You can always find the cause of your fortunes or misfortunes. Often perhaps you do not perceive it, but nevertheless there is a cause. It's either you or others, this or that. That's exactly how it is, Valdoggi. And listen, my mother maintains that I'm out of my mind, that I don't reason..."

"It seems to me that you reason too much..." asserted Valdoggi, already half dazed.

"Yes! And that's my problem!" Lao Griffi exclaimed with deep sincerity, as he opened his light eyes wide. "But I'd like to say to my mother: 'Listen, I've been improvident. Yes! as much as you care to believe... I was even predestined, quite predestined to get married — that I'll grant! But is it necessarily the case that in Udine or in Bologna I would have found another Margherita?' Margherita, you understand, was my wife's name."

"Oh," said Valdoggi. "Did she die?"

"Lao Griffi's face changed and he thrust his hands in his pockets, shrugging his shoulders.

The old woman lowered her head and coughed slightly.

"I killed her!" answered Lao Griffi flatly. Then he asked: "Haven't you read about it in the newspapers? I thought you knew..."

"No... I don't know anything about it," answered Valdoggi, surprised, embarrassed, and distressed for having hit on a delicate matter, but nevertheless curious to know all about it.

"I'll tell you," continued Griffi. "I've just come out of jail. I spent five months there. But it was only preventive detention, mind you! They acquitted me. Naturally! But if they had left me in, don't think that I would have minded! Inside or out, at this point it's jail in either case. So I told the jurors: 'Do with me what you will: sentence me, acquit me, anyhow for me it's all the same. I'm sorry for what I've done, but in that terrible instant I didn't know how, nor was I able to do otherwise. Whoever is not guilty, whoever has no reason to be sorry, is always a free man. Even if you chain me, I'll always be free internally. At this point, I don't care what happens to me externally.' I didn't want to say anything more, and I didn't want a lawyer to defend me. But everyone in town knew quite well that I, temperance and moderation personified, had incurred a mountain of debts for her, that I had been forced to quit my job... And then... ah, yes, and then... Can you tell me how a woman, after having cost a man so much, can do what she did to me? That wicked woman! But you know? With these hands... I swear to you that I didn't want to kill her. I wanted to know how she could do it, and I asked her, shaking her after having seized her by the throat... like this... I squeezed too hard. He had jumped out the window into the garden... Her former sweetheart...