VIII

One morning, about three years after his conviction, Costantino awoke in a bad humour. The heat was oppressive, and the air of the cell was heavy and sickening. One of the prisoners was snoring and puffing like a kettle letting off steam.

Costantino had slept with Giovanna’s last letter beneath his head, and a sad little letter it was; short, and depressing in the extreme. She told of her and her mother’s dire poverty, and of the boy’s serious illness. It never occurred to Costantino to reflect how cruel it was to write to him in this strain; he wanted to know the truth about them, however bad it might be, and he felt that to share all Giovanna’s sorrows and to agonise over his inability to help her was a part of his duty. A barren duty⁠—alas!⁠—merely an increase of his misery.

He had become quite deft at his trade of shoemaking, and worked rapidly, but he could make very little money; all that was left, however, after the King of Spades had been paid for his supposed good offices he sent to Giovanna.

“Upon my word,” said the ex-marshal, “you are a goose. Spend it on yourself. They ought to be sending you money.”

“But they are so poor.”

“Poor! Not they; haven’t they got the sun? What more do they want?” said the other. “If you would only eat and drink more it would be a real charity. You are nothing but a stick, my dear fellow. Look at me! I’m getting fat. My bacon may be all rind, but, all the same, I’m getting fat.”

He was, in fact, as round as a ball, but his flesh hung down in yellow, flabby rolls. Costantino, on the other hand, had fallen away, his eyes were big and cavernous, and his hands transparent.

The sun! he thought to himself bitterly. Yes, they have indeed got that; but what good is the sun even, when one has nothing to eat, and is suffering every kind of privation? He was, no doubt, a great simpleton, but as he thought of these things, he sometimes cried like a child. Yet all the time he never gave up hope. The years passed by; day followed day slowly, regularly, uneventfully, like drops of water in a grotto, dripping from stone to stone. Almost every convict in the prison, especially those whose terms were not very long, hoped for a remission, and kept close count of the days already elapsed and of those yet to come. Their accuracy was amazing; they never made a mistake of so much as a single day. Some even carried their calculations so far as to count the hours. Costantino thought it all very foolish; one might die in the meantime, or regain his liberty! It was all in the hands of God. Yet, all the same, he too counted on being freed before the appointed hour; only in his case the appointed hour was so desperately, so hopelessly far away!

This realisation was heavy upon him on that morning when he awoke and fingered the warm paper of Giovanna’s last letter.

Getting up, he sighed heavily, and began to dress himself. The man on his right stopped snoring, opened one sleepy eye, regarded Costantino dully, then closed it again. “Feeling badly?” he asked, as Costantino sighed again. “Oh, yes! Your child is ill. Why don’t you tell the Director?”

“Why should I tell the Director? He would clap me into a cell for receiving the letter, and that would be the whole of it.”

“Except pane e pollastra,”6 said an ironical voice.

There was a general laugh, and Costantino, realising bitterly the utter indifference of all those men among whom he was destined to pass his days, felt as though he were wandering alone in a burning desert, gasping for air and water.

He went to his work longing impatiently for the exercise hour, when he would be able to talk over his troubles with the King of Spades. The great, fat, yellow man whom he despised so in his heart, was, nevertheless, indispensable to him; his sole comfort, in fact. He alone in that place understood him, was sorry for him, and listened to him. He was paid for it all, to be sure, but what did that signify? He was necessary in the same way to a great many of the convicts, but to none, probably, as much as to Costantino, who already, with a somewhat selfish regret, was dreading the time when, his term expired, the King of Spades would finally depart.

On this particular day a new inmate made his appearance in the workroom. He was a Northerner; long and sinuous, with a grey, wrinkled face, and small, pale eyes. It was not easy to tell his age, but the men laughed when he announced himself as twenty-two. He began at once to complain of the heat and of the sickening smell of fish that filled the room. Ah, he was no cobbler; no, indeed! He was the only son of a wealthy wholesale shoe-dealer⁠—a gentleman, in fact. And thereupon he recounted his unfortunate history. He had, it appeared, been so unlucky as to kill a rival in love; there had been provocation and he had ripped him open in the back⁠—simply that! The woman who was the real cause of the crime had consumption, and now she was dying from grief⁠—dying, simply that! Moreover, there was a child in the question, a son of the prisoner’s by the sick woman. If she died, the boy would be left orphaned and abandoned. Costantino trembled at this; not, indeed, that the man’s story affected him particularly, but because the picture of the woman and the child reminded him of Giovanna and the sick Malthineddu.

The newcomer, who was cutting a pair of soles with considerable skill, now became silent, and bent over, intent upon his work, his under-lip trembling like that of a child about to cry. Costantino, watching him, reflected that though he knew that this man must be suffering intensely he felt as indifferent as did any of the others: he too, then, had lost the power of sympathising with the sorrows of others! The thought filled him with dismay and made him more insanely anxious to get out than ever.

That day, as soon as he saw the King of Spades, he drew him over to a corner where the sun-baked wall cast a little spot of shade; but when he had got him there he could not bring himself to begin on his own troubles. Instead he repeated the story told by the new arrival. The other shrugged his shoulders and spat against the wall.

