The last glass had been drunk, and two o’clock in the morning was about to strike from the tower clock of the City Hall.

Said Biagio Quaglia, his voice thick with wine, as the strokes sounded through the silence of the night filled with clear moonlight:

“Well! Isn’t it about time for us to go?”

Ciavola, stretched half under the bench, moved his long runner’s legs from time to time, mumbling about clandestine hunts-in the forbidden grounds of the Marquis of Pescara, as the taste of wild hare came up in his throat, and the wind brought to his nostrils the resinous odour of the pines of the sea grove.

Said Biagio Quaglia, giving the blond hunter a kick, and making a motion to rise:

“Let us go.”

Ciavola with an effort rose, swaying uncertainly, thin and slender like a hunting hound.

“Let us go, as they are pursuing us,” he answered, raising his hand high in a motion of assent, thinking perhaps of the passage of birds through the air.

Turlendana also moved, and seeing behind him the wine woman, Zarricante, with her flushed raw cheeks and her protruding chest, he tried to embrace her. But Zarricante fled from his embrace, hurling at him words of abuse.

On the doorsill, Turlendana asked his friends for their company and support through a part of the road. But Biagio Quaglia and Ciavola, who were indeed a fine pair, turned their backs on him jestingly, and went away in the luminous moonlight.

Then Turlendana stopped to look at the moon, which was round and red as the face of a friar. Everything around was silent and the rows of houses reflected the white light of the moon. A cat was mewing this May night upon a door step. The man, in his intoxicated state, feeling a peculiarly tender inclination, put out his hand slowly and uncertainly to caress the animal, but the beast, being somewhat wild, took a jump and disappeared.

Seeing a stray dog approaching, he attempted to pour out upon it the wealth of his loving impulses; the dog, however, paid no attention to his calls, and disappeared around the corner of a cross street, gnawing a bone. The noise of his teeth could be heard plainly through the silence of the night.

Soon after, the door of the inn was closed and Turlendana was left-standing alone under the full moon, obscured by the shadows of rolling clouds. His attention was struck by the rapid moving of all surrounding objects. Everything fled away from him. What had he done that they should fly away?

With unsteady steps, he moved towards the river. The thought of that universal flight as he moved along, occupied profoundly his brain, changed as it was by the fumes of the wine. He met two other street dogs, and as an experiment, approached them, but they too slunk away with their tails between their legs, keeping close to the wall and when they had gone some little distance, they began to bark. Suddenly, from every direction, from Bagno da Sant’ Agostino, from Arsenale, from Pescheria, from all the lurid and obscure places around, the roving dogs ran up, as though in answer to a trumpet call to battle and the aggressive chorus of the famishing tribe ascended to the moon.

Turlendana was stupefied, while a sort of vague uneasiness awoke in his soul and he went on his way a little more quickly, stumbling over the rough places in the ground. When he reached the corner of the coopers, where the large barrels of Zazetta were piled in whitish heaps like monuments, he heard the heavy, regular breathing of a beast. As the impression of the hostility of all beasts had taken a hold on him, with the obstinacy of a drunken man, he moved in the direction of the sound, that he might make another experiment.

Within a low barn the three old horses of Michelangelo were breathing with difficulty above their manger. They were decrepit beasts who had worn out their lives dragging through the road of Chieti, twice every day, a huge stage-coach filled with merchants and merchandise. Under their brown hair, worn off in places by the rubbing of the harness, their ribs protruded like so many dried shingles through a ruined roof. Their front legs were so bent that their knees were scarcely perceptible, their backs were ragged like the teeth of a saw, and their skinny necks, upon which scarcely a vestige of mane was left, drooped towards the ground.

A wooden railing inside barred the door.

Turlendana began encouragingly:

“Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!”

The horses did not move, but breathed together in a human way. The outlines of their bodies appeared dim and confused through the bluish shadow within the barn, and the exhalations of their breath blent with that of the manure.

“Ush, ush, ush!” pursued Turlendana in a lamenting tone, as when he used to urge Barbara to drink. Again the horses did not stir, and again:

“Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!” One of the horses turned and placed his big deformed head upon the railing, looking with eyes which seemed in the moonlight as though filled with troubled water. The lower skin of the jaw hung flaccid, disclosing the gums. At every breath the nostrils palpitated, emitting moist breath, the nostrils closing at times, and opening again to give forth a little cloud of air bubbles like yeast in a state of fermentation.

At the sight of that senile head, the drunken man came to his senses. Why had he filled himself with wine, he, usually so sober? For a moment, in the midst of his forgetful drowsiness, the shape of his dying camel reappeared before his eyes, lying on the ground with his long inert neck stretched out on the straw, his whole body shaken from time to time by coughing, while with every moan the bloated stomach produced a sound such as issues from a barrel half filled with water.

