Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands

e had expected to find in the woman he had insulted, an implacable adversary, and was prepared to meet her enmity with disdain. But a single glance in the Corso from the eyes of Theresa Lea

s he had heard! How vulgar and insolent his own audacious attack upon h

e traced them back indeed to that father himself, since it was from him that he had inherited the bitter and perilous self-confidence which had sunk deep into his heart, and grown and flourished there. Under such influe

n, fortune, in a feverish pursuit of shadows. Yes, of shadows; for what was it that urged him on but the obstinate pride, the ambition, the vindictiveness, which in the beginning are often associat

ir was heavy with flowers and quivering with "

ren, left to want, family estates sold, and nothing gained but the unquiet heart's alternations from suffering to revenge, from revenge

his hand, they congratulated him on the honours paid to his father; they h

ible success, took possession of my life-brutal, self-absorbed, hollow, all of it. And he vowed that henceforward his comrades should have something else to talk about besides the latest wild exploit of Giuseppe

that son himself, as he passed through the familiar haunts of his boyish days, it seemed as if he could perceive the figure of his grandmother sitting by the roadside and throwing stones at the procession as

or realise how his own life had shaped itself before him as the gloomy sequel to his father's. But why should she gaze at him with those anxious, troubled eyes, at the very moment when he