“If he wants to, even he can write,” he said. “But I should advise prudence, someone is nosing about.”

“How are we ever going to manage after you have gone?” said Costantino thoughtfully.

“You would like to keep me here forever, you rascal?” demanded the other in a rallying tone.

“Heaven forbid! No, indeed; I only wish you might get out tomorrow!”

The King of Spades sighed. His enemies, he declared, were forever devising new and diabolical schemes for keeping him out of the way; he had abandoned all hope now of a pardon. In any case, however, his term would expire before long; then he would go at once to the King, and lay a plain statement of the facts before him. The King would order an instant reversal of the verdict, and he himself, his innocence finally established, would be restored to his post. Who could tell, there might even be another medal conferred, to keep the rest company! But his first care would be to obtain pardons for all his friends, especially for Costantino. “That would be a noble work,” he observed, self-approvingly. Indeed, by virtue of making such assurances frequently, he had come actually to believe in them himself.

“Tomorrow? Yes, indeed; a pardon might very possibly come tomorrow, and a good thing that would be for everyone.”

“Good, or bad,” said Costantino despondently.

“After all,” continued the other, “when I am gone it may be that you will no longer have any use for my services.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth he regretted having spoken, but seeing that Costantino merely shook his head, evidently supposing that he alluded to a possible pardon, he regarded him compassionately.

“Are you really and truly innocent?” he asked. “By this time I should think you would be willing to talk to me quite openly. Do you remember that first time when I asked you? You said: ‘May I never see my child again, if I am guilty.’ ”

“Yes, so I did; and now, you mean to say, I am perhaps not going to see him again? Well, God’s will be done; but I am innocent, all the same.”

The King of Spades turned, and again spat upon the wall. “Patience, old fellow, patience, patience,” he said; and there was a note of real warmth and feeling in his tone. He felt, in fact, quite proud of himself for recognising and esteeming honesty when he saw it in others, and it was this taste that drew him to Costantino. He saw with wonder that his fellow-countryman was so good, that his soul was so pure, and his whole nature formed of so fine a material, that even the boundless corruption of prison life could not sully him.

Now it happened that the ex-marshal allowed himself⁠—as one of the privileges of his position of go-between⁠—to read the letters that passed through his hands. Not long before, an anonymous letter had come for Costantino, written in a villainous hand, with great sprawling characters that looked like insects crawling over the page. Venomous creatures they proved, indeed, to be, and capable of inflicting wounds as deadly as those of any living reptile. In short, the letter announced that Giovanna, wife of the prisoner, was permitting Brontu Dejas to pay court to her, and that Aunt Bachissia was about to go to Nuoro to consult a lawyer about applying for a divorce for her daughter.

On reading this precious communication the ex-marshal became furious; his friend, the Delegate, immersed as he was in his great scientific researches, heard him snorting, and puffing out his fat, yellow cheeks. “Idiots! Fools! Sardinian asses!” he sputtered. “Why on earth tell him about it at all! What can he do, except batter out his brains against the wall?”

He did not deliver the letter, and every time he saw his friend he regarded him compassionately, feeling at the same time pleased at his own goodness of heart for caring so much.

Three days later the boy died. Costantino was notified immediately of the event. He wept silently and by stealth, trying hard to bear up with fortitude before his companions. When Arnolfo Bellini, the man whose mistress was dying, heard of the Sardinian’s misfortune, he fell into a fit of nervous weeping, emitting curious noises like an angry hen, his grey, old-young face doubling up in such grotesque contortions that one of the quarrelsome brothers from the Abruzzi burst out laughing; one of the others leaned across and punched him in the leg with an awl, whereupon the Abruzzese started, ceased laughing, and continued his work without protest.

Costantino, after staring a moment at Bellini in amazement, shook his head and turned to his bench. Silence reigned, and presently the man calmed down.

The low room was filled with the hot, reflected glare from the courtyard, and the overpowering heat drew a sickening odour from the leather and the perspiring hands and feet of the convicts. There were thirteen of them under the surveillance of a tall, red-moustached guard, who never opened his lips. The uniformity of dress, the close-cropped heads and shaven faces, and the general vacuity of expression lent them all a certain mutual resemblance; they might have been brothers, or at least nearly related to one another, and yet, never more than on that particular day, had Costantino felt himself so utterly apart, so wholly out of sympathy with his companions in misery.

He stitched and stitched, bending over the shoe, which rested between his knees in the hollow of his leather apron. From time to time he would pause, examine his work attentively, then go on again drawing the thread through with both hands with a jerk that seemed almost angry. Yes, one must work, now that the boy was dead. Had he loved him very dearly? Well, he could hardly say; perhaps not so very much. He had only seen him once during that time at Nuoro, through the iron grating of the reception-room, held fast in the arms of his weeping mother. The baby, he remembered, had a little pink face, somewhat rough and scarred, like certain kinds of apricots when they are ripe. His round, violet-coloured eyes shone like a pair of grape seeds from beneath their long fringe of lashes. He had cried the whole time, terrified at the sight of the stern-faced, rigid guards; and grasping the iron bars convulsively with his little red hands.

