"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 a.s.sure 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 gra.s.s 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 ba.s.s 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_ (Stagman). 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 superst.i.tious 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-gla.s.s thrown down from somewhere above; and all around there were quant.i.ties 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 ap.r.o.ns 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?"