When he awoke the sun was already above the horizon, pushing through a bank of bluish cloud. The morning was cold, with light, drifting clouds, and the thickets, bushes, stubble, every spear of grass, sparkled with dew in the slanting rays of the sun. Once more the birds bustled in and out among the bushes, burst into song, rushed together in little groups, or poised gracefully in the misty air. Now and then the chorus of chirps and twitters would swell into something so acute and piercing that it was almost like the patter of metal raindrops: sometimes a shrill whistle, or the strident note of a crow, would break into this silvery harmony; then all would die away, swallowed up in the vast silence of the uplands. Giacobbe came out of the hut yawning and stretching. He yawned so violently that his jaws cracked, and his smooth-shaven face folded into innumerable tiny wrinkles about the round, open mouth; and his little, oblique eyes, yellow in the sunlight, watered like those of a dog. "Well," he thought, pressing both hands to his stomach, "I have cramps here. What did I do last evening?" He threw open the folds; a ram with curved horns came out, snuffing the ground, closely followed by a yellowish bunch of sheep, all trying to tread in his tracks, and all likewise snuffing the ground; others came, and still others; the folds were empty; still Giacobbe stood close to the enclosure--motionless--buried in thought. "Yes, last evening I had nothing to eat. I drank the little master's brandy, and then I had dreams. Yes, yes, that was it--Costantino--and the dog--and my sister Anna-Rosa. Well, damn him! Why didn't he come back, the little toad? I got drunk, just like a beast. Yes,"--he moralised, walking towards the hut,--"a drunken man is like a beast; he does not know what he is doing, and brays out everything in his mind. A dangerous thing that, Giacobbe Dejas, you bald-pate! Get that well into your head; it's dangerous. No, no, I'll never get drunk again; may the Lord punish me if I do." A little later the young master returned. Giacobbe, intent and smiling, watched him closely. "Ah!" said he, stepping forward solicitously, "you look like a man who has had a whipping; what has happened?" "Nothing. Get away." But nothing was further from the other's intention. He began to circle around his master, fawning upon him and making little bounds towards him like a dog, teasing persistently to be told what had occurred. At last Brontu, who really longed to unburden himself, yielded. Well then, yes; Giovanna had, in fact, driven him away like an importunate beggar. She had asked him if he had forgotten that she had a son who would one day spit at her, and demand to know how it was that she had two husbands. "My soul, I knew it!" cried Giacobbe, leaping in the air for joy. "What did you know?" "Why, that she had a son."