Farther ahead, stretched out upon the ground, lay a dead horse. Dead? No, no, it wasn't dead. Its eyes were open. Good God, what eyes! It was a skeleton, little more. And those ribs! Those flanks!

Nino suddenly arrived, hobbling and panting.

"Let's get out of here immediately! Let's go back!"

"It's alive, look!" cried Ida, in a tone expressing both revulsion and pity. "It's raising its head. Good God, what eyes! Look, Nino!"

"Yes, yes," he said, still panting heavily. "They came and dumped it here. Leave it alone. Let's get out of here! What's the attraction? Can't you smell that the air already..."

"And those ravens? she exclaimed, shuddering from fright. "Are those ravens going to eat it alive?"

"Now Ida, for heaven's sake!" he begged, clasping his hands imploringly.

"Nino, stop it!" she then cried, her anger violently provoked at seeing him so suppliant and foolish. "Answer me: are they going to eat it alive?"

"How am I supposed to know how they will eat it? They'll probably wait...."

"Until it dies here of hunger, of thirst?" she continued, showing a face contorted by compassion and horror. "Because it's old? Because it's no longer useful? Oh, poor animal! What a shame! What a shame! Haven't those peasants any heart? Haven't you and your people any heart?"

"Excuse me," he said, displaying anger, "you feel so much pity for an animal..."

"Shouldn't I?"

"But you don't feel any for me!"

"And what are you, an animal? Are you perhaps dying of hunger and thirst? Have you been dumped in the middle of the stubble? Listen... Oh look at the ravens, Nino. Come on, look... they're circling around. Oh, what a horrible, shameful, monstrous thing! Look... oh, the poor animal... it's trying to get up! Nino, it's moving... Perhaps it can still walk... Nino, come on, let's help it... Do something!"

"What in the world do you expect me to do? " he burst out in exasperation. "Do you expect me to drag it along behind me, or haul it away on my shoulders? All we needed was this horse! That's all we needed! How do you expect it to walk? Can't you see it's half dead?"

"But what if we have someone bring it something to eat?"

"And something to drink too, I suppose!"

"Oh, how mean you are, Nino!" said Ida with tears in her eyes.

Then, overcoming her feeling of revulsion, she bent over to gently, very gently caress the horse's head. The animal had managed with some difficulty to raise itself up from the ground onto its front knees, displaying, despite its degrading infinite misery, what remained of its noble beauty in head and neck.

Nino, owing possibly to the blood boiling in his veins, possibly to the spiteful bitterness she had shown him, or to the mad dash and to the perspiration trickling down his limbs, felt a sudden chill and shuddered, his teeth chattering and his entire body trembling strangely. He instinctively turned up the collar of his jacket, and with his hands in his pockets and a feeling of gloom and desperation in his heart, went over to sit, all hunched up, on a rock some distance away.

The sun had already set. In the distance one could hear the bells of a cart passing down along the highway.

Why were his teeth chattering like that? And yet, his forehead was burning, his blood boiled in his veins, and his ears rumbled. He seemed to hear the ringing of so many bells in the distance. All that anxiety, the agony of waiting, her capricious coldness, that last mad dash, and now that horse, that accursed horse... Oh, God, was it a dream? A nightmare within a dream? Was it fever? Perhaps it was a more serious misfortune. Yes! How dark it was! God, how dark! Had his vision darkened, too? And he couldn't speak, he couldn't cry out.