II
Benedetto loved Professor Mayda. When, at the Senator's house, he heard
that the Professor had decided to carry him away to Villa Mayda, he
showed great pleasure, He loved this man, who was perhaps, as yet,
incapable of faith, but was profoundly convinced that there are enigmas
which science cannot solve; who was generous, haughty with the great,
but gentle with the humble. He loved the garden also, the trees, the
flowers, and the grass, whose friend and servant he had been, as he had
been the friend and servant of the Professor. Everything in this garden
was full of sweet, innocent souls, in whose company he had adored God
in certain moments of spiritual ecstasy, placing his lips on the
tiny beings, on a flower, on a leaf, on a stem, in a breath of green
coolness. He was happy in the thought of dying amidst them. Sometimes,
under one of those pine-trees, its canopy, full of wind and of sound,
turned towards the Coelian Hill, he had thought of the last scene in his
vision, and had imagined himself stretched there on the grass, in the
Benedictine habit, pale and calm, and surrounded by mournful faces,
while the pine-tree above him sang the mysterious song of Heaven.
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