He spent a fevered night. Already far distant was the time in which he had been content to see Margherita in the orchard garden, without caring for the colour of her hair, the grace of her bosom. Then his dreams had been all fantastic; raptures, meetings, flights to mysterious places, preferably to the white tablelands of the moon; but had he learned she was about to marry, it would have occasioned him no suffering. Once he had thought of persuading her to follow him to the mountains where they might poison themselves with a poison that would not disfigure their corpses; yes, they would lay themselves on the rocks among the wild flowers and the ivy, and they would die together; but into this dream entered the desire neither for a kiss nor for a pressure of the hand. Afterwards had come the idyllic dream of the mountains at Fonni, of the lover's kiss, of Margherita's surrender. Then came the night of the acting, when the immediate vision of her hair, her eyes, her bosom, had caused him a delicate intoxication. Now he was racked by the thought that she might be destined for another. In his fevered slumber he was in agony, in his dreams he was writing, writing, at a despairing letter which he never succeeded in bringing to a termination. Then, still dreaming, he remembered having composed a sonnet in dialect for her, and he decided on sending it. He awoke. He rose and flung the window wide. It was near dawn. The heaven was quite clear, a great red star was setting behind the black obelisk of Orthobene, like a dying flame on a candlestick of stone. Cocks were crowing, answering each other with rivalry of raucous cries, each apparently angry with the other, and all with the delay in the coming of the light. Anania looked at the sky; he yawned, and a cold shiver ran from his feet to his head. Oh God! what was happening to him? Part of his soul must detach itself from him, must remain here, under that clear heaven, in sight of those wild mountains whose crests were candlesticks for the stars. As a wayfarer, burdened by too heavy a load wishes to drop some of it so as more lightly to follow his path, so Anania felt a great longing to leave part of his secret with Margherita. He shut the window, seated himself at his table, trembling and yawning. "How cold!" he said aloud. The sonnet was already written out on pink paper ruled with violet lines. It bore the poetic title "Margherita," and was in the form of an allegory, also highly poetic. A most lovely marguerite grew in a green meadow. All the flowers admired her, but specially a pale and lowly buttercup which had grown by her side. The buttercup was sick with love for his beauteous neighbour. And lo! on a sweet spring morning, a lovely maiden passed through the meadow, and plucked the daisy, kissing it and hiding it in her bosom, never noticing that she had squashed the unhappy buttercup. But the buttercup seeing his adored neighbour snatched away was glad to die.