[Jpicedt-devel] ill fai

[Pettyjohn <ha...@ca...>]

Ittle barn full of hay, to bed. The meaning of the Colonel's utterance
was self-evident. The young wife replied by an indescribable gesture,
expressing all the annoyance she could not feel at seeing her thralldom
thus flaunted without human decency, and the offence to her dignity as a
woman, and to her husband. But there was, too, in the rigid setting of
her features and the tight knitting of her brows a sort of presentiment;
perhaps she foresaw her fate. Rosina remained quietly in her place. "A
minute later, and apparently when the Colonel was snug in his couch of
straw or hay, he repeated, 'Rosina?' "The tone of this second call was
even more brutally questioning than the first. The Colonel's strong
burr, and the length which the Italian language allows to be given to
vowels and the final syllable, concentrated all the man's despotism,
impatience, and strength of will. Rosina turned pale, but she rose,
passed behind us, and went to the Colonel. "All the party sat in utter
silence; I, unluckily, after looking at them all, began to laugh, and
then they all laughed too.--'_Tu ridi?_ --you laugh?' said the husband.
"'On my honor, old comrade,' said I, becoming serious again, 'I confess
that I was wrong; I ask your pardon a thousand times, and if you are not
satisfied by my apologies I am ready to give you satisfaction.' "'Oh! it
is not you who are wrong, it is I!' he replied coldly. "Thereupon we all
lay down in the room, and before long all were sound asleep. "Next
morning each one, without rousing his neighbor or seeking companionship,
set out again on his way, with that selfishness which made our rout one
of the most horrible dramas of self-seeking, melancholy, and horror
which ever was enacted under heaven. Nevertheless, at about seven or
eight hundred paces from our shelter we, most of us, met again and
walked on together, like geese led in flocks by a child's wilful
tyranny. The same necessity urged us all. "Having reached a knoll where
we could still see the farmhouse where we had spent the night, we heard
sounds resembling the roar of lions in the desert, the bellowing of
bulls--no, it was a noise which can be compared to no known cry. And
yet, mingling with this horrible and ominous roar, we could hear a
woman's feeble scream. We all looked round, seized by I know not what
impulse of terror; we no longer saw the house, but a huge bonfire. The
farmhouse had been barricaded, and was in flames. Sw