Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (Italian).djvu/75

Rh a word of sweetness, of happy innocence, tempering the severity of the sacred walls. Beautiful!"

Don Rocco looked at his fig tree as if he saw it for the first time. He was fond of it, but he had never suspected that it possessed such wonderful qualities.

"But it gives little figs," said he, in the tone of a father who hears his son praised in his presence and rejoices, but says something severe lest he become puffed up, and also to hide his own emotion. Then he invited the professor to make himself at home in the house.

"No, no, my dear," answered the professor, silently laughing at that phrase about the little figs. "Let us take a short stroll: it is better."

Passing slowly across the courtyard, they came out into the vineyard, whose festoons crowned both declivities of the hill, and they passed along the easy, grassy ascent between one declivity and the other.

"It is delicious!" said the professor.

Between the immense cold sky and the damp shadows of the plain the last glimpses of light were softly dying away on the grayish hill, on the red vines, all at rest. The air was warm and still.

"Is all this yours?" asked the professor.

Don Rocco, perhaps through humility, perhaps through apprehension of what the immediate future might bring, kept silence.