This was the only memory Costantino had preserved of his son. Years had gone by since then; yet he always imagined him flushed, tearful, with little violet eyes shining out from beneath the dark lashes. But he often pictured the future, when Malthineddu, grown to be big and strong, would drive the wagon, and ride the horse, and sow, and reap, and be the comfort and support of his mother. The prisoner constantly hoped that some day or other he would be cleared, and able to return to his home, but when at times this hope seemed to be more than usually vain, then his thoughts would instantly revert to the boy, and how he would be able to take his place in a way; thus his feeling for him was more a part of his love for Giovanna than that more selfish affection which is the result, often, of habit and propinquity.

Now the boy was dead, and the dream shattered; the will of God be done. And Costantino, dwelling upon Giovanna’s grief, suffered himself, acutely.

When the King of Spades, accordingly, met his friend that day in the shadow of the sun-baked wall, he at once perceived that the other’s grief was far more for his wife than for the loss of the child; nevertheless, his method of imparting comfort was to say banteringly: “Why, my dear fellow, if, as you say, the Lord has taken the innocent little soul back to himself, why do you take it so much to heart? It must be for his own good!”

“Why must it?” said Costantino, his head drooping, and both arms hanging down with limp, open palms. “Why must he be better off? Simply because he was poor!”

The King of Spades happened to be in a philosophising mood. He explained, therefore, that poverty was not always a misfortune; nothing of the sort; it might at times be looked upon as a blessing, even an unqualified one!

“There are many worse things than poverty,” said he. “Reflect for a moment; your wife will become reconciled.”

“Oh! of course; she has the sun,” said Costantino, clenching his hands. “This burning sun, and just how is it going to help her?”

“Pff! pff! pff!” puffed the other, inflating his big, yellow cheeks. Then he grew thoughtful, and fell to examining the little finger of his right hand with minute attention.

“Suppose,” he said suddenly, “your wife were to marry again?”

Costantino did not quite take in what he meant, but his arms stiffened instinctively.

“I hardly should have thought,” said he in a hurt tone, “that you would say such a thing as that.”

“Pff! pff! pff!” The ex-marshal swelled and puffed meditatively. Then, after a short pause, he began again:

“But listen, my dear fellow, you don’t understand. I don’t for a moment mean to say that your wife is not a perfectly honest woman; what I do mean is⁠—suppose she were actually to marry some one else? And still you don’t understand? Upon my word, this Christian is extraordinarily slow at taking an idea! One would suppose you were free, you are so innocent. Perhaps, though,” he added, “you don’t know that people can get divorces nowadays. Any woman whose husband has been sentenced for more than ten years, can be divorced and marry some one else.”

Costantino threw his head up for a moment, and his sunken eyes opened round and wide; then the lids dropped again.

“Giovanna would never do it,” he said simply.

There was another brief interval of silence.

“Giovanna would not do it,” he repeated; yet, even as he pronounced the words, he had a strange sensation, as though a frozen steel were slashing his heart in twain; one part was convulsed with agony, while the other shrieked again and again: “She would never do it! she would never do it!” And neither part gave a single thought to the little, dead child.

“She would not do it, she would not do it,” reiterated one half of his heart with loud insistence, until, at last, the other was convinced, and they came together again, but only to find that both were now devoured by that torturing pain.

“See here,” said the King of Spades, “I don’t believe she would either. But tell me one thing; now that the child is dead, and now that the mother has nothing more to hope for, from either him or you, would it not, after all, be the very best thing she could do, supposing she had the opportunity? For my own part, I think that if a chance came along for her to marry again, she would be very foolish not to take it.”

“Brontu Dejas!” said Costantino to himself. But he only repeated: “No, she would not do it.”

“But you are a Christian, my friend; if she were to do it, would she not be in the right?”

“But I am going back some day.”

“How is she to know that?”

“Why, I have told her so all along, and I shall never cease telling her so.”

The King of Spades had a strong inclination to laugh, but he restrained himself, feeling quite ashamed of the impulse. Presently he murmured, as though in answer to some inward question: “It is all utter foolishness.”

“Yes, of course,” said Costantino. But all the time, he was thinking of Brontu Dejas, of his house with the portico, of his tancas and his flocks; and then of Giovanna’s poverty. Alas! the knife was cutting deep into his heart now.

That very night he wrote a long letter to Giovanna, comforting her, and assuring her of his unshaken faith in the divine mercy. “It may be,” he wrote, in the simple goodness of his heart, “that God wishes to prove us still further, and so has taken from us the offspring that we conceived in sin; may his will be done! But now, a presentiment tells me that the hour of my restoration to liberty is at hand.” He considered long whether or no to tell her of the dreadful thing hinted at by the ex-marshal, and thought himself quite shrewd and cunning when he decided it would be better to let her think that he did not so much as know of the existence of that infernal law.