A wave of pity and compassion swept over the man, as before him rose this vision of the agony of the camel, shaken by strange, hoarse sobs which brought forth a moan from the enormous dying carcass, the painful movements of the neck, rising for an instant to fall back again heavily upon the straw with a deep, indistinct sound, the legs moving as if trying to run, the tense tremor of the ears, and the fixity of the eyeballs, from which the sight seemed to have departed before the rest of the faculties. All this suffering came back clearly to his memory, vivid in its almost human misery.

He leaned against the railing and opened his mouth mechanically to again speak to Michelangelo’s horse:

“Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!” Then Michelangelo, who from his bed had heard the disturbance, jumped to the window above and began to swear violently at the troublesome disturber of his night’s rest.

“You damned rascal! Go and drown yourself in the Pescara River! Go away from here. Go, or I will get a gun! You rascal, to come and wake up sleeping people! You drunkard, go on; go away!”

Turlendana, staggering, started again towards the river. When at the cross-roads by the fruit market, he saw a group of dogs in a loving assembly. As the man approached, the group of canines dispersed, running towards Bagno. From the alley of Gesidio came out another horde of dogs, who set off in the direction of Bastioni.

All of the country of Pescara, bathed in the sweet light of the full moon of the springtime, was the scene of the fights of amorous canines. The mastiff of Madrigale, chained to watch over a slaughtered ox, occasionally made his deep voice heard, and was answered by a chorus of other voices. Occasionally a solitary dog would pass on the run to the scene of a fight. From within the houses, the howls of the imprisoned dogs could be heard.

Now a still stranger trouble took hold upon the brain of the drunken man. In front of him, behind him, around him, the imaginary flight of things began to take place again more rapidly than before. He moved forward, and everything moved away from him, the clouds, the trees, the stones, the river banks, the poles of the boats, the very houses,—all retreated at his approach. This evident repulsion and universal reprobation filled him with terror. He halted. His spirit grew depressed. Through his disordered brain a sudden thought ran. “The fox!” Even that fox of a Ciavola did not wish to remain with him longer! His terror increased. His limbs trembled violently. However, impelled by this thought, he descended among the tender willow trees and the high grass of the shore.

The bright moon scattered over all things a snowy serenity. The trees bent peacefully over the bank, as though contemplating the running water. Almost it seemed as though a soft, melancholy breath emanated from the somnolence of the river beneath the moon. The croaking of frogs sounded clearly. Turlendana crouched among the plants, almost hidden. His hands trembled on his knees. Suddenly he felt something alive and moving under him; a frog! He uttered a cry. He rose and began to run, staggering, amongst the willow trees impeding his way. In his uneasiness of spirit, he felt terrified as though by some supernatural occurrence.

Stumbling over a rough place in the ground, he fell on his stomach, his face pressed into the grass. He got up with much difficulty, and stood looking around him at the trees. The silvery silhouette of the poplars rose motionless through the silent air, making their tops seem unusually tall. The shores of the river would vanish endlessly, as if they were something unreal, like shadows of things seen in dreams. Upon the right side, the rocks shone resplendently, like crystals of salt, shadowed at times by the moving clouds passing softly overhead like azure veils. Further on the wood broke the horizon line. The scent of the wood and the soft breath of the sea were blended.

“Oh, Turlendana! Ooooh!” a clear voice cried out.

Turlendana turned in amazement.

“Oh, Turlendana, Turlendanaaaaa!”

It was Binchi-Banche, who came up, accompanied by a customs officer, through the path used by the sailors through the willow-tree thicket.

“Where are you going at this time of night? To weep over your camel?” asked Binchi-Banche as he approached.

Turlendana did not answer at once. He was grasping his trousers with one hand; his knees were bent forward and his face wore a strange expression of stupidity, while he stammered so pitifully that Binchi-Banche and the customs officer broke out into boisterous laughter.

“Go on! Go on!” exclaimed the wrinkled little man, grasping the drunken man by the shoulders and pushing him towards the seashore. Turlendana moved forward. Binchi-Banche and the customs officer followed him at a little distance, laughing and speaking in low voices.

He reached the place where the verdure terminated and the sand began. The grumbling of the sea at the mouth of the Pescara could be heard. On a level stretch of sand, stretched out between the dunes, Turlendana ran against the corpse of Barbara, which had not yet been buried. The large body was skinned and bleeding, the plump parts of the back, which were uncovered, appeared of a yellowish colour; upon his legs the skin was still hanging with all the hair; there were two enormous callous spots; within his mouth his angular teeth were visible, curving over the upper jaw and the white tongue; for some unknown reason the under lip was cut, while the neck resembled the body of a serpent.

At the appearance of this ghastly sight, Turlendana burst into tears, shaking his head, and moaning in a strange unhuman way:

“Oho! Oho! Oho!”

In the act of lying down upon the camel, he fell. He attempted to rise, but the stupor caused by the wine overcame him, and he lost consciousness.

Seeing Turlendana fall, Binchi-Banche and the customs officer came over to him. Taking him, one by the head and the other by the feet, they lifted him up and laid him full length upon the body of Barbara, in the position of a loving embrace. Laughing at their deed, they departed.

And thus Turlendana lay upon the camel until the sun rose.