The foreign women can understand the sound, they
can feel the malicious, suggestive mockery. But they cannot catch the
words. The smile becomes more dangerous on the faces of the men.
Then Maria Fiori sees that I have understood, and she cries, in her
loud, overriding voice:
'_Basta--basta._
The men get up, straighten their bodies with a curious, offering
movement. The guitars and mandolines strike the vibrating strings. But
the vague Northern reserve has come over the Englishwomen. They dance
again, but without the fusion in the dance. They have had enough.
The musicians are thanked, they rise and go into the night. The men pass
off in pairs. But the wood-cutter, whose name and whose nickname I could
never hear, still hovered on the edge of the darkness.
Then Maria sent him also away, complaining that he was too wild,
_proprio selvatico_, and only the 'quality' remained, the well-to-do
youths from below. There was a little more coffee, and a talking, a
story of a man who had fallen over a declivity in a lonely part going
home drunk in the evening, and had lain unfound for eighteen hours.
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