His letter despatched, he felt more tranquil. But a little worm had begun to gnaw and gnaw in his brain. The ex-marshal, moreover, from that day on, with a pity that was heartless in its operations, never ceased to instil the subtle poison into his veins. He must become accustomed to the idea, thought this diplomatist to himself, else the poor, simple soul will die of heartbreak. There were times, however, when he thought that it might be better, after all, to let him die, and have done with it. Then, remembering all his promises about obtaining a pardon, he would pretend to himself that he was really going to do this, and continue the torture so that his victim might survive the shock when news of the divorce actually came. He had no doubt that his friend’s wife was seriously contemplating the step, and it made him angry to hear Costantino speak affectionately of her.

“My dear fellow,” said he one October day, puffing as usual, “you don’t know women. Empty jugs, that’s what they are; nothing but empty jugs! I was once engaged to be married myself. You can hardly believe it? Well, I can hardly believe it either. What then? Nothing, except that she betrayed me before I had even married her, and⁠—that you irritate me beyond measure. Here is your wife in an altogether different situation; she is young and poor, and has blood in her veins⁠—she has blood in her veins, I suppose, hasn’t she? Well, if this Dejas fellow wants her to marry him, I say she would be a great goose not to do it.”

“Dejas! Why⁠—what⁠—who told you?” stammered Costantino in amazement.

“Oh! didn’t you tell me yourself?”

Costantino thought he most certainly had not, but then his mind had been in such a confused state for some time back⁠—but merciful God! Dear San Costantino! How had he ever come to do such a thing? What had made him utter that man’s name?

“Well, then,” he burst out; “yes, I am afraid of him! He courted her before we were married; he wanted her himself. Ugh! he’s a drunkard, and as weak as mud. No, no; she could never do anything so horrible! For pity’s sake, let’s talk of something else.”

So they did talk of something else, still in the Sardinian dialect, so as not to be understood by the other prisoners. They talked of the consumptive student, who was drawing visibly nearer to the door of the other world; of Arnolfo Bellini, who began to sob whenever his eye fell on the dying man; of the Delegate, whom they could see pacing back and forth by the fountain; of the magpie, who was growing feeble, and losing all his feathers, from old age.

Gossip, envy, hatred, identical interests, cowardice, raillery, fear⁠—such were the bonds which united or kept apart the different members of the little community⁠—prisoners, guards, and officials alike. To Costantino they were all equally objects of indifference; he, the Delegate, and the student seeming to live apart in a little world of their own, with the ex-marshal⁠—the pivot about which every detail in the prisoners’ lives seemed to revolve; he, meanwhile, appearing to be as superior as he was necessary to them all.

Many envied the friendly intercourse existing between Costantino and him, and frequently the former would be implored to use his influence with the King of Spades to procure some favour. He merely shrugged his shoulders on such occasions, though, when they offered him money, as sometimes happened, he was sorely tempted to take it, so intense was his longing to be able to support Giovanna; he had no other idea. The King of Spades, with his eternal insinuations that cut like knives, was becoming more and more hateful to him. One day they actually quarrelled, and for some time did not speak to one another. But Costantino could not stand it; he felt as though he should suffocate, as though he had been shut up in a cell, and cut off from all communication with the outer world. He soon apologised and begged for a reconciliation.

The autumn drew on; the air grew cool, and the sky became a delicate, velvety blue, distant, unreal, dreamlike. Sometimes the breeze would waft a perfume of ripening fruit into the prison enclosure.

Costantino was less acutely miserable, but he had sunk into a state of settled melancholy; he grew thinner and thinner, and deprived himself continually of things which he stood in need of in order to have more money to send to Giovanna. The other prisoners all received presents of some sort from their friends and relatives; he alone denied himself even the little pittance he was able to earn.

“I don’t understand it,” said the ex-marshal to him one day. “Your complexion is pink and you look younger than you did when you came, and yet you are almost transparent.”

Sometimes Costantino would flush violently, and the blood would rush to his head; then he would be utterly prostrated, and in his weakness he would suffer more from homesickness than he had done even in the first year of his imprisonment. He would see before him the boundless sweep of the uplands, sleeping in the autumnal haze, glowing and yellow beneath the crystal sky; he would get the breath of the vineyards, the scent of such late-maturing fruits as flourish in that land of flocks and beehives; images would rise before him of the foxes and hares, the wild birds and cattle, the hedges thick with blackberries, all the hundred and one natural objects which had constituted the sole element of enjoyment in his otherwise miserable and barren childhood. Then his thoughts would turn to his uncle, the cruel old Vulture who, having tormented him in his lifetime, seemed able to torment him still. An impulse of bitter hatred would rise up in his heart, only to be repressed, on remembering that he was dead, and succeeded by a prayer for the murdered man’s soul.

There was no one else whom he was even tempted to hate, no one at all; not even the real murderer, or Brontu Dejas⁠—who, in fact, had as yet given him no cause for complaint⁠—or the King of Spades, though he subjected him to this continual martyrdom. Indeed, it hardly seemed as though he had sufficient strength effectually to hate anyone. A feeling of gentle melancholy pervaded him, a sort of numbness like that of a person about to fall asleep; his only sensation was one of tender, pitiful, passionless love; as tranquil, as mild and all-embracing as an autumnal sky, and having for its one object⁠—Giovanna. She was a part of the love itself, and waking or sleeping, he thought only of her, only of her, only of her.

