The elder brother sits
straight and flushed, but even his eyes glitter with a kind of yellow
light of laughter. Paolo also sits quiet, with the invisible smile on
his face.' Only Maria, large and active, prospering now, keeps
collected, ready to order a shrill silence in the same way as she orders
the peasants, violently, to keep their places.
The boy comes to me and says:
'Do you know, Signore, what they are singing?'
'No,' I say.
So he capers with furious glee. The men with the watchful eyes, all
roused, sit round the wall and sing more distinctly:
_Si verra la primavera
Fiorann' le mandoline,
Vienn' di basso le Trentine
Coi 'taliani far' l'amor._
But the next verses are so improper that I pretend not to understand.
The women, with wakened, dilated faces, are listening, listening hard,
their two faces beautiful in their attention, as if listening to
something magical, a long way off. And the men sitting round the wall
sing more plainly, coming nearer to the correct Italian. The song comes
loud and vibrating and maliciously from their reedy throats, it
penetrates everybody.
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