I must have looked mad at that time to the few scattered peasants about the pool. I lived on a handful of maize, a crust of bread. I cast my nets in the water, and once or twice went up to Sant' Aloisa with the small fish, and was sent away by the crone Marietta. August passed, and the time drew nigh for the gathering of the grapes, ripe here sooner than in the Lombard and the Tuscan plains. But the vintage of Sant' Aloisa was slight, for the ground was covered with olives in nearly every part. When they were stripping what few poor vines there were I offered myself for that work. I thought so I might behold her. There was no mirth on the lands of Taddeo Marchioni: the people were poor and dull. Fever that came from the river and the swamps had lessened their numbers by death and weakened those who were living: my strength was welcome to those ague-stricken creatures. The day of the gathering was very hot: no rain had fallen. The oxen in the wains were merely skin and bone: their tongues were parched and swollen in their muzzled mouths. The grass had been long all burnt up, and the beasts famished: the air was stifling, pregnant with storm. Amidst the sere and arid fields, and the woods, black and gray, of ilex and of olive, the great old square house rose before us, pale, solitary, mysterious--a mausoleum that shut in living creatures: it terrified me. Night fell as the last wagon, loaded with the last casks of grapes, rolled slowly with heavy grinding wheels toward the cellars of Sant' Aloisa. With the wagon there were a few men enfeebled with fever, a few women shivering with ague. I walked behind the wagon, pushing it to aid the weary oxen. There was no moon: here and there a torch flickered in a copper sconce filled with oil. The courtyard and the cellar were of enormous size: in the old times Sant' Aloisa had sheltered fifteen hundred men. In the darkness, where a torch flared when he passed, I saw now and then Taddeo Marchioni coming and going, giving orders in his high, thin voice, screaming always, swearing sometimes, always suspecting some theft. He did not see me. He was entirely absorbed in his vintage and in the rebukes he hurled at his peasants. I drew back into the shadow, leaning against the column of the gateway, a huge wall blackened with time and damp. The bell of the old clock-tower sounded the nineteenth hour of the night. All at once the servant Marietta muttered in my ear, "Go in: she wants to speak with you. Go in to the tapestry-room on the other side of the house: you remember."