as unlucky a speech as he could possibly have made. The professor glared at him fiercely. "Astounding, sir!" he exclaimed. "Yes!
"How many were they?" "Three. They went away up the river talking." "Did they cross the bridge?" "No. They were not shepherds, or labourers, or priests," said Nerina. To these classes of men her own acquaintance was confined. "Painters, perhaps?" said Adone; but no artists were ever seen there; the existence even of the valley was scarcely known, except to topographers.
"What are painters?" said Nerina. "Men who sit and stare and then make splashes of colour." "No; they did not do that." "It is strange." He felt vaguely uneasy that any had come near the water; as a lover dislikes the pressure of a crowd about his beloved in a street, so he disliked the thought of foreign eyes resting on the Edera.
"Is she ill?" he cried, as he reached the bank of his own land. "No; she is well in health," answered Gianna, "but she is sorely grieved and deeply angered; she found the girl Nerina going out at the dead of night." Adone changed colour. He was silent. Gianna came close to him. "The child and you both out all night, heaven knows where! What but one thing can your mother think?"
As for me, I will go and search for Nerina." "Do you mean she has not returned?" "Certainly she has not. She will no more dare to return than a kicked dog. You forget she is a young thing, a creature of nothing; she thinks herself no more than a pebble or a twig. Besides, your mother called her a wanton. That is a word not soon washed out.
He had already obtained the necessary permission to leave his parish; he then asked for a young friend from San Beda to take his place in the village; left his little dog to the care of Nerina; took his small hoard in a leathern bag strapped to his loins, and went on his way at daybreak along the southwest portion of the valley, to cover on foot the long distance which lay between him and the nearest place at which a public vehicle went twice a week to a railway station; whence he could take the train to Terni and so to Rome.
Mass over, Adone had gone home, broken his fast, taken off his velvet jacket, his long scarlet waistcoat, and his silver-studded belt, and put the oxen to the pole of the waggon. "Shall I come?" cried Nerina. "No," he answered. "Go and finish cutting the oats in the triangular field." Always obedient, she went, her sickle swinging to her girdle. She was sorry, but she never murmured.
I have been hard to you, I have been cruel and unfair," he said, as a vague sense of her infinite devotion to his cause moved him as a man may be moved by a dog's fidelity. "You have been good to me," said Nerina; and from the bottom of her heart she thought so. "I came to see if you wanted me," she added humbly. "No, no. They think ill of you for going my errands.
"No one will hear; tell me!" said the child. He told her. "And what are you to do?" she asked, her eyes dilated with horror. "According to him," said Adone bitterly, "I am to be meek and helpless as the heifer which goes to the slaughter. Men must not resist what the law permits." Nerina was mute.
In the meanwhile Aminta has sought to kill himself with his own spear, but has been prevented by Dafne, and the two now enter. At this moment too comes Nerina, one of the 'messengers' of the piece, with the news that Silvia has been slain while pursuing a wolf in the forest.
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