"I will place her here with Aunt Grathia, until I have found my feet. I will speak to Signor Carboni and to Margherita. I will tell them, 'This is how matters stand, my mother is to live with me the moment my position allows it. This is my duty, and I will do my duty though the universe fall.' He will drive me away like an unclean animal; I will have no illusions about it. Next, I will look for a post; and I shall find one, and then I will take the poor wretch with me, and we will live together, miserably of course, but I shall pay my debts, and I shall be a man. A man! say rather a living corpse." He seemed to himself calm, cold, already dead to joy. But in the depth of his heart was a cruel intoxication of pride, a fury of infatuated resistance to fate and to society and to himself. "It is what I willed," he thought. "I knew it might end like this. I have been allowing myself to drift. Woe is me! now I must expiate my folly. I will expiate!" This illusion of courage sustained him through the night and through the following day, when he made the ascension of the Gennargentu. The morning was sad, windless, but cloudy and misty; he determined to persevere in his expedition, hoping the weather would clear. In reality, he wanted to give himself proof of his courage and indifference. What were mountains from henceforth to him? What were far horizons? What the whole world? But he willed to do what he had resolved to do. Only for one moment did he hesitate. "Suppose _she_ finds out I am here, and refuses to come, escapes me again? Am I not temporizing in the hope of that?" he asked himself cruelly. The widow reassured him, and he set out. The guide, mounted on a strong and patient pony, preceded him up steep paths, sometimes lost in the silver mist, sometimes appearing like a figure blotted in water colour on a too wet grey background. Anania followed him. All around him, all within him was fog. In that floating veil, he distinguished the cyclopean outline of Monte Spada; and within him among the mists which enwrapped his soul, that soul showed itself like the mountain, great, hard, and monstrous.