He seemed familiar with the household, he came and fetched wine at his
will. Maria was angry with him. She railed loudly and violently. He was
unchanged. He went out with the wine to the party on the grass. Maria
regarded them all with some hostility.
They drank a good deal out there in the sunshine. The women and the
older man talked floridly. Il Duro crouched at the feast in his curious
fashion--he had strangely flexible loins, upon which he seemed to crouch
forward. But he was separate, like an animal that remains quite single,
no matter where it is.
The party remained until about two o'clock. Then, slightly flushed, it
moved on in a ragged group up to the village beyond. I do not know if
they went to one of the inns of the stony village, or to the large
strange house which belonged to the rich young grocer of the village
below, a house kept only for feasts and riots, uninhabited for the most
part. Maria would tell me nothing about them. Only the young well-to-do
grocer, who had lived in Vienna, the Bertolotti, came later in the
afternoon inquiring for the party.
And towards sunset I saw the elderly man of the group stumbling home
very drunk down the path, after the two women, who had gone on in front.
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