As time went on this love became more and more engrossing; she came to represent the far-off home, family, liberty⁠—life itself. All, all, was comprehended in her: hope, faith, endurance, peace, the very love of life! She became his soul.

When the inexorable King of Spades threatened him with that horrible thing, he did not know it, but it was the death of his soul that he was holding over him. For the certainty of not losing Giovanna, Costantino would gladly have agreed to pass forty years in prison; and, at the same time, he panted for his freedom precisely in order that he might not lose her.

During the winter that followed, he suffered intensely from cold; his face and nails were livid, and during the exercise hour, even when he stood in the sun, his teeth chattered like those of an old man. He asked often to confess, and confided all his troubles to the young chaplain.

“Who puts such ideas as these into your head, my son?” asked the confessor, his dark eyes flashing.

“A fellow-countryman of mine, the ex-marshal⁠—Burrai. The King of Spades they call him.”

“May God bless and protect you!” said the other, becoming thoughtful; he knew the King of Spades well. Then he administered what comfort he could, and asked what Giovanna had written herself, and when.

Alas! she wrote but seldom now and never more than a few lines at a time. It seemed almost as if, after the child’s death, she had nothing to write about. In her last letter she had told him that the weather was bitterly cold; there had been two snow-storms, in one of which a man, while attempting to cross the mountains, had been frozen to death. And then she had added that they were having a famine.

These accounts, of course, preyed upon Costantino’s mind. He would dream constantly that he had been taken to Nuoro and given his liberty; from thence he would set forth on foot for home; it was cold, bitterly cold; he could go no further⁠—he was dying, dying⁠—then he would wake up shivering, and with a heavy weight on his heart.

“You are so weak, my brother,” said the confessor. “It is bodily weakness that makes you imagine all these things. Your wife is a good Christian; she would never wrong you in the world. Come, put all such ideas out of your head. You should try to get back your strength; you must eat more, and drink something now and then. Are you earning anything?”

“A little; but I send it all to my wife, she is so terribly poor. Oh! I eat plenty, and I don’t like to take anything to drink; it gives me nausea.”

“Well, take heart. I will talk to Burrai; he shall not bother you any more.”

He did, in fact, have an interview with the King of Spades, and took him severely to task for putting such wicked ideas into Ledda’s head. “The poor fellow is far from strong as it is,” said he. “If you don’t let him alone, he will be ill.”

Burrai regarded the priest calmly out of his shrewd little pig-eyes, then he gave a puff and shook his head.

“I only do it for his own good,” he said confidently.

“But what good, what possible good? You⁠—”

“I tell you, my dear fellow⁠—I beg your pardon⁠—but here it is, for the present⁠—as long as the cold weather lasts⁠—there is very little to be feared, so far as the young woman is concerned; that is, I fancy that now it is only the old one, Costantino’s mother-in-law, who is at work, advising and tormenting her daughter not to let her chance slip by. But when the spring comes⁠—then you’ll see; that’s all.”

The chaplain’s face fell; he was disturbed and puzzled. The other, watching him out of his sharp, little eyes, concluded that the present would be a good time to explain himself more fully, and accordingly began to enlarge upon the mother-in-law’s grasping disposition, the youth of her daughter, the dangers of the spring season, and so forth. The chaplain now became really angry.

“This is too much!” he exclaimed, as he strode up and down, striking the palms of his hands together, and his eyes flashing. “How dare you imagine all this string of things that may possibly happen, and then repeat them to that poor creature as though they were actual occurrences? Because the young woman once had another suitor, you mean to say⁠—”

“My dear friend, there is no need to get so angry,” said the other. “Here, look at this,” and he showed him the anonymous letter.

The chaplain saw at once that the matter was more serious than he had supposed; he read the letter, and then asked if Ledda paid him money.

“Of course, a trifle now and then. Perhaps you think it wrong? Well, don’t I take the risk of being put in a cell in order to serve him?”

“And you consider that you are doing right when you act in this manner?”

“What is doing right? If it is helping your neighbour, then I most certainly think that I am.”

The chaplain reread the letter attentively.

“Yes,” pursued the other. “I certainly am. And what is more, if, when I get out of here, they don’t reinstate me in my position, I intend to arrange a system of correspondence for all the prisons in Italy. It will be a sort of agency⁠—”

“I see, my friend, that it will not be long before we have you back again.”

“Eh! eh! I shall know how to manage the thing; a secret agency, and⁠—”

“Pardons too!” said the priest, folding the letter and returning it. “How can you have the heart to fool those poor creatures so?”

“Yes, pardons too,” replied Burrai calmly. “Well, and suppose they are fooled; if it gives them any comfort to hope, is not that an act of kindness in itself? What is there for any of us, but hope?”

“Well,” said the other more mildly, “at least do me the favour to leave that poor fellow alone. Allow him to enjoy the pleasures of hope, otherwise he will certainly fall ill.”

The ex-marshal promised, though with bad grace. It seemed to him a poor method.

“He will die of heartstroke, I verily believe,” he said to himself. “Wait till the spring; then we will see whether a man of the world knows what he is about or no.” And he laid one hand on his breast.

