"He was there on the lawn, beautiful as ever, and the beauty that only hardened his features and the proud bearing of a person would have been enough to undo anything, and get it back in his arms ... He could say something, Cosimo, any thing to meet her, she could tell her: - Tell me what you want me to do, I'm ready ... - and was back to his happiness, happiness together without shadows . Instead, he said: - There can be love if you are not themselves with all their might.
Viola made a gesture of opposition that was also a gesture of fatigue. Yet even he could understand that, as in fact he understood, even on her lips the words to say: "You are like I love you" and go up to him at once ... She bit her lip. He said: - Be yourself alone, then.
"So being myself does not make sense, that's what he meant Cosimo. Instead, he said: - If you like those two worms ...
- Do not you dare to despise my friends! - She cried and still thought, "I care about is you, is just for you I do everything I do!"
- Only I can be despised.
- The way you think!
- I am one with it.
- So goodbye. I'm leaving tonight. I do not see anymore.
ran to the house, had their luggage, left without even saying a word to the lieutenants. He was speaking. He did not return to more shadowy. He went to France and the historical events s'accavallarono to his will, when she already did not want to return. Revolution broke out, then the war, the first concerned the new Marquess course of events (was in ' entourage of Lafayette), then emigrated to Belgium and thence to England. In the fog of London, during the early years of the wars against Napoleon, dreaming of Ombrosa trees. Then he married a Lord interested in the East India Company and settled in Calcutta. From its terrace looking at the forests, the trees more strange than the garden of his childhood, and it seemed every time to see Cosimo his way through the leaves. But it was the shadow of a monkey or a jaguar. [...]
Cosimo remained for a long time to wander through the woods, crying, disheveled, refusing food. Crying loudly as babies, and birds that once were fleeing in flocks at the approach of quell'infallibile hunter, now we were neighbors on the tops of the trees around or volandogli on his head, shouting and sparrows, goldfinches Trillo I, cooed the dove, the chirping finches and warbler, and other dens came the squirrels, dormice, voles are, their squeaks and joined the choir, and so my brother moved in the midst of this cloud of tears.
Then came the destructive violence of every tree, beginning from the top and, via a leaf after another, the fast reduced caterpillar in winter, although it was not his clothes deciduous. Then he climbed on top and they broke all the branches until he let the big beams, went back again, with a penknife and began to remove the bark, and you could see the trees scraped out the trunk with white abbrividante air wound.
And in all this rage, there was resentment against Viola, but only remorse for having lost it, for failing to keep her tied to him, for her wound with an unjust and foolish pride. Why, now I understand, she was always faithful, and if it came with two other men was estimated to mean that only Cosimo worthy to be her only lover, and all its frustrations and tantrums were not the insatiable desire to grow their love affair admitting he touched a peak, and he he he did not understand anything and this had escalated to lose it.
For several weeks was held in the woods, just as never before, he had not even Optimus Maximus, was taken away because if the Viola. When my brother came back to show a Ombrosa, had changed. Neither could make me more illusions: this time Cosmo was just going crazy. "
da Il barone rampante , Italo Calvino
