This is the real Joseph, father of the child. He has a
fierce, abstract look, wild and untamed as a hawk, but like a hawk at
its own nest, fierce with love. He goes out and buys a tiny bottle of
lemonade for a penny, and the mother and child sip it in tiny sips,
whilst he bends over, like a hawk arching its wings.
It is the fierce spirit of the Ego come out of the primal infinite, but
detached, isolated, an aristocrat. He is not an Italian, dark-blooded.
He is fair, keen as steel, with the blood of the mountaineer in him. He
is like my old spinning woman. It is curious how, with his wife and
child, he makes a little separate world down there in the theatre, like
a hawk's nest, high and arid under the gleaming sky.
The Bersaglieri sit close together in groups, so that there is a
strange, corporal connexion between them. They have close-cropped, dark,
slightly bestial heads, and thick shoulders, and thick brown hands on
each other's shoulders. When an act is over they pick up their cherished
hats and fling on their cloaks and go into the hall. They are rather
rich, the Bersaglieri.
They are like young, half-wild oxen, such strong, sturdy, dark lads,
thickly built and with strange hard heads, like young male caryatides.
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