When they next met, Costantino asked with a smile if he had seen Su Preideru, as they called the chaplain between themselves, and what he had said to him.

The ex-marshal was leaning against the damp and dingy wall, softly cursing some individual unknown, in the Sardinian dialect.

“Balla chi trapasset sa busacca, brasciai!”7 he murmured, as Costantino approached. “What is it? Who?”

“Oh! nothing.”

“You want to know if I have seen the priest? Yes, and he scolded me like a child. What a child it is! A little pig, really and truly, a little pig! But the lard is yellow and rancid. Do you know, I read somewhere that in Russia they think very highly of rancid lard?”

“But tell me what he said.”

“What he said? Let me see, what did he say? I don’t remember; oh! yes, he told me that I had imagined all that⁠—what we have been talking about. Yes, that was it, my dear fellow; I have, it seems, a vivid imagination, and your wife will never wrong you in the world! Never, as surely as we are standing here!”

Costantino looked at him eagerly. No, the man was not chaffing; he was perfectly serious, and evidently meant what he said.

“Ah, ha! he scolded you, did he? Good enough!” he cried.

“This wall,” said the King of Spades, straightening himself, and regarding his hands, which were red and scarred from contact with the rough stones, “this wall looks as though it were made of chocolate; it is warm and damp. Ah! if it only were, there would be two advantages: we could eat it, and then escape! Have you ever eaten any chocolate?”

“Why, of course, and Giovanna too; she is very fond of it, but it is fearfully dear. Well, and what then?”

“What then?” exclaimed the other impatiently. “My dear fellow, you drive me crazy. Oh! she will wait for you twenty-three years⁠—never fear!”

“No, not that long; I shall be out of here long before that,” replied Costantino confidently. “Then too,” he added with a gleam of humour, “there is the pardon; you were to see the King, you know, about a pardon for me.”

“Precisely,” said the other. “I was to see the King. You don’t believe me? I shall, however, go to him at once; he receives every official, and what am I if not an official? He is fond of the army; he is young; I hear he is getting fat. Ah! not as fat as I, though”⁠—and he laughed.

From then on, whenever Costantino tried to bring the conversation around to the old subject, the other contrived to head him off; but at all events he was no longer tormented.

One day about this time, Costantino was informed that five francs had been paid in to his account. “He did it!” he exclaimed. “I am sure it was the priest. What a kind man he is! But I don’t need it; no, indeed, I don’t need the money at all.”

“You stupid,” said the King of Spades. “Take it; if you don’t he will be offended. ‘I don’t want it!’ A pretty way that to acknowledge a present!”

“But I should be ashamed to take it. And what could I do with it, anyhow?”

“Why, eat, drink⁠—you have need to, I can assure you. You would like to send it home, I suppose? The devil take you! If you do such an idiotic thing as that I will spit in your face! Why, see here, she doesn’t even write to you any more; she⁠—”

“What is there for her to write about?” said Costantino, trying vainly to think of some excuse. “Besides,” he added, “she will be working now, the winter is nearly over.”

“Yes, it is nearly over, and then the spring will come,” said the other in a tone that had almost a menace in it. “It will come.”

“Why, of course, it will come!”

“When does the warm weather begin with you? We have it in March.”

“Oh, with us, not till June. But then it is so beautiful. The grass grows⁠—oh! as tall as that, and they clip the sheep, and the bees are making honey!”

“An idyl, truly! You don’t know what an idyl is? Well, I’ll tell you. It is⁠—sometimes it is⁠—infidelity. Wait till June. How long is it since you’ve been to confession?”

“Oh, I’ve not been for a fortnight.”

“A long time, I declare! What a good Christian you are, my friend. For my own part, I’ve never been at all. My conscience is as clear and unsullied as a mirror. Now there,” said he, pointing to the pasty-faced student, whose hair was so white that it looked as though it had been powdered, “there is one who had better confess without delay; he is knocking now at the door of eternity.”

Sure enough, only a few days later the student was removed to the infirmary, and at the end of March he died.

Bellini, the man whose mistress was dying of the same disease, asked after him anxiously every day, and when he died cried for hours in a weak, childish fashion. It was not from any grief he felt at parting from the sick man, but at the thought of what might happen to his mistress. His grief subsided at length, and then, as he no longer had the reminder of the student before his eyes, he gradually came to think less and less about his own sorrow.

The death of the student had a totally different effect upon the King of Spades; he became quite melancholy, took to philosophising about life and death, and would engage in lengthy discussions with the Delegate, who rolled his eyes about and expounded his views in a deep bass voice.

When talking with Costantino, the ex-marshal was apt to drop into rather homesick reminiscences about the distant land of their birth.

“Yes,” said he one day, “I was once quite close to your home, or its neighbourhood. I can’t tell you precisely, but I know there was a wood, all arbute, and cork-trees, and rock-roses; it looked as though there had been a rain of blood all over them. And there was a smell⁠—oh! the queerest kind of smell, it was something like tobacco. Then there was a cross on a stone, and you could see the water far away in the distance.”

