Caterina laughed. Her eyes, with their bluish whites, her whole face, her whole little figure, seemed illuminated. Regina took her in her arms, danced her up and down, pressed her to her heart, made her play, played and laughed with her. "My little, little one! My _scagarottina_."[7] [7] The smallest, the last hatched, the favourite of the nestlings. "Bah!" said the nurse, very cross. "What's the sense of calling her that? Give her to me. She's cold." "You had better take her to the Pincio," said Regina, returning the babe to her arms; but Caterina held tight on to her mother, and frowned at the nurse. "It's too windy on the Pincio," said the peasant, still crosser. "And so, Miss Baby, you don't love me any more, don't you?" But Regina did not mind the nurse's jealousy. She had so often herself been jealous of the nurse! * * * * * When the woman and the baby were gone, Regina wandered a little hither and thither through the silent Apartment. What could she do with herself? What could she do? She did not know what to do. She ought to have gone to visit a lady she had met at Madame Makuline's; but the bare idea of dressing herself to go to a drawing-room, where a pack of women would be sitting in a circle, discussing gravely and at length the alarming shape of the sleeves in the latest fashion-book, filled her with melancholy. What was she to do? What was she to do? Boredom, or at least a feeling which she told herself was boredom, began to oppress her. She could not remember what, up till yesterday, she had been in the habit of doing to exorcise boredom. But she did remember how in the first year of her marriage she used to get bored just like this. Well, how had she got through that period? What grateful occupation had made her forget the passing of life? None; she had just been happy. "What? Am I unhappy now? All because of a piece of nonsense?" she asked herself, sitting down by the window of her bedroom and taking up a little petticoat she was sewing for Baby. "But at that time, too, I was making myself miserable about nothing." She stitched for five or six minutes. The silence of the room, the quiet, rather melancholy afternoon light, that same distant rumbling of the great shell, which reached her through the warm air, gave her something of the vague and soothing sweetness of dream. The trouble seemed laid. More minutes passed. But suddenly the door-bell sounded, and she sprang to her feet, shaken by the electric vibration which infected her nerves. "Not at home!" she said, running to the maid, who was on her way to open. Regina returned to her room and shut the door. She didn't even want to know who was seeking her. At that moment, on that day, she hated and despised the whole human kind.