surface of the sea.

The house of widow Saverini, clinging to the very edge of the precipice,
looks out, through its three windows, over this wild and desolate
picture.

She lived there alone, with her son Antonia and their dog "Semillante," a
big, thin beast, with a long rough coat, of the sheep-dog breed. The
young man took her with him when out hunting.

One night, after some kind of a quarrel, Antoine Saverini was
treacherously stabbed by Nicolas Ravolati, who escaped the same evening
to Sardinia.

When the old mother received the body of her child, which the neighbors
had brought back to her, she did not cry, but she stayed there for a long
time motionless, watching him. Then, stretching her wrinkled hand over
the body, she promised him a vendetta. She did not wish anybody near her,
and she shut herself up beside the body with the dog, which howled
continuously, standing at the foot of the bed, her head stretched towards
her master and her tail between her legs. She did not move any more than
did the mother, who, now leaning over the body with a blank stare, was
weeping silently and watching it.

The young man, lying on his back, dressed in his jacket of coarse cloth,
torn at the chest, seemed to be asleep. But he had blood all over him; on
his shirt, which had been torn off in order to administer the first aid;
on his vest, on his trousers, on his face, on his hands. Clots of blood
had hardened in his beard and in his hair.