“Why, of course!” cried Costantino. “That was the forest of Cherbomine.8 I should say I did know it. Once a hunter saw a stag there with golden horns. He fired, and shot it dead, but as the stag fell it gave a cry like a human being, and said: ‘The penance is completed!’ They say it was some human soul that had been forced to expiate a terrible sin of some sort. The cross was erected afterwards.”

“And how about the horns?”

“They say that as the hunter drew near the horns turned black.”

“Pff! pff! how superstitious you all are, you peasants! Ah! here is the spring coming at last,” he continued, staring up at the sky. “For my own part, the spring gets on my nerves. If I could but go hunting once. There was one time when I was hunting in the marshes near Cagliari: ah! those marshes, they look just like ever so many pieces of looking-glass thrown down from somewhere above; and all around there were quantities of purple lilies. A long line of flamingoes were flying in single file; they stood out against the sky which was so bright you could hardly raise your eyes to it. Pum! pum! one of the flamingoes fell, the others flew on without making a sound. I rushed right into the middle of the marsh to get the one I had shot. I was as quick and agile as a fish in those days; I was only eighteen years old.”

“What are flamingoes good for?”

“Nothing; they stuff them; they have great, long legs like velvet. Have you ever been in that part of the country? Oh! yes, I remember, when you worked in the mines, you passed through Cagliari. I shall go back there some day, to die in blessed peace!”

“You are melancholy nowadays.”

“What would you have, my friend? It is the spring; it is so depressing to have to pass Easter in prison. I shall take the Easter Instruction this year.”

“I have taken it already.”

“Ah! you have taken it already?” And the two prisoners fell into a thoughtful silence.

Thus April passed by, and May, and June. The dreary prison walls turned into ovens; unpleasant insects came to life, and once more preyed upon the unfortunate inmates; again the air was filled with sickening odours, and in the workroom, presided over by the same red-faced, taciturn guard, perspiration, fish, and leather fought for pre-eminence in the fetid atmosphere.

Costantino, weaker than ever, suffered tortures from the insects. In former years he had slept so profoundly that nothing could disturb him, but now it was different, and a sudden sting would arouse him with a bound, and leave him trembling all over. Then insomnia set in, and periods of semi-consciousness that were worse than actual sleeplessness, haunted, as they sometimes were, with nightmare. Sharp twinges, not always from insects, shot through his entire body, and he would toss from side to side, gasping and sighing.

Sometimes the torture became almost unendurable, and often the orange glow of sunrise would shine through the window before he had been able to close an eye; then, overpowered by exhaustion, he would fall into a heavy slumber just as it was time to get up!

Giovanna had now entirely ceased writing. Once only, towards the end of May, a letter had come, begging him not to send her any more money, as she now earned enough to live on, with care. After that there was nothing more.

And yet he maintained his tranquil faith in her loyalty. Even this last letter he took as a fresh proof of her affection for him.

Every day the King of Spades, waiting for his friend in the exercise hour, would betray a certain anxiety.

“Well,” he would say uneasily, his sharp little demon-eyes snapping from out of the big, clean-shaven, yellow face. “Well, what news?” And when Costantino would seem to be surprised at the question, he too would look surprised, though he never would say at what.

“It is warm weather,” he would observe.

“Yes, very warm.”

“The spring is over.”

“I should say that it was!”

“Have they finished harvesting where you come from?”

“Of course they have. My wife says there is no need to send her anything more now.”

“Ah! I knew that already, my dear fellow.”

The ex-marshal hardly knew what to think; he was almost annoyed to find that his forebodings were not being verified.

One day, however, Costantino failed to put in an appearance at the “exercise,” and when the ex-marshal was told that his friend had been taken to the infirmary, he felt a strange tightening at the heart. Presently the old magpie came fluttering about, and, settling down with a shake of its half-bald, rumpled head, croaked out dismally: “Cos-tan-ti, Cos-tan-ti.”

“ ‘Costanti’ has had a stroke, my friend,” said the King of Spades. The other convicts began to crowd around him curiously. But he waved them all off. “I know nothing about it,” he said. “Let me alone.” Up to nine o’clock, Bellini told them, Costantino had been at work with the rest as usual. Then a guard had said that he was wanted, no one knew what for; he had gotten quickly up, and gone off with him, as white as a sheet, and his eyes starting out of their sockets; he had not returned.

To the last day of his life Costantino never forgot that morning. It was hot and overcast; the shadows of the clouds seemed to hang over the workroom, throwing half of it into deep gloom. The convicts all looked livid by this light, the leather aprons exhaled a strong and very disagreeable odour, and every one was out of humour. A man who was afraid of ghosts had been telling how in his part of the country, long, white, flowing forms could be seen on dark nights, floating on the surface of the river; he asked Bellini if he had ever seen them.

“I? No; I don’t believe in such foolishness.”

“Ah! you think it’s foolishness, do you?” said the other in a dull, monotonous tone, and staring into the shoe he was at work on.

“Calf!” murmured another, without looking up from his work.

The believer in ghosts thereupon raised his head with an angry movement, and was about to reply in kind, when the first broke in, protestingly: “Oh, really,” said he, “can’t I talk to myself? If I choose to say⁠—calf⁠—or ram⁠—or sheep⁠—or dog⁠—what business is it of yours? Can’t I say things to my shoe, I’d like to know?”

It was at this point that the guard had come, and called Costantino away, and the latter, who had passed a sleepless night, had opened his drowsy eyes, turned pale, and leaped to his feet. “Who wants me?” he had asked, and then he had followed the guard.

He was taken to a dingy room, filled with shelves of dusty papers. The dirty windows were closed; beyond them, through a red grating, could be seen the sky⁠—dull and grey, as though it too were dirty. A man was seated writing, at a tall, dusty desk, piled so high with papers that between the papers and the dust the man himself could hardly be seen. As the prisoner entered he raised a flushed face, the small chin completely hidden by a heavy, blond moustache. He fixed a pair of big, round, dull-blue eyes upon Costantino, but apparently without seeing him, for he dropped them again immediately, and went on writing.

Costantino, who had seen this man before, stood waiting, his heart thumping in his breast. Mechanically his thoughts dwelt upon the description of the water-phantoms he had just been listening to, and the voice saying: “calf”; he wondered vaguely if one would be justified in feeling angry at that. Not a sound broke the stillness of the room, except the scratch, scratch, of the pen, as it travelled over the coarse paper. Again the pale blue eyes were fixed upon the prisoner, and again lowered to the sheet. Costantino, trembling and unnerved, gazed desperately around the room. Still the man wrote on. The prisoner could feel his heart beating furiously; a thousand dark fancies, hideous, terrifying, rushed through his brain, like clouds driven before an angry tempest. And still the man wrote on, and on. Suddenly, without warning, all the dark fancies vanished⁠—dispersed and swallowed up, as it were, in a single glorious flood of light. A thought, so dazzling and beautiful as almost to be painful, shot into his mind. “They have discovered that I am innocent!”

The idea did not remain for long, but it left behind it a vague, tremulous light.

The man was still writing, and did not stop as he presently said in a loud, hard voice: “You are named⁠—?”

“Costantino Ledda.”

“Where from?”

“Orlei, in Sardinia, Province of Sassari.”

“Very good.”

Silence. The man wrote a little while longer; then suddenly he dug his pen into the paper, raised his red face, and fastened his round, expressionless eyes upon the man standing before him. Costantino’s own eyes dropped.

“Very good. Have you a wife?”

“Yes.”

“Any children?”

“We had one, but he died.”

“Are you fond of your wife?”

“Yes,” replied Costantino, and raised his terrified eyes as far as the fat, red hand resting on the desk, with a ring on one finger having a purple stone; and between the thumb and forefinger, the stiff, black point of the pen. Not knowing where to fix his perplexed gaze, Costantino followed the movements of this pen, conscious all the while only of a feeling of supreme agony, as when one dreams that he is about to be swallowed up in a cataclysm.

The hard voice was speaking again, in a low, measured tone.

“You know, of course, that your wife’s whole life has been ruined by your fault. Young, handsome, and blameless, the rest of her days must be spent in struggle and privation. The world holds out no promise of happiness for her, and yet she has never done any harm at all. As long as your child lived she endured her lot patiently, her hopes were fixed upon him. But now that he is dead what has she left? When you return to her⁠—if, indeed, God should be so merciful as to allow you to do so⁠—you will be old, broken-down, useless, and she will be the same. She sees stretching before her a terrible future⁠—nothing but sorrow, shame, poverty, and a miserable old age. No resource but to beg; thus her life is a worse punishment even than yours⁠—”

Costantino, as white as death, panting, agonising, tried to protest, to say that he would surely be liberated before long, but the words died away on his lips; the other, meanwhile, gave him no chance, but pursued his theme in smooth, even tones, his dull eyes never leaving the prisoner’s face.

“Her life is thus a worse punishment even than yours. You should think of these things, and, abandoning all hope, repent doubly of your crime.” He cleared his throat, and then continued in a different tone: “Now, however, the law has provided a means by which this great injustice can be rectified. You of course know very well that an act of divorce has gone into effect which enables a woman whose husband is guilty of a certain class of crime, to marry again. Should your wife⁠—sit down, keep quiet⁠—should your wife apply for such a divorce, it would be your duty to grant it at once. I know that you are, or pretend to be, after all, a good Christian⁠—”

Costantino, who was leaning on the table, shaking in every limb, but making a heroic effort to control himself, now broke in. “Has she applied for it?” he demanded.

“Sit down, sit down there,” said the other, motioning with his pen; he wanted to continue his harangue, but Costantino again spoke, in a clear, firm voice that contrasted strangely with the trembling of his limbs. “I know my duty perfectly,” he said, “and I shall never give my consent. I shall undoubtedly be freed before very long, and then my wife would bitterly repent of her mistake.”

Two deep wrinkles furrowed the red cheeks of the lecturer, and an ugly smile shone from his dull eyes.

“Indeed!” he said. “Well, the consent of the prisoner is asked merely as a formality. It is, of course, his duty to give it, and his goodwill counts for something in his favour. But it all comes to the same thing, whether he gives it or no⁠—Eh, there! what⁠—why⁠—what is the matter?” For Costantino had given a sudden lurch, and collapsed on the floor like a bundle